Support Operations and the chain of command

Yesterday my operations section got a call from the brigade SPO office saying we had to help a sister battalion that couldn't accomplish a support mission it was assigned. It was a strange call for several reasons.

First, the normal route for taskings is through our battalion, not directly from brigade. Second, we normally get a few days' notice. Third, the brigade contact said we were to let the other unit use our equipment to do the mission.

This kind of "put down everything you're doing and handle this" convulses a company's operations, but that obviously wasn't the brigade contact's concern. Their concern was getting the mission done, without regard for property accountability or personnel availability. It's a bad way of doing business.

As I found out later, our battalion SPO office had said as much -- which was why brigade circumvented battalion and called us directly. Without knowing exactly who was ordering this, I called my commander and -- under his direction -- put things in motion to pick up the mission.

The first thing to do was dispatch the equipment -- the weekly checks that certify a piece's operability. And since the equipment actually belonged to a who third unit, we had to go through them to get that done.

Unfortunately (and I say that tongue-in-cheek), we just weren't able to get this done by the end of the duty day. Even if we were, though, we'd have had to lay out all the component parts in order to do a property transfer. There's no way all of this could have happened in one afternoon with time enough to actually *do* the mission. We would have run around like crazy for nothing.

Too bad it didn't work out!

For me, it was a learning experience. Although there wasn't anything I did *wrong*, per se, I should have contacted battalion SPO immediately after the brigade contact called. That would have ended things right there.

I also learned about the interpersonal friction between the battalion and brigade staffs. Neither section is monolithic, and there are always characters who act to cover their behinds without notifying their own superiors. In this case, the brigade contact was a comparatively low ranking NCO -- no match for our Support Operations Officer (a major).

In addition, I saw the friction between our SPO and that of the sister battalion's. While we've become famous for never dropping a mission, the other battalion is almost notorious for letting things fall through. Rather than continue to clean up their messes, our SPO shop is trying to wean them from their dependence on us.

To conclude, just because you get a call from someone at brigade doesn't mean you have to do what they say. As an XO, it's imperative that you know who to take orders from, who you just have to be nice to, and who you can blow off.

No matter what, though, you always have to keep your commander in the loop. If there's anyone who can cover your behind, it's your direct boss.