Friday, September 30, 2005

Off to the Crystal Palace

Well, I've been back on the ground now a little better than a week and it's been, well, like I never left except a little cooler.  That's not exactly true.  While the air is still filled with dust, there is an atmosphere of change. The parliamentary elections were held nearly 2 weeks ago now and the level of violence has dropped markedly While it's too early to say if this is the beginning of a long term trend, reorganization by the cave-dwellers, the beginning of their winter hiatus, or an enemy resigned to the fact that democracy has taken hold in this country and their war is lost, I can't say.

 

What I can say though is that things are changing for me. While I knew this was coming, I was still holding out a little hope that something would change. I have lost my battle to keep dancing with the girl that brought me to the ball, and starting next week I will leave my position as the Executive Officer of LTF 191 and will ascend that Crystal Palace at the other end of Metropolis known as the Joint Logistics Command. I know all the reasons behind the move and while they make sense in a way that things can only in the Army bureaucracy, and while I know the move will benefit me professionally down the road, it's a difficult blow not being able to finish this thing with the people that I brought here.

 

People have different concepts on how to build a successful military career, one of the more popular being the “Hitch Your Wagon to a Rising Star” method. This might work for some, but I've always had more success with surrounding myself with good people and giving them the support they need to do their job, then staying the hell out of their way.

 

If I have achieved any success in this job it is due to the staff that was assigned to me.  If I had planned my whole career for this job, I couldn’t have done any better than this talented group of people who took this task force from the planning sequence in Germany to the dusty wooden huts here in Metropolis.  Through the mind-numbing minutia of the deployment planning, the personnel certification, the shipping of equipment, the training exercises conducted in a deluge at Lampertheim, Convoy Live-Fire in the frozen waste-land of Grafenwoher, deploying, establishing operations, enduring rocket attacks, and relocating the entire operation here, they succeeded in carrying the workloads where larger staffs of far senior people have failed.

 

The staff truly made this job easy and any good things that may come my way are certainly due to them.

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As the parent of one member of your staff, thank you for recognizing their efforts and for being such an intelligent, strong and caring leader. Along with your leadership, your writing has been much appreciated by this dad. Keep up the good work, and hopefully the day will come that I can buy you a drink at the "Bucksnort Saloon" and thank you in person.