A Marine’s Afghan AAR (IX): The jobs of squad and platoon NCOs
Here CWO2/Gunner Keith Marine discusses the proper roles of privates, squad leaders and platoon sergeants. One of our more savvy platoon commanders assumed his own AO. When I went to visit him I noticed that he had a twice-rewarded PFC keeping accountability of chow and water and fixing the UGR-As daily. I might also add ...
Here CWO2/Gunner Keith Marine discusses the proper roles of privates, squad leaders and platoon sergeants.
Here CWO2/Gunner Keith Marine discusses the proper roles of privates, squad leaders and platoon sergeants.
One of our more savvy platoon commanders assumed his own AO. When I went to visit him I noticed that he had a twice-rewarded PFC keeping accountability of chow and water and fixing the UGR-As daily. I might also add that this shitbird probably did it better than most SNCOs. Here is my point. The platoon sergeant should be the most experienced infantrymen in that platoon. He is responsible for not only chow and water but most importantly helping train and advise the platoon commander and squad leaders. He can’t do that sleeping 12 hours a day and never going outside the wire. We are about 50 percent with some doing the right thing and some making a stab at what the shitbird PFC does. If these guys are spending their time sleeping all day and counting chows, they need to be relieved not rewarded with Navy Coms. On the other side of things you need to make sure the squad leaders are able to be squad leaders. Figure if the plt sgt and cmdr are going out with a different squad every other day it should keep things moving in the right direction. In addition, all hands will have a good grasp on the atmospherics and tactical situation because there is no substitute for seeing things firsthand.
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