After I had been reassigned to the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, to take command of the 305th Supply and Services Company, I was subsequently briefly relieved from command only to be reinstated almost immediately. I seriously believed that my senior rater had intermittent windshield wiper issues. When his windshield wipers were working, his brain was thinking rationally. However, whenever his windshield wipers weren’t working, it was like he would go berserk. He would go on one of his rage rampages. If you’ve ever seen a pissed off bull after somebody has inadvertently entered its domain or a bunch of pissed off bees after their hive has been disturbed, you will know exactly what I mean. That was him to a tee. You simply did not want to be in the path of that angry bull or those pissed off bees when they were on a rampage. Oh hell no. The good Lord knows how bad your ass will get torn apart. And believe me, your ass will get torn apart. Now, suppose that those intermittent windshield wipers with the issues also had a personality disorder and mechanical difficulties. Usually, those mechanical difficulties would manifest in the form of the intermittent windshield wipers turning themselves on and going 100 miles an hour, even if it weren’t raining. Think about that. Why in the hell would you need windshield wipers to turn on all by themselves on a bright sunny day? Answer: you don’t. Therein lies the problem with intermittent windshield wipers with a personality disorder (mechanical disorder). Those goddamn sons of bitches have a mind of their own. They do what they damn well please, whenever they damn well please come hell or high water. Well, that’s pretty much what full bird colonels do when their elevators don’t quite go all the way to the top floor. They’re unpredictable. And when something is unpredictable like a pissed off bull or a bunch of pissed off bees, you just might get hurt. Ouch. I got lucky. Anyway, after the dust settled and everything went back to normal, life as the commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company returned to normal. Life was normal until one afternoon when one of my NCOs brought a female soldier named Private Bustamante in to see me. The reason that Private Bustamante was in my office was that she had been away without leave (AWOL) for three days and she had been insubordinate to her NCOs and officers in her chain of command. Her Platoon Sergeant recommended punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). When I read her charges to her and gave her possible options, Private Bustamante chose to appeal the punishment to the Battalion Commander. I simply could not understand why she would appeal the punishment to the Battalion Commander. Her decision simply didn’t pass the common sense test. I had made clear to the company that my policy for invoking punishment was to use a logarithmic scale so that the punishment would match wrongful behavior and that I believed that first-time violators should always get a light or reduced punishment, and that each subsequent punishment should be increasingly more severe. When I checked Private Bustamante’s file, I noted that she had received punishment from the previous commander, but she had a clean slate as far as I was concerned. Since I couldn’t trust anything that the previous commander had done, I simply disregarded what he had done. In my book, this was her first offense. So, why was she appealing to the Battalion Commander where she could possibly get the boom lowered upon her? When the Battalion Commander saw her on her appeal, he let her off with a letter of reprimand. Since she was due to be discharged from the Army in approximately 40 days, that letter of reprimand was like a twisted letter of appreciation. About the only way that letter of reprimand could do any damage to somebody who was due to be discharged from the Army so soon was if somebody were to roll it up into the shape of a tight funnel and poke it into somebody’s eye. Thus, it had the effect of being a letter of appreciation. Thank you very much for your kind words of wisdom. I shall keep them and cherish them forever. A twisted letter of appreciation. That really floored me. I simply could not understand what in the hell the Battalion Commander was thinking. When I went to talk with the Battalion Commander, I asked, “Sir, what in the hell were you thinking?” The Battalion Commander replied, “Private Bustamante told me that she had information about you being drinking buddies with a couple of the soldiers in the unit.” “Did she give you any names?” “No. No names. She just gave me vague details about where the soldiers worked and where you went out to drink with them.” “Oh really. And when was I supposed to have done this?” “Apparently, before you took command.” “Sir, that sounds like total horseshit. I can’t believe you even bought that bullshit. Tell me, just exactly what kind of information does Private Bustamante have on you that she can use it to blackmail you? Cuz I believe that she seriously blackmailed your ass. There is no doubt in my mind that she has some kind of dirt on you. That is the only way you would swallow some kind of horse shit like that.” “No. No blackmail. I just think we need to let this one go.” “That’s bullshit Sir. But you’re the man, so I’ll respect your decision. I walked away from the Battalion headquarters feeling like I had just stepped out of an exercise in futility.
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