The Rock of the Battalion

 I always had a tenuous, or maybe I should say strange relationship with the upper ranks, officer and enlisted. I often become some kind of reflection of what I think that person is to me. Sounds confusing, no? What I mean by that, if I see the Sergeant Major of the battalion as a little weasel who won’t go to the field when his Marines deployed, that’s what my relationship with him became, as a little weasel. I would avoid him like the plague, and keep any dealings with him as short as possible.

I had one, once who came up with a reason to not deploy.

You deploy with your Marines. To not deploy with your Marines is a cardinal sin to us, especially if you’re in the senior staff of the battalion. The Sergeant Major’s most important job is as a symbol of leadership under duress, the rock of the battalion.

Unfortunately, not all that wear the coveted stripes of a Marine sergeant major are worthy of that almost sacred role. I say that in sorrow more than anger, there were so many enlisted Marines that I worked with that would never get that rank because of politics and associated other bullshit. And so many that did get it who I wouldn’t trust to clean the shitters out in 29 Palms.

This was never the case with the first sergeants that I worked with. I worked with a few, and these guys were the men who were the rocks of the company. These guys were the consummate professionals and leaders.

I have to qualify ‘rock’ here. In Marine Corps slang, rock means the lowest man in the platoon or class. Usually class in some type of training environment. I only know that because I was the class rock for one of these military schools. But since that school had an attrition rate of fifty percent, I only got a little shit about that.

But that’s not the type of rock I’m referring to above, so Marines, stop snickering. I’m referring to the other version of the word ‘rock,’ the steady, steely-eyed, stone-faced bringer of death that the world knows as a Marine.

That type of rock.

A sergeant major isn’t really given a solid operational role, the rank is what the man who wears it is. If you are that rock of the battalion, the enlisted men will go to you if they think they’re being railroaded. You get out there and physically train with the battalion, and the young Marines see that old man out there running up and down those fucking hills, well they god damn better not act like it hurts.

Or, if you were a political weasel, you would hide out in your office all day, avoid field training exercises like the plague, and when it’s time to deploy, well, you know my feelings about that. The big worry now, is that this sprinkling of politicians in the upper enlisted ranks has become a flood and poisoned the upper officer ranks of the officer corps also. Or maybe it happened the other way around. But it’s obvious that the Joint Chiefs and the other four stars are political animals of the left and completely incompetent. The Dems have pulled off a purge of the high ranks that would be the envy of Stalin.

Our enemies, have noticed this weakness. Between the incompetent generals and the incoherent Biden the Taliban have run wild, North Korea is launching missiles again, and China is running apeshit all over the South China Sea.