Young lieutenants often need, in addition to formal Army training, serious training from their enlisted subordinates. Chester Russell’s memory yielded a story for interviewers Brown and Bridgeman that describes how that training happens.
Enlisted Soldiers like Chester
Earl Brown asked how many miles a day they built; did they have a quota? No quota, but a lot of pressure to crank out miles, pressure that every soldier on the road felt to his core. The exchange sparked Chester’s memory, and he recalled the education of the young lieutenant.
The young officer, new to Company B, made the mistake of getting in the way of a catskinner named Derdorf.
Apparently, the young man thought Catskinner Derdorf needed a lot of detailed management. “…this guy was telling him where to go and how to go and lower blade, raise the blade, and all that monkey business.”
Chester pulled up alongside Derdorf’s dozer. “Derdorf, what’s the matter? …My God, we got these small trees here, we should be going like heck.”
Derdorf shook his head in disgust, “That damned officer up in front of me he won’t get out of our road.”
Chester had a solution. “Why don’t you start on and I’ll go along with you. I’ll shift into higher gear and we’ll run him down the brush.”
They ran him down the brush, a long, long way down the brush. When they finally stopped, they climbed off their dozers to find the young officer just standing there, hands on his knees, panting.
“He’d had it. He couldn’t turn around to tell us to stop because if he did, he’d run into a tree, and if he’d run into tree, he knew we were going to run over him.”
With a straight face, Derdorf told the young officer, “Sir, I think you are off the trail.”
