This first bit really happened, in 2008, more or less as depicted, with allowances for my memory not being perfect after, alarmingly, nearly 18 years, and for the inherent limitations of putting things in comic form. It was not well received at the time. This isn’t a trope that I invented, it’s well depicted in, say, Generation Kill “Police that Moostache!” and also in the entire life and career of GEN Gorge S. Patton, who famously instituted monetary fines for officers not wearing ties in combat.
Most charitably, I would say that the Command Sergeant Major in question – again, a real person - was understandably if incorrectly in the event trying to get the traumatized Soldier back in a more stable frame of mind by giving him a concrete, familiar and easily achievable task to do – changing his uniform, cleaning up, restoring a military appearance – in an effort to restore a sense of normalcy and comforting, if controlling context. “We don’t stop polishing our boots just because men are being killed around us, therefore everything is normal and I do not need to panic.” This doesn’t always work, didn’t in this case, but it’s basically the equivalent of giving everyone at an accident scene some task to do so they feel simultaneously useful and in control of their circumstances.
More prosaically, people in stressful situations do tend to fall back on what they know, and for a Sergeant Major rolling up on a group of Soldiers who aren’t in immediate danger anymore but who look like a bag of smashed assholes, that can only mean one thing.
Anyway, say what you will about his methods, we will see a different side of this character over the next 18 pages, so there’s more to it than that.
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It’s also been brought to my attention by my lovely but very civilian wife that the role of the Sergeant Major, and the type of person that it attracts, is not well understood in the civilian world. Thinking of an analogy, I came up with the following.
Say you have a factory, which produces a product through a complicated process with many steps and the usual array of safety hazards that you have in a factory environment. Wanting to improve operations, you take your most senior foreman, GED class of 1979 but has worked at the factory for decades, and make him Senior Executive Vice President for Quality Control and Compliance, reporting only to the CEO. He has no staff or direct reports or hiring or firing authority, but it’s well known that the CEO has a lot of confidence in him and that anyone who has a problem with him has a problem with the boss. That guy’s the Sergeant Major.
Now, if you’ve picked someone suitable, it’s quite possible that his deep awareness of the production process and long-developed knowledge of OSHA regulations mean that he’s a hugely effective troubleshooter, more so than the MBAs who were hired last year, and if he knows how to pull the right levers within the larger corporate organization he now has the authority to make real improvements, far beyond his direct ability to do so. Those exist.
HOWEVER. If you have someone unsuitable, then he doesn’t know and will never learn how to pull levers to effect widespread change, and he’ll often fall back on what he DOES know, which is direct enforcement of individual safety regulations and micromanagement of those few parts of the production process where he personally has the most experience. He’ll show up on a production line one day, disrupt everything by making people turn in unserviceable high-vis vests, make minor and inconsequential changes to the floor layout, and take off, having cost the company ten times his salary in lost effort through his pestering. Those exist too.
Sergeants Major in the audience will note that the E5/SGT in the first panel was also, improperly, not wearing his cover outdoors, and hastily replaced it when the Sergeant Major walked past him. Lieutenant Colonels in the audience will also notice, but not care that much.
For further illustration on the subject of Sergeants Major, see Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life. “Don't stand there gawping, like you've never seen the hand of God before!”