One of the reasons I started writing this blog was so I would have a repository for things I had already written. That’s why you can find Christmas poems going back to the 80’s. I also wrote a column in the Fort Riley POST when I was the Staff Judge Advocate for the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley. I wrote a column every week and it was great fun. I tried to plug in a little legal education (at a very mundane level), pride in the Division and Post and a little humor. I called the column, “The Judge Says.”
After I had been doing this for a little over a year, General Hugh Overholt, The Judge Advocate General of the Army, showed up for our annual inspection and presented me with the Forces Command “4th Estate Award” for writing the best column in an Army paper. I’m may be overstating the significance of the award. So sue me.
So I am going to feed in Judge Says columns under the category, “The Judge Says.” I also wrote comumns in Germany when I was the V Corps SJA. I entitled the Column, “From the Corps.” It was originally entitled it “From the Corps Rear.” The SJA office was located at the rear of the Corps, but I was convinced that I should drop rear out of the title. I guess there were no prizes for originality of thought. I may stick the “From the Corps” articles under “The Judge Says” or come up with a new category. I don’t want to make such a weighty decision at this time. Here it is. Enjoy.
*** Tuesday, we had the ground breaking for the new NCO Club. And while I wasn’t there, I’ll bet I can tell you what happened. I’ll bet General Partain and probably CSM Dyess each with a shovel, dug into the virgin soil where the new NCO Club will soon stand. How do I know this? ‘Cause that’s how it is supposed to be done.
The reason I am mentioning this is because, in 1973 (or 4, things are beginning to get fuzzy), I observed the craziest ground breaking ceremony ever. It was the new JAG School in Charlottesville, VA. The Commandant couldn’t get The Judge Advocate General down from DC at the time construction was ready to start, so he decided to wait till a later date when a lot of big wigs could be present. Well, by the time of the ground breaking, the foundation had been dug and the basement concrete had been poured. You ain’t heard nothing yet.
On the day of the ceremony it was raining. We were all loaded on buses (mandatory formation), but we were heading in the wrong direction. It seems that because of the muddy conditions, the ceremony was to be held inside at a different location. As I took my seat at the Red Cross Training Center, I noticed up on the stage, a sand box full of dirt. Now, I’m flexible (there’s a fine line between being flexible and wishy-washy) and I think I could have gone along with the late ceremony inside the wrong location as long as the dirt had come from the construction site (Heaven knows they had lots of dirt laying around). But when I found out the dirt had been purchased from a local nursery, I slid down in my seat hoping no one would see me. On three occasions, I denied being present and, even later, claimed ignorance of the whole affair. I was convinced the building had been conceived out of wedlock. But, even with this dubious beginning, the JAG School has turned out to be a fantastic building. Each one of my lawyers has studied military law at the school.
The bit about the JAG School doesn’t have a lot to do with the point I want to make. That is that Fort Riley and the Big Red One are pointed in the right direction – a new NCO Club that will bring back some of the traditions of the Army. Soldiers at Fort Riley are doing a lot of things right and we need to build on that pride. We are the best.
That brings me to another pet peeve – dissatisfiers (that’s a 75 cent word that means those things that hack you off). If we sat down and thought about the things that we are unhappy about, we could make a long list, and the more we wrote the more unhappy we would become. And there are turkeys around that do just that.
Don’t get caught up in the game of negative thinking. I knew a captain and his wife who were unhappy at Fort Carson, Hawaii and every other post they were assigned. And they loved to talk about how miserable they were. The Fort Riley community has a tremendous amount of energy and good things are happening. Get involved and contribute.