Remember the rumor going around the at the Second Infantry Division had rethunk it’s reflective belt policy, choosing to err on the side of common sense and normalcy? We wrote our own take on it here. As you may recall, we mentioned how disgusted we were that they’ll trust you with frags, AT4s, Javelins and Claymores (and for that matter gozillion dollar aircraft)…they trust you to hump all over Afghanistan, Iraq and of course Korea. Now they may just trusty you to run without wearing neon warning lights on your LBE.

It wasn’t a rumor, by the way. There was an abortive attempt to make things better. Ask 8TH Army CSM Ray Devens why it went away, we can’t explain it.

Here’s an essay addressing the endemic and disgusting risk assessment/risk aversion mentality festering ever worse in the military today.

Grunts: endemic

In the Shadow of the Green Safety Dot Part 1

Chris Hernandez

No joke there I was, at a National Guard training camp’s range. This was in mid-2002, not long after the Twin Towers fell. I was in a tank unit, and we were pretty sure we’d be in combat somewhere in the Middle East before long.

I waited my turn to get on the firing line. My First Sergeant wandered among the troops doing something. I didn’t pay attention, until he walked to me with something flat and green in his hand.

“Let me see your watch,” he ordered. He looked pissed off.

I held out my wrist, puzzled. “What’s up, Top?”

He started peeling something off the flat green thing he was holding. “I have to put something on your watch face.”

I took a closer look at the object in his hand. It was a sheet full of adhesive green dots. He pulled one dot off, set it on his finger and reached toward me.

I drew my arm back. “What the hell is that for, Top?”

The First Sergeant gave me an exasperated look. “Give me your damn watch. I have to put this on it. It’s a green safety dot.”

The term itself [safety] made me want to puke. I could almost imagine some guy in a pink uniform with a tutu, prancing around to the Village People, shrieking “Think safetyyyyyyyyyyy!” at the top of his high-pitched, effeminate lungs.

A green safety dot? What’s that? “I don’t want that crap on my watch, Top. What’s it for, anyway?”

Anger flashed in the First Sergeant’s eyes. I knew it wasn’t anger at me. “It’s an order that just came down through battalion. We have to put these dots on everyone’s watches, so every time you look at your watch, you’ll think safety.”

Look at your watch and think safety. Even today, the memory of that phrase irks me.

I gave him an expression that fell somewhere between disgust and insubordination. Here I was, a combat arms, tank gunner sergeant, probably about to go to war, and someone wanted me to put this ridiculous dot on my watch so I’d always “think safety”. The term itself made me want to puke. I could almost imagine some guy in a pink uniform with a tutu, prancing around to the Village People, shrieking “Think safetyyyyyyyyyyy!” at the top of his high-pitched, effeminate lungs.

I exploded, “I’m not a f**king child, Top! That’s the stupidest sh*t I’ve ever heard! I’m not going to put that stupid ass dot on my watch!”

He blew up back at me, “Yes you are! That’s the damn order, just do it!”

We had a short shouting match over it. Within seconds, I realized the horrible situation he was in: he had to enforce a pathetically stupid, nonsensical, juvenile order. He knew soldiers like me would fight it, because we’re adults who were prepared to fight and possibly die in combat; we didn’t want anyone holding our hands and making sure we “think safety”. But he still had to carry the order out. Some colonel or major decided, “Hey, this is a great idea!” and sold it to their commander, who then ordered all the sergeants major and first sergeants to make it happen. Top couldn’t ignore it, and couldn’t publicly agree with me about it.

I decided to let him off the hook. I pulled my watch off and said, “Fine, Top. Give me the stupid f**king dot.”

He handed it to me. I stuck it on the bottom of the watch. “There. Now if some moron asks about it, you can honestly say I have the damn dot on my watch.”

Top nodded in appreciation and walked off to look for the next victim. He probably told every soldier after me to put the dot on the bottom of the watch. He was a good First Sergeant, well respected within the company. This was a man who actually teared as he told us how he almost refused a promotion, because as a First Sergeant he would never again command a tank (to tankers, that’s a huge deal; I still feel like crying over it, and I haven’t been in a tank in 9 years). He was a good man, forced to act like a nanny to a group of grown men who were training for war. Handing out the green dots hurt him right in the soul.

At the time, I thought the “green safety dot” fiasco was just one person’s stupid idea that got out of hand. I thought the “war is hell, get used to it” mindset I had learned in the Marine Corps would permeate the Army, especially since we were at war. I thought nobody would try to make Soldiers, especially combat arms soldiers, into risk-averse worry warts.

A year later I went to Phase I of the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC). There, instructors beat a mantra into our heads: “I don’t care what you’re doing, you MUST have a Risk Assessment for it.” A Risk Assessment was an examination of whatever activity we were doing, plotted on a chart, identifying dangers and specifying ways to mitigate them. Not a bad idea if you’re storming a beach, or conducting squad live fire training, or even practicing land navigation on a blazing hot day. But we had to write up and brief Risk Assessments for everything.

One of our tasks was to give a class about what job we did in the military. To pass this task, we had to brief the Risk Assessment during our introduction. So a parade of sergeants went to the podium and began their classes with, “Make sure you don’t trip over power cords. Don’t fall asleep and poke yourself in the eye with a pencil. Don’t get a paper cut. If we get hit by a hurricane [you know, since they strike without warning], the latrines are designated storm shelters.”

I sat in class awaiting my turn, fuming at what I saw, and still see, as a desperate attempt to beat the motivation out of combat troops. So we’re supposed to charge into machine gun fire if need be, keep going while our friends are killed around us, not quit the fight even if we suffer crippling injuries, but a classroom in peacetime America is so dangerous we have to be warned not to hurt ourselves during a lecture?

My turn came. I walked to the podium and started my introduction. I talked about my military background, my unit, and my civilian job. I told the class what I was going to lecture them about. Our lead instructor sat at the back of the class, checking off which required points I mentioned. I knew he was waiting for me to address the Risk Assessment.

I stopped talking, looked over my fellow students with a dejected shrug, and said this:

“Risk Assessment. If you manage to hurt yourself during my class, you f**king deserve it.” Then I went on with my presentation.

“Risk Assessment. If you manage t

o hurt yourself during my class, you f**king deserve it.”

The instructor kept looking at his checklist, but his eyes went wide. He made a mark. Later, when he sat down with me to discuss my grade, he pointed to the Risk Assessment box. It was checked. He smirked a little and said, “You mentioned the words ‘Risk Assessment’. Good enough for me.”

So I made it, even though I knew when I blew off the Risk Assessment and dropped the F bomb I risked failing out of the course. I was happy the instructor, an old-school Sergeant, thought as little of the Risk Assessment requirement as I did. But I also noted something else: nobody but me argued. Every other student in the class just rolled over, took it right in their fourth point of contact and blathered on about nonexistent dangers in our classroom. That was a sign of bad things to come.

In 2004 I was called up for Iraq (if my wife asks, I did NOT volunteer). And surprisingly, during trainup we weren’t murdered with safety rules. There were dumb things, like an urban combat instructor blowing up at a student for firing a blank round within ten feet of him. But overall, nobody beat us to death with risk assessments. In Iraq in 2005 we were pretty much left to our own devices about safety. I had the faint hope that mister “green safety dot” had actually gone on a real mission, had the crap scared out of him, and decided never to try that stupid nonsense again.

But after Iraq, the risk assessment monster started raising its head again.

MORE ON THAT GOAT ROPE TOMORROW

Read part two here.

Respectfully,

Chris Hernandez

 

About the Author: Chris Hernandez is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army National Guard who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where he frequently worked with French elements of ISAF while training and mentoring Afghan personnel. He is also a veteran police officer, having spent a long (and eye-opening) deployment as part of a UN police mission in Kosovo. Chris is a solid member of the team here (another Texan – who’dathunkit?) and we’re damn glad to have him – he will occasionally be doing some guest ranting here as well as on his own page when he’s not working on the sequel to his novel Proof of Our Resolve. Read some of his other work in The Statesman and on his blog.

Support Mad Duo Chris over on IndieGoGo…

Wait until you see his upcoming fiction novel Line in the Valley – fighting between our troops against the Cartels in the near future. It’s going to be awesome. Read excerpts of that in his blog.

Mad Duo, Breach-Bang-CLEAR!