One of the old lines is, “What is the difference between the Army and the Boy Scouts?”  The answer is “The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.”  I truly love the Army and am proud to have served for 28 years.  But, if you are going to be a career soldier, you better keep your sense of humor.  The Army does things (with its lack of adult supervision) that can drive you crazy.  We used to say, “When something goes wrong, the first thing that must be done is to fix blame.”  While it was said “tongue-in-cheek”, it really was close to the truth.

Back in the 70’s, I was teaching at the JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia.  In those days, if we had hand-out material that had a number of pages, we would have the material printed for us at the print plant at Fort Lee, Virginia.  Five years ago, we would feed the material into a copying machine and it would come out copied, collated and stapled.  Today, the material would be posted on-line and the students would go to a web site and read the material.  But, back in the 70’s, the print plant was pretty efficient.

During the same period, there were a lot of Vietnam protests near or actually on military posts and bases.  I taught a seminar to the Advanced (Graduate) Class on the legal aspects of handling protesters.  The courts had decided there were freedom of speech and right of assembly issues in how we dispatched the protesters (you could remove them from post, but you shouldn’t drop them off at a gate that was 30 miles from the gate they entered).  Anyway, these young JAG officers needed to know how to advise their commanders and I had assembled some pretty good material to help them.

The materials for the students had been sent down to the print plant and hadn’t come back.  I checked because I was running out of time.  They advised me that our supply sergeant was taking a truck to Fort Lee the next day and he would be bringing back my dissent seminar material along with a whole lot of other stuff.  That next day, the materials were picked up at Fort Lee and brought back to the JAG School.  The following day, the materials had vanished.  By the time the School figured out what had happened, all the materials were buried in the county landfill!

I was furious.  Remember the first rule – fix blame.  I went to my boss and told him it was inexcusable for all those brand new materials to have been trashed.  Somebody had to be responsible.  He sat me down and calmly explained to me what had happened.

Mr. Merritt, the publication section director, was going through all of the School’s Department of the Army publications.  Many were obsolete and he intended to pitch them.  The School’s janitorial service worked each night.  I believe they came in about 11:00 PM and worked till about 7:00 AM.  Mr. Merritt spoke with them just as they were leaving on the day in question.  He told them he would be spending the day gathering up obsolete publications to be thrown away.  He would pile all the old publications on a large table.  This particular table had wheels, so it was great for moving material from one end of the hall to the other.  Mr. Merritt requested that when the janitors arrived for work that night, they should wheel the table down the hall to the dumpster and throw away the obsolete material.

Mr. Merritt worked diligently and filled the table.  At 5:00 PM, he went home.  I know, I know.  You are already way ahead of me, but I need to fill in a few more pieces.  At about 7:30 PM, our tired and hungry supply sergeant returns from Fort Lee.  He needs to empty the truck before he can go home.  He walks down to the Publications Section and finds the table he needs to use for transportation, but it is covered with DA publications.  He removes the material and neatly stacks it against a wall.  Then, he wheels the table down the hall to where he has the truck parked.  He unloads all the new material onto the table and wheels it back to publications.  By now it is well after 8:00 PM, so  he locks the place and goes home for a late dinner.

The janitorial personnel at the JAG School are wonderful people.  They took such pride in keeping the building spotless and we treated them like family.  On that infamous day, they showed up around 11:00 PM and followed Mr. Merritt’s instructions.  They made sure that all the material on the table made it into the dumpster.  Of course, the dumpster was emptied first thing the next morning and the Fort Lee print plant material had taken its last ride.

My boss looked at me and said, “Jack, who do you want to punish?  Everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do.”  I went back to my office and reflected on the situation.  Then, after a short while, I relaxed.  After all, I had fixed blame.  There wasn’t any.