I was going on my break so I decided to follow the sergeant and ask him why he put himself in jail. He responded by saying “when my men screw up he punishes them, but when he screws up who punishes him, so he jailed himself to show his men that he is not above the rules either.
I found this an interesting approach and in a way he had earned my respect even though I did not really know him that well. Many years later as I began to move up the ranks I was reminded by this when a Royal Signals corporal told me a similar story about himself. This inspired me and from then on I would at times (when I screwed up) stand one of my men down from doing the drag stag (between the hours of midnight and 05:00hrs in the morning) and put myself on guard duty as a sergeant even as a staff sergean.
My men would always want to know what I had done wrong, but I would just say you don’t need to know just enjoy your down time.
No comments:
Post a Comment