The Commanding OfficerSubmitted by Len Hinds THE COMMANDING OFFICER! C.O.’s are a fortunate lot for, as everyone knows, a C.O. has nothing to do–this is excep  To decide what is to be done; to tell somebody to do it; to listen to reasons why it should not be done, why it should be done by somebody else, or how it should be done in a different way; and to prepare arguments in rebuttal that shall be convincing and conclusive. To follow up to see if the thing has been done; to discover that it has not been done; to enquire why it has not been done; to listen to excuses from the person who did not do it; and to think up arguments to overcome the excuses,
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To follow up a second time to see if the thing has been done; to discover that it has been done incorrectly; to point out how it shall be done; to conclude that as long has it has been done it might as well be left as it is; to wonder if it not time to get rid of the person who cannot do a thing correctly; to reflect that in all probability any successor would be just as bad, or worse. * * * To consider how much more simple and better the thing would have been done had he done it himself in the first place; to reflect satisfactorily that if he had done it himself he would have been able to do it right in twenty minutes, and that the way things turned out, he himself had spent two days trying to find out why it had taken somebody else three weeks to do it wrong, and to realise that if he undertook all these jobs himself it would have such a demoralising effect on his unit; because it would strike at the heart of the belief of all soldiers that a C.O. has nothing to do. |
