Not going to repeat the now well-worn story of Walter Reed-related issues, merely wanted to take a minute to point out a trend and offer up a lesson.

There was a time when, while serving on active duty, the Army just decided to stop paying me. Never did figure out what happened, the checks just stopped coming. I worked through the chain. I trusted it. I accepted the fact that things move slowly in the Army. I waited. I followed up. I waited some more. I exhausted every internal option available to me as I watched my savings dwindle (the chow hall was great, but I still had other bills to pay).  When loan defaults loomed I wrote my Senator who at the time was Army veteran Daniel Inouye.

Roughly 72 hours later I had a check for all my back pay and a line outside my barracks room door of members of my chain of command from battalion-level on down asking if everything was OK, and would I please work through the chain of command to resolve future problems ’cause we really get the heebie jeebies when Senator’s offices call.

The pay problems of one buck sergeant don’t compare to the woes of outpatients at Walter Reed, but this story – and many others any GI will be happy to relate to you – are indicative of the general mindset of those at the top. Nothing is their problem (“If you sloppy GI’s wouldn’t keep food in your rooms there wouldn’t be a rat problem”)  until someone makes it their problem, and that “someone” is never going to be someone they outrank. The operative phrase is “mission first, people always” until people do what people do and then it becomes “people whenever.”

Under different circumstances I’m sure everyone highest levels of Army medicine and the Department of the Army are great folks, but that they responded in typical Army fashion to this situation is beyond shameful. I hope this serves as a lesson for a wider variety of defense and national security leadership: fat lot of good your big initiatives are going to be if you are undone by the little things.