And I thought cadets were dumb...

Officers do a lot of dumb things, at least from the perspective of the soldier...and the perspective of other officers on occasion. We make up stupid rules, demand stupid projects and products, and are often seen as assigning busy work. 2nd lieutenants are so notorious for doing dumb things that when they are given an opportunity to lead a platoon the lieutenant is assigned a sergeant first class as a platoon sergeant to help keep an eye on the young officer and hopefully mitigate some of the dumb things the lieutenant will likely do.

I have done dumb things in my career. I did dumb things as a 2nd lieutenant (stealing the company commander's HMMWV comes to mind). I did dumb things as a 1st lieutenant (overslept the morning commander's update during a field exercise). I've done numerous dumb things as a captain (agreeing to PCS to Huachuca being one of them). I'm sure that if I were staying in I would do dumb things as a major.

Most of the time I had an NCO, warrant officer, or understanding boss to help smooth over any problems I caused by my mistakes, sweep those mistakes under the carpet, or just ignore them completely and move on. Most officers are like me and have had somebody to clean up the mess they left and are capable of learning from those mistakes. Of course there are a few officers who created so massive a mess that nobody was going to be able to help them out; flagrant disobeying of orders or committing adultery (and getting caught!) in the supply yard come to mind.

So what is the dumbest thing I've ever done as an Army officer?

It wasn't stealing the HMMWV, I only received a slight scolding for that. It wasn't even as a lieutenant.

It was as a captain, and it was something I should have known better than to do.

The event took place in June of 2007 prior to my battalion's (1-23 IN) move from Baghdad to Baqubah to help 5-20 IN (one of our sister battalions) and 3rd brigade, 1st Cavalry Division retake that city from entrenched insurgent forces. I had gone up to FOB Warhorse with the lead element (what is known as the torch movement) to help establish the headquarters and initial intelligence collection prior to the start of Operation Arrowhead Ripper.

Jon Stewart sums up what we were all thinking...

One evening the FOB was hit by indirect fire (if I remember correctly it was actually the last time the FOB would be hit with mortars while we were there). I happened to be standing in line at the phone center waiting to call my parents like the good son that I am. The mortars hit far from where I was at the time so I was not concerned and didn't even bother to find a bunker...I would have lost my place in line anyway.

After making my phone call I walked back to battalion to find out that one of the mortars had hit directly behind the headquarters building. The mortar had gone into a dirt berm that surrounded the building on two sides and left a nice 60mm mortar sized hole. We had no idea if the mortar had gone off inside the berm or if the round was still intact. EOD had been called but for whatever reason they would not be able to swing by until the morning. This is when I swung into action and did a very dumb thing.

I stuck my hand down the damn hole.

I can't even tell you what I was thinking at the time. I probably was just curious to see if the round was still there. Even if it was, was I going to pull out a live round and show it to everyone?

At this point the staff sergeant behind me (a good distance behind me) mentioned that sticking my hand down the mortar hole might not be the best idea.

I ignored him and pulled a pen from my sleeve. The mortar was probably just further down the berm. I stuck my arm and the pen down as far as I could reach searching for the lost mortar.

There was a private standing next to the staff sergeant who finally decided to speak up. "Sir, that's probably really not a good idea."

That's when it struck me. A private is telling me this is a bad idea. Privates are full of bad ideas and constantly carry them out. If a private is telling me I shouldn't be doing this, then I really really really shouldn't be doing this.

And that's the story of the dumbest thing I've ever done in the Army. Could have blown my hand off. Most likely wouldn't even have gotten a Purple Heart for it either...they don't award stupid. I believe the real lesson here isn't "don't put your hand in mortar holes", it's "don't deploy soldiers longer than 12 months they start doing really stupid things".