On my second tour in Vietnam, I was assigned as an
infantry battalion executive officer, second in command, in
the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). I was very pleased with
the assignment. As it happened, I had just graduated with
honors from the Command and General Staff College at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas. Shortly after I arrived in Vietnam, a
photo of the top five graduates appeared in Army Times. The
division commanding general saw it, and I was pulled up to
the division staff to serve as the operations officer, responsible
for coordinating the combat operations of a twenty-thousand-
man division. I was only a major and it was a lieutenant
colonel’s position. I would have preferred to stay with my
battalion, but wasn’t given that choice. It turned out to be very
demanding and a stretch for me, but it marked a turning point
in my career. Someone was watching.
Years later, as a brigadier general in an infantry division,
I thought I was doing my best to train soldiers and serve my
commander. He disagreed and rated me below standards. The
report is still in my file. It could have ended my career, but
more senior leaders saw other qualities and capabilities[4]in me
and moved me up into more challenging positions, where I
did well.
Doing your best for your boss doesn’t mean you will
always like or approve of what he wants you to do; there will
be times when you will have very different priorities from
his. In the military, your superiors may have very different
ideas than you do about what should be your most important
mission. In some of my units my superiors put an intense
focus on reenlistment rates, AWOL rate, and saving bonds
participation. Most of us down below would have preferred to
keep our primary focus on training. Sure, those management
priorities were important in principle, but they often seemed
in practice to be distractions from our real work. I never
tried to fight my superiors’ priorities. Instead I worked hard
to accomplish the tasks they set as quickly and decisively as I
could. The sooner I could satisfy my superiors, the sooner they
would stop bugging me about them, and the quicker I could
move on to my own priorities. Always give the king his due
first.
What TWO key ideas of the memoir are illustrated in this passage?