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It seems like every time I pick up our monthly post
newsletter or newspaper there's a column listing the command's recent DUI offenders.
So it's obvious that like many other military communities here in Europe, we have a growing problem with drunk drivers.
A long, long time ago, back in the early 1980's, my ol'Airborne unit had a similar problem - not only with DUIs, but drugs too.
Our battalion commander, Ltc. Needham, called for a "loddy-doddy everybody" battalion formation.
I was a platoon sergeant at the time and remember that day like it was yesterday.
Good ol'Needham climbed on top of a wooden physical training platform, took a long silent look at the battalion and said;
"Starting today, regardless of your rank, race, religion, married or single, if you get picked up and tested positive for drugs or for driving under the influence of alcohol, you will be given a battalion Article 15.
And when you come before my desk, be prepared for your punishment.
I will MAX YOU OUT! And if you want to know what's the maximum punishment that I can impose on you under the UCMJ, just ask your company commander or first sergeant.
Are there any questions?"
Well, needless to say, from that day on the troops nicknamed him "Nuke'em Needham."
Because when you got caught and stood before his desk, you knew you were gonna get "nuked" and lose your rank and/or a whole lot of money.
Though I was not a strong supporter of Needham's new policy, I gotta admit, he did get rid of and/or drastically reduce the battalion's DUI and drug problems.
He believed that if you hit a soldier where it hurt the most, in the wallet, he won't have any money left for booze or drugs.
(Come to think of it, didn't General Patton have a similar theory?)
Now back in the late 1970's when I was assigned to a Ranger unit, we had a battalion commander who didn't believe in Article 15s.
He said, "It's better to take away a soldier's free time than to ruin his career with an Article 15."
Though we didn't have any serious DUIs in the battalion, we did have problems with soldiers getting themselves thrown in jail for drunk & disorderly conduct and bar fighting.
But this only happened on the weekends because we were usually training out in the field Monday through Friday.
(That is, when we weren't away on a long deployment somewhere else.)
So naturally, it was just a tradition for us Rangers to cut loose and raise hell on the weekends after spending so much time out in the field.
Well the battalion commander got tired of getting late night phone calls on the weekend from the local police department about his Rangers tearing up the town.
So he passed word down through the chain of command that if we didn't start behaving ourselves, then he'll start taking the weekends away from us too.
Needless to say, we didn't heed to his warnings right away.
And we didn't learn our lesson until he started calling battalion alert formations on the weekends and taking us on 12 mile road marches in the middle of the night.
Now if you showed up drunk, you were either sober by the time you completed it or you simply passed out somewhere along the way.
And if you passed out or quit before successfully completing the march, you had to do it all over again the next day or the following weekend with your chain of command.
Talk about being in "double trouble."
In another unit, a fellow platoon sergeant and friend of mine use to call in his entire platoon whenever one of his men got picked up by the military police.
His theory was, "If I gotta get up in the middle of the night to retrieve one of my soldiers, I'm gonna make the whole damn platoon come with me until they start behaving and policing themselves up."
Yep, all this may have happened more than 20 years ago, but what worked for us old timers back then I guarantee will still work today.
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