As historians and former staff try to set up to honor the participants in long ago fights and battles in the Vietnam War, the differing roles become again glaringly clear.
We who served as platoon leaders and company commanders for indigenous forces find ourselves once again responsible for them when they show up sick, broken and hungry in a refugee camp somewhere.
State Dept. and U.N. personnel are quick to point out you are no longer “responsible,” but who is a better judge of these poor creatures’ merit? The responsibility for those who gave you their unswerving obedience does not end when your country quits a war.
I have found this true for American units I served in as an NCO and as an officer.
At reunions, you remain the final arbitrator of how those you were responsible for performed on a certain day.
Seat of Responsiblity, Accountability
You are the one who must protect their true performance from usurpers who suddenly get the ear of “someone,” and a war story, after the fact, is born.
This is also true when one of your own takes on an undeserved status at the expense of other former soldiers.
But first and foremost, your responsibility never ends in making sure that truth prevails over dreamed-up baloney, regardless of who outside the squad, platoon and company chain tries to claim better knowledge of who was who during battle.
Writers and historians hate former squad leaders and platoon sergeants because their recollections have no flowery baloney attached.
Who Should Decide?
Our leaders had no problem sending us night after night and day after day into the fire responsible to fight, win and protect the lives of our charges.
How strange for them to suddenly believe that they are the final word on how our soldiers performed.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a terrible truth to lay on you. I do not care what positions at the end of your lives you have achieved because if it was I who was a squad leader, platoon sergeant or company commander, it is I who remain the protector of their legacy — and you tread on dangerous ground challenging me on what that entails.
To every usurper, regardless of who you sold your baloney story to, beware for I seem to have inherited others’ children for life.
I am a former squad leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader and company commander in terrible and glorious battles and I am the final say on what somebody did or did not do.
I assert that authority now, and it would seem forever.
To my soldiers I say simply; “Rest easy. For if the usurper comes from within or outside of the unit, I will provide all the wrath required to give truth back to your valiant efforts.
“Any person who believes otherwise treads on dangerous ground because I am a former squad leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader and company commander, and I am the infantry.
Major Mark A. Smith, U.S. Army (ret.), served in Vietnam, where he was a Prisoner of War. He may be contacted at majorzippo@yahoo.com
