This is a Veterans’ Day republication of an earlier piece in honor of all those who have served or are currently serving. These fine young men and women have each written a blank check, “up to and including my life” to defend this great thing we call, “These United States of America.” We owe them a debt we can never truly repay.
Ed.
An Infantry Colonel Rides the Buffer and finds out that operating a floor polisher isn’t as easy as young Soldiers make it look.
Back in 2004, having come back from the desert twenty pounds and one wife lighter, I bought a small little place over in Largo, Florida where I had found post deployment work in the private sector. It was a pretty decent little house. With no spouse and an all-of-the-sudden bit of extra time on my hands, I decided to fix up the place. The first thing that had to go, was that nasty, puke-colored carpet. Tearing it out and having it replaced was going to be time consuming and fairly expensive. However, once again I was reminded that, God takes care of fools and drunks, and as all my friends, acquaintances and Class-B Dependents know, I am well qualified in both categories.
When I ripped up the carpet, I was most pleasantly surprised to find underneath it, TERRAZZO! God indeed loves me! All I needed to do, was go rent me one of them floor buffer machines and lickity split, a beautiful new floor. I mean, how hard could it be? Private’s and Specialists (AKA “Spec-4’s” or “Speedy 4’s,” ) do this sort of thing all the time. Again, how hard could it be….right??
So, I skedaddled over to the nearest equipment rental place and snatched me up a likely looking piece of hardware, got home, unloaded it and commenced floor restoration operations. Everything was fine while I was going straight forward. The second I tried to turn that once placid piece of machinery right or left, it morphed into a snarling beast that insisted on wreaking unspeakable violence on my person.
It threw me up, down & sideways and on more than one occasion, slammed me up against the wall. If I had thought to wear a cowboy hat, boots, jeans and one of those shiny, crew-served belt buckles, I could have qualified as a bull rider at the Iowa State Fair. Full disclosure; there was absolutely NO instance where I was actually able to stay on that raging beast for the full 8 seconds—but that ain’t important here. During one “ride,” I accidentally let go of the handle and the inertia swung that rascal completely around, striking me just above the knees, taking me out, kinda like Mean Joe Green did to Broadway Joe Namath behind the line of scrimmage. Here’s a reddit video link showing what this might have looked like to a casual observer.
For more such entertainment, you can go on U-Tube, there’s an entire collection of what the Army’s E-4 Mafia calls, “Buffer Rodeos.” Here’s a Leadership Tidbit folks–Soldiers (Sailors, Marines & Airmen too) are always discovering new and innovative ways to get in trouble or to get hurt—Buffer Rodeos being one stand out example. Here’s one of the more talented competitors.
This epic battle continued for what seemed like hours as I struggled to complete what I had heretofore considered a simple task—( Right about now, I imagine the E-4 Mafia is laughing its collective keister off). Anyhow, I had managed to (more or less) complete 3 out of the 5 rooms in my humble abode, when the timely intervention of a phone call offered me a brief respite from the epic beating I was taking from this monster..
I hit, “talk” and gasped out “Colonel” [gasp] “Ford” [gasp] “Speaking” [gasp] “May I help You?” [Gasp, Pant, Pant, Pant]. “Sir! Are you OK?!” It’s my Command Sergeant Major, sounding very concerned. Finally catching my breath, I regaled my worried CSM with the story of my feeble attempts to bring this demon to heel.
I explained that everything had gone well until I tried to turn it left or right, whereupon it decided to beat me like the proverbial rented mule. My CSM then asked in a slightly different tone, “Sirrrr, by any chance were you trying to steer it by pushing left or right?” “Yep,” I replied. Again my loyal CSM, now in a really different tone, “SIR,” (I’ll discuss the difference between this “Sir,” and the first two in a moment) “the way you steer a buffer” he continued, “is to raise the handle up and down—you don’t try to push it side to side. If you do, it will kill you.“
“Wait One, Sergeant Major,”
I, with great trepidation, turned the beast back on and sure enough, not only can I pilot it with one hand, I now (temporarily of course) have an ego only discernible by an electron microscope…at maximum magnification…which brings me to the real point of this piece.
One of the most crucial roles of the Army’s Noncommissioned Officer Corps, is to take care of Commissioned Officers. The Army wisely recognized that Commissioned Officers can tend to do some dumb stuff, especially the inexperienced ones. Google “Second Lieutenant Jokes,” sometime. So in a wise decision likely dating back to when Julius Ceasar was a private, your Army always assigns a Noncommissioned Officer to keep the Commissioned Officer out of jail.
The more inexperienced the Officer, the wider the age/experience gap is between that Officer and the NCO assigned to ride herd on him. A Second Lieutenant straight out of his Basic Course, will get a Sergeant First Class who has been in the Army 10 years or more, while a crusty old Colonel will get a Command Sergeant Major his own age, who has served roughly the same amount of time as he, which brings me to my next point.
Senior NCO’s have their own language. They also have the unique and uncanny ability to communicate an entire sentence, even a whole paragraph simply by the way they enunciate the word, “Sir.”
For example, at beginning of the call, my loyal CSM’s “Sir!,” was calculated to convey respect and a very real concern for his boss’s well being.
However, his second “Sirrr,” asked, “Uh Oh. Just what the hell has my Colonel done now?’’
His final and by far most expressive “Sir,” effectively said, “You are so damned dumb, I’m ashamed to admit you are my Colonel. If the other Sergeants Major find out about this latest episode of yours, I won’t be able to show my face in the NCO club for 6 months.” Yep. That’s right. All of that—just by the way he pronounced “Sir.”
Three morals to this Story:
First, every Soldier in the Army, even especially a crusty old Colonel, has a Sergeant to make sure he’s dressed right and to keep him out of trouble (or at least try mightily to)—and that’s a good thing.
Second, there’s a reason for the existence of what’s known as, “the E-4 Mafia.” These 17-20 year old young folks, know things—things like operating a buffer without killing yourself, anyone else around you or causing massive collateral damage—and they do so with dash and elan. More importantly, they make up the part of the Army that actually gets stuff done, and are usually at what we like to call, “the Pointy End of the Spear.”
Third, like every other Soldier and also my brothers & sisters in the other branches of our Armed Forces, they have each written a check to the American People for “the amount up to and including my life.”
Today’s offering is dedicated to Sergeant Major Don McCrory, who represents all the NCO’s who labored mightily and were even occasionally successful, in keeping this particular Officer out of trouble; to the young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who walk at the pointy end of the spear, and finally, to my Dad, Master Sergeant Ray L. Ford, USAF, Retired, (BSM w/“V”) the NCO against whom I measure all the others.
Michael A. Ford
Colonel, Infantry
U.S. Army (Ret)
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😂😂😂
There’s a song parody in here somewhere to the effect of “You Can’t Let the Colonel Run the Buffer Alone” to the tune of Roger Miller’s old hit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-8hst0bho .
Hahaha-great stuff! I’m reminded of our exploits with Johnson’s paste wax and the buffer on the command hallway at OCS-we got so good at it our company voted us the permanent mavens for the entirety of OCS-until that fateful day we were breaking in a new wax melter-and the fire alarm went off at 0330-with some 240 of us bald headed candidates milling around outside -with no adult supervision- it suddenly dawned on me-we set the fire alarm off….I went in the building-gave the all clear-called the SDNCO to report a false alarm-everybody back in the building…what a mess…that was the day LTC Burr was doing our inspection for us to go Blue….but there is an art to buffing and the timing of it to leverage the burning paste wax….Senior Tac 1LT Dickerson was just a tad suspicious about the false alarm–and this candidate’s involvement: like, why is it always you? Sir, this candidate is just lucky sir, and glad to serve! Like -get the hell out of here….Nothing I liked better than messing with the TACs….
Wee used to call it “bucking buffer,” and one was required to stand on the base, or squat – as you wish, and hold on to the handle while an operator tried to make the buffer buck you off. Infinitely more challenging and no cord-wrapping issues.
Colonel
Funny. Great article.
Highly entertaining, Sir. That feeling though… like realizing the 123-45-6789 on the sample addressed envelope pinned to the bulletin board was just a placeholder and you’d written your two-tour Vietnam veteran uncle numerous times using 123-45-6789 on your return address. He must have chuckled at that. Book smart; life dumb. Cringe-worthy.
What a great laugh to start the day off with… Having almost a doctorate degree somewhere along the line I tried the buffer thing too, didn’t work out too good. Very humbling. Helps maintain respect for people with vocational skills.
My second reading of the story exactly a year and several hours later… as good as it was last time !
thank you so much, I needed this laugh yet again
God willing and the Creek don;t rise…It will go up again this time next year.
I’m glad for your Army experiences. Sincerely. Serious thought here: Your experiences are markedly different from mine which preceded you by 20 some years, because The Army came so far in re-building the NCO Corps. It is, once again, as my Army Dad said in the 50s and 60s “The backbone of The Army.” That’s a good thing.
In the early 70s, young officers joked that the NCOs were 50:50. Half you would be proud to have in your family. They were outstanding men. Half should be shot. They were worse than worthless. In fact, there should have been an allowance for each company commander to shoot one NCO a month on payday.
When I pulled duty officer in open bays in the 82nd Airborne with a loaded 45, you could see the difference from bay to bay on how good or weak the NCO’s of that platoon were. It was remarkable.
The NCO school system and a lot of hard work later, I saw the difference in two Armored Divisions in Germany in the 80s. The NCOs knew their stuff. They took charge. They took care of the troops while getting the most performance out of them.
We’ve come a long way, Army. Hope we can survive this season of DEI and CRT.
One footnote on when the Army was an armed mob: I remember seeing senior NCOs and young troops cooking outside at oh-dark-thirty on a weekend. It was the Samoan sergeants making sure the Samoan soldiers didn’t get caught up in drugs. They were, without exception in my experience, super troops. Culture commands.
Great piece good Colonel!
As a former sergeant, I always liked what Dwight D. Eisenhower once said about sergeants: “The sergeant is the Army.”
😊