Imagine you are a Blackhawk crew chief deployed forward in Afghanistan. Imagine is a day like every other day, where you are sitting with your crew by your bird, playing cards when suddenly, a “broken arrow” call comes on the net.

An ODA and Afghan partner force is ambushed by the enemy and in danger of being overrun.

Imagine that your Blackhawk, another Blackhawk, two chinooks, and two Apaches scramble to extract your brothers in arms. Imagine that the clouds are so thick and low that it’s too hard to make an approach.

But your pilots are trained for this, and they go in because if you don’t, people are going to die.

Imagine that you are the first two birds in, pathfinding for the Chinooks, putting down on a hot LZ, gunning and suppressing enemy gunners left and right, to enable the hot extract. Imagine taking out multiple RPG and PKM crews, while you are suppressing the enemy.

Imagine that despite all the firepower suppressing the enemy, including two Apache gunships, that the engagement is so heavy that 15 RPG’s still impact the HLZ.

Imagine being the first bird in, and the last bird out, imagine that all airframes made it back to base in one piece and with every single one of the ODA members and Afghan partners.

Imagine that the flight commander puts every single crew-member from all airframes up for an Air Medal with “V” device for valor. Imagine that your commander, a Col., approves them, for every single crew-member, 22 soldiers, but not for you or the other 3 Blackhawk crew-chiefs.

Why? Because you are enlisted, while every other member of the flight is officers and warrant officers. So instead, you and the other three enlisted soldiers, get downgraded to an Army commendation medal (ARCOM) with “C” for combat.

Imagine that WTF learns about all that from people on the ground and sends an interrogative to an officer with a last name that rhymes with “thriller” that immediately takes action,and delegates to MG George that also takes action to correct it, so those awards can move forward.

Now imagine that almost two years after, the unit in question, messes up the paperwork, loses the 638s multiple times, to the extent that one of the four crew-members ETS, and the other three are about to PCS to other units.

Imagine that WTF thinks, wait a minute, this is not “people first,” and takes it straight to the person that always says (and lives) “people first, winning matters,” the CSA @ArmyChiefStaff .

Now imagine that the @ArmyChiefStaff takes the time to review just what the hell is going on personally, and finds it important enough, to forward it to his team for action and “making it right for these soldiers.”

Now imagine that miraculously, inside three days, the 638s are finally get unscrambled, @ArmyHRC conducts an awards board, and FedEx’s the awards to the unit, so they can get awarded to the soldiers.

And since it is “miracle season,” In the process, @ArmyHRC also identifies and awards, a distinguished flying cross with “v” to one of the pilots that flew in that mission.

Moral of the story: you can be a good leader, or you can be a bad leader, and only you can decide which one you’re going to be. Don’t be the kind of leader that goes out of his way to downgrade the achievements of worthy soldiers, just because they are junior soldiers.

Be the leader that can find the time to correct even the smallest things, while still doing the important things like I don’t know, running the @USArmy . People first, winning matters.

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