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Can you imagine an NCO meeting a Colonel, let alone a five star general, shirtless and greasy today? My how times have changed. There’s very much a place for spit and polish in the service. But there’s also very much a time for senior officers to see past the dog and pony shows and see…
Can you imagine an NCO meeting a Colonel, let alone a five star general, shirtless and greasy today?
My how times have changed.
There’s very much a place for spit and polish in the service. But there’s also very much a time for senior officers to see past the dog and pony shows and see what the actual conditions are.
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This picture shows why the rank of command sergeant major was reintroduced into the armed forces….
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I see an officer who is smart enough to know not to expect spit and polish when you show up un-announced at an active service service unit.
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When the war was on the services had become far more affected by a pragmatic attitude than a peace time service would ever tolerate. Overwhelmingly, the military was manned by non-professionals and the attitudes of the leadership had to adapt to that fact.
LeMay was not scarred by the encounter pictured. He did insist on some spit and polish in SAC, but that was what caused SAC to become known as the arm pit of the USAF. My father went so far as to travel from Hunter AFB at Savanna, GA to Asheville, NC to re-enlist so he could get out of SAC because Lemay insisted that people be kept in their MOS and the cooks ended up essentially assigned permanent KP in addition to doing their normal job. It led to some of the longest hours in the USAF and the exodus created by that atmosphere hurt SAC tremendously. While the attitude never went away, Lemay was forced to moderate some of the demands. Flightline personnel, for example, rarely went to KP, but the cooks found themselves relieved of a lot of the work that nearly made their jobs intolerable.
My father ended up in Air Defense Command after SAC, the most desirable lash up in the USAF.
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