This is the question that has puzzled mankind for a millennium. Essentially it is where more than one person works together to achieve a common goal. We as people use teamwork every minute of the day, but it is especially important to the job of the Infantryman, it is the backbone of our jobs. We as soldiers have to recognize that in order to do our job we must rely on the man on our left and the man on our right. This is the basics of the infantryman’s job trust the guy to each side of you and you will make it through whatever evil hell may send your way.
What happened last Thursday night was a total lack of teamwork, trust and most importantly brotherhood. Three soldiers from 1st Platoon decided to take things into their own hands not thinking of the team, used bad judgment and ended up getting not only themselves into trouble but also the platoon, the platoon sergeant who has stuck his neck out for us more than a few times. The actions of the few made the platoon who had excelled in prior weeks look like complete undisciplined vagabonds. These three were not entirely to blame for they were accompanied by other soldiers who knew what they were doing and did not voice the truth, these soldiers, these silent few let not only themselves down but also the Fightin’ First team down. It is our responsibility as fellow soldiers to police up our brother no matter what situation arises; it is our responsibility to protect those who cannot protect themselves from their own actions. We not only failed ourselves, brothers, and team but we failed one of the most important army valuesLOYALTY.
For is it not true, in order to be loyal to others we must first be loyal to ourselves. We forget our creed we will never leave a fallen soldier; whether fallen means dead on the battlefield or drunk in the bar never the less he is still fallen and it is our job to police our buddies up. Teamwork has been used since the beginning of man from the slaves in Egypt to last years winning NBA basketball team. No matter where you go in the world today you will find teamwork, one man cannot achieve victory. In order to win you must use all your assets, when you do this you can win no matter what the odds are. If you look throughout history you will find example of teamwork for example, the allies of WWII came together and achieved victory over an evil dictator.
There is no reason why we as trained infantryman soldiers can not use teamwork. Teamwork is what will keep us alive. When a fire team is moving they must all rely on each other in order to complete the mission, the fundamentals of our job require us to trust each other with our lives daily. What happened last week was wrong, these three did not follow commands that were given, they did not use their chain of command, in fact the only thing they did do right was to use their arrive alive card. If they had contacted their chain of command they would not be placed is this situation, and would not have embarrassed their team, company and battalion with this incident. I cannot entirely blame them though for I was also at fault, I was their way of getting to and from where the incident took place.
I hold myself accountable because my lack of teamwork and judgment was not used. I realize that if I had to change the incident that happened last week there is a million ways I could do so. For starters I would have not came back to the barracks after they had contacted me, if I was a good battle buddy I would have stayed they to police my fellow soldiers up, so I guess I let them down as much as they let the team down, but also we did have a plan of action, they were supposed to get in contact me if anything like this was going to happen and .
