Demand for Supply

Just about every company in the Army has a supply sergeant (movement control teams are one exception). He's the guy who's responsible for ordering the pencils and keeping track of what belongs to whom. As a company commander, you can work around a dumpy XO, but a bad supply sergeant makes for a real headache.

A good, experienced supply guy is hard to come by, particularly in Korea. Most of the time we get guys right out of their initial entry training. When we do get someone who's competent, it's typically for just one year, and then they're gone again. It's not really a good system for true accountability.

This problem is compounded by flexible Army personnel rules. Technically, you can "slot" people two levels higher than their rank. For example, a specialist can -- in theory -- fill a staff sergeant's slot. In reality, however, there's no way a specialist can do a staff sergeant's job any more than a captain like me can lead a battalion.

It's even worse when you figure that the specialists we get are typically "reclassed," meaning they did some other job for their first enlistment. Yes, they've been trained, and yes, they can be slotted two levels up, but they don't really know the job.

I both pity and respect the sergeant first class in my shop. She has to handle not only her own job, but also train the rest of the supply sergeants in the battalion AND teach me how to do mine.