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I’ve read that Mort Walker, creator of the long-running and highly popular comic strip Beetle Bailey, sometimes asks serving military members to provide suggestions for the strip. Things that have happened that are humorous, ridiculous, etc., in their units.
If true, last Sunday’s strip could have been suggested by someone at CGSC many years ago. The strip showed the hapless Brig. Gen. Halftack in a doctor’s office getting a bottle of pills. As he was leaving, the doctor kept saying “Take one, not two pills.”
Halftrack grumbled about having heard the doctor, and opened a door to leave. A strip or two later he emerged from a storage room, opened the door marked “exit,” and left, while the doctor continued to tell him to take one, not two pills.
Many years ago one of the classes provided by CGSC was begun and called the Pre-command Course. All U.S. Army lieutenant colonels and colonels selected to command battalions and brigades had to come to the fort for a varying length of time to learn some of the intricacies of command.
The commandant always spoke to the class and shared some of a three-star general’s perspective about command at lower levels.
The commandant’s talk was scheduled in different meeting rooms or classrooms depending on the size of the class and other considerations. When Bell Hall was still the home of CGSC most of these talks by the commandant were in a tiered conference room known as Classroom 6.
But on the occasion of this column’s talk by the commandant, the talk was given in a regular CGSC classroom that would hold an entire section of CGSC students, usually 66.
Each classroom had a storage room inside it. The classroom entry doors had glass panes on them; the storage room didn’t.
The commandant in question gave a “fire and brimstone” talk exhorting the soon-to-be commanders to “know everything about your unit, and I mean everything.”
When he finished, the commandant headed to the closest door, followed by his aide. The general opened the door and walked in, with the aide right behind. The aide shut the door, which was the door to the classroom storage room.
With the door shut it was dark as pitch inside, and for several minutes both men tried in vain to find either the light switch or door knob. It was only a couple of minutes, but seemed like hours to those in the class, the instructor, and the general and his aide.
I’ve read that Mort Walker, creator of the long-running and highly popular comic strip Beetle Bailey, sometimes asks serving military members to provide suggestions for the strip. Things that have happened that are humorous, ridiculous, etc., in their units.
If true, last Sunday’s strip could have been suggested by someone at CGSC many years ago. The strip showed the hapless Brig. Gen. Halftack in a doctor’s office getting a bottle of pills. As he was leaving, the doctor kept saying “Take one, not two pills.”
Halftrack grumbled about having heard the doctor, and opened a door to leave. A strip or two later he emerged from a storage room, opened the door marked “exit,” and left, while the doctor continued to tell him to take one, not two pills.
Many years ago one of the classes provided by CGSC was begun and called the Pre-command Course. All U.S. Army lieutenant colonels and colonels selected to command battalions and brigades had to come to the fort for a varying length of time to learn some of the intricacies of command.
The commandant always spoke to the class and shared some of a three-star general’s perspective about command at lower levels.
The commandant’s talk was scheduled in different meeting rooms or classrooms depending on the size of the class and other considerations. When Bell Hall was still the home of CGSC most of these talks by the commandant were in a tiered conference room known as Classroom 6.
But on the occasion of this column’s talk by the commandant, the talk was given in a regular CGSC classroom that would hold an entire section of CGSC students, usually 66.
Each classroom had a storage room inside it. The classroom entry doors had glass panes on them; the storage room didn’t.
The commandant in question gave a “fire and brimstone” talk exhorting the soon-to-be commanders to “know everything about your unit, and I mean everything.”
When he finished, the commandant headed to the closest door, followed by his aide. The general opened the door and walked in, with the aide right behind. The aide shut the door, which was the door to the classroom storage room.
With the door shut it was dark as pitch inside, and for several minutes both men tried in vain to find either the light switch or door knob. It was only a couple of minutes, but seemed like hours to those in the class, the instructor, and the general and his aide.
Finally the door opened and out walked, quite briskly, a red-faced three-star. As he headed for the classroom entrance door, he mumbled something to the effect “Well, even a three-star can’t know absolutely everything about every little thing in his command.”
No one in the class laughed, although a lieutenant colonel who was there said later it was the hardest he’d ever had to try to stifle a laugh. Even after the general departed the room no one laughed as no one wanted that fact to get back to the general.
I worked in Bell Hall at the time and was always going in classroom storage rooms for one thing or another. But shortly after the above incident, when I tried to enter one, it was locked. I had to go to the classroom services office for a key, and inquired why the storage rooms were now locked.
I was told that the day after the general’s gaffe, word came down that from that day unto ever more, storage rooms inside classrooms would be locked.
The reason was apparent. No future general would ever make a spectacle of himself by trying to exit an unfamiliar classroom. Lock the offending door and solve the problem.
John Reichley is a retired Army officer and retired Department of the Army civilian employee.
