My Hatred Of Rednecks...

[The Grand Nudger]

[...] three hots and a cot [...]

Cold MREs, anyone?

Meatballs and tomato sauce ... blech. "Meal Refused by Ethiopians", indeed.

Once upon a time, there were no vegetarians in the infantry (too embarrassing)...but there were boxes and boxes of vegetarian mres.  Those were the good ones. The "meat" in an mre is invariably a reconstituted, fortified, cured meat product.  Good for the UO sniffing dogs, not much else.  I'd rather eat the packaging than the meat slice.

Of course. But the legal ramifications for such are long-winded and expensive. And, more to what I think your point is, a good leader has his thumb pretty close on the pulse of his unit and won't ask them to do the unreasonable?

The notion is that a good nco/co issues sound orders that his subs can understand -as- such. There's a term for it (named after a drill from back in the day and another country....can't remember it for the life of me today).

However, on point, if my co or lt told me to do something that exceeded the scope of roe (or my conscience...mind you...I'm flexible, lol).....I'd ignore the order or find a way to accomplish it that fit and not bring it up with them again. People say wild ass shit when they're all jacked up. My top once told me to shoot the next man who turned off the lights in his brad and he meant it. I never did end up shooting anyone on account of it. I'd be a liar if the thought didn't cross my mind, but, meh. I got creative more than once with suppressing fire orders too. Always room to wiggle.

I actually got into more trouble for slavishly following orders to the letter than for improvisation. I once fired the 20mike into a wall when told to "control the crowd". Dismount for a month, docked pay for three. Didn't care. He either meant to menace them, or :wink-wink: mow them down. You're always doing something wrong (you know what I mean) so if they wanna drop the hammer for x...they'll drop it and claim y, lol.