The McGrath Minute

“A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.” – General Douglas MacArthur

Perseverance is a great leadership trait that one must possess in life. Adversity always makes you are better person and it is the foundational building block of your moral character. As I have stated in previous posts I am not afraid of failure. Failure can teach you lessons that you will always carry forward in life. Me and a friend always joke about how we have failed everything that we have done. This is an example of what I would describe as one of my profound leadership failures that I had while I served in the military. I always used this story in order to teach a lesson with a hope that I could teach someone to not make the same mistake that I made in combat.

I was very excited to get promoted to becoming a platoon sergeant while deployed in Iraq. Not only would I be a platoon sergeant, I would become a platoon sergeant and get on the job training in combat. Although this isn’t the most ideal situation, I would venture to say that this is every infantryman’s dream to be in charge of an infantry platoon in combat. I had plenty of experience and this was my third combat deployment, I felt like I was ready. The problem that I quickly determined was that this wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be especially when I came in to take over this platoon at the tail end of a deployment.

Bad habits, terrible muscle memory, and complacency starts taking over as people can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was close to going home. I would always say that you cannot allow complacency to set in during an exfiltration of a mission because that is when the enemy was most likely to strike. The enemy would develop a pattern of life and when they determined that you were making shortcuts they would attack. In most cases this would result in a death, injury, or destruction of military property. I felt that for my very first patrol with this platoon, I would observe their tactics, techniques, and procedures. I would address any issues if I felt that there would a major break down in the security posture or if anyone did things that could jeopardize the mission or the safety of the platoon.

We conducted a reconnaissance and presence patrol that involved the mounted movement of almost 100+ kilometers through fairly dangerous terrain. In the military we would call this a non-permissive environment. There had been multiple successful improvised explosive device (IED) blasts in this area, however, there was no injuries thus far in the deployment. This was also a fairly new area that we had started patrol, and I believe that the enemy at the time was not happy we were there, however, they were also shifting their objectives to waiting out the coalition forces in Iraq as the draw down seemed imminent.

We had to crossed a military temporary bridge and that marked a transition in the most dangerous portion of our patrol. As we moved along there was little to no activity, but the contributing factor was that we were moving late at night. We began to cross a culvert that had previously been used as an IED location, while I was riding in the last vehicle. I was doing my usual scanning, however, I got a gut instinct that there was an IED under this culvert. From my previous combat experience I learned that I would always trust my gut instinct, however this was a dynamic situation. I was in a new environment, with a new element, and I wanted to observe their way of doing business. So I ordered the patrol to stop and I asked each vehicle commander if anyone had seen anything suspicious under coming from that culvert. They responded one by one that they had not observed anything suspicious. I felt that I had to show that I have trust in their abilities and we continued mission. There was a critical task that we had skipped!

As we wrapped up our mission and we were returning to our base, the enemy understood that there was only one way in and out of our new area of operation. As we were returning from this uneventful patrol we observed a route clearance patrol moving at a snail’s pace towards us. Route clearance’s job was to find and destroy IED’s. They would drive slow, have a lot of lights, and specialized equipment that they would use to defeat IEDs. We were moving and we got to within a short distance of the route clearance element’s lead truck, when a massive IED detonated. That lead vehicle was driving over the aforementioned culvert when the IED exploded. For some reason a young soldier got on our radio frequency, asking for help because they had killed and wounded. One soldier from the route clearance element was unfortunately killed on that night. He paid the ultimate sacrifice doing a dirty, but necessary job that made the roads safer for both Coalition soldiers and local Iraqi civilians.

I always think about that night and I swore at the time that I had allowed this incident to happen and that I had failed at my job as a combat leader. I did not force my subordinates to do their jobs and to do the proper battle drill for clearing a culvert. This is the only way that I could honor the sacrifice of that soldier by ensuring that soldiers under me would not take short cuts. See, when it comes to people’s lives the only true choice is to do the right thing. This is called integrity. The Army has adopted integrity as one of its core values. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines integrity as having strong moral or artistic values: incorruptibility.

My moral obligation as a leader is to ensure that all of my subordinates performed their jobs to the utmost of their ability. I mistook not wanting to cause turbulence on my first day for a good leadership quality because that situation was not the right time to adapt that approach. You cannot affect what has happened in the past, however, you can shape the future and ensure that you never make critical mistakes twice. As a leader you should be self-aware and continually assess your successes and failures to ensure that you are performing your duty morally and ethically.