I'm watching Jadotville and this is a running critque.
Sid "Vicious" Johnsten sent me with the Engineering Department Master Chief to rescue our two n'eer do wells. We went to the office of the head of the Bahrain Self Defense Commander who was, perhaps, pleased to see us.
He stood up behind his desk when we came in and shook hands energetically with Master Chief Meisbrugger and said how pleased he was to meet the man who wears the stars. The Master Chief and I were both in uniform. I was the ship's legal officer, Master Chief Meisbrugger was the man with the stars.
The general pointed out what we already knew. Our two idiots had been latched with their hands in front and both of them decided to leap out of the BDSF jeep after they were apprehended doing wrong things in front of the InterContinental Hotel. They opted to leap from the jeep. They got a lot broken. Broken arms, broken jaw, etc.
The officer in charge of the Bahrain Defense Force told the Master Chief and me, that they had suffered enough and he gave them back to us gratis, so we could ship them home via the Navy Hospital in Rota.
It's hard to believe but neither of them were taken to Mast. They just went away one day and never came back. It used to be like that. It was a better navy back then. We took it as given that 10% of your people really were 90% of your problem and we took it for action. We didn't set out to hurt them, we just got rid of them. Bottom Blow was an unbelievable option.
Can you imagine if you could still do that today?
2 comments:
I will be very interested to hear your impression of Jadotville Cap'n, I enjoyed it.
As to the good old days (for truly they were), sometimes it was better for all concerned to let someone out the backdoor with an administrative discharge. No harm, no foul, thank you for playing.
Of course, in those days not everyone got a trophy. Not everyone expected a trophy, unless one deserved it.
Sigh...
The ship reached the point where it was only 60% manned by the time we pulled into Diego Garcia. After a month long availability with the Proteus we kind of got kicked out of port and were almost back up the equator when a C5 landed with about 90 crewmen. We turned around and got 'em. We needed them.
I think if we still ran bottom blow that there'd be hell to pay once the lawyers got involved and somebody quietly invoked the data to see if we were racist bastards. As it happens, that wasn't ever a problem on the 5 ships I served on. But let a JAG get involved and all normal thought processes fly out the window.
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