THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Pain and Simmons are doing what I REALLY like to see. They came back from a fight giving each other hell, but that is because we haven't had enough of the reports from the front they are providing.

They are coming back from the fight we have been talking about with Tom Fleming and his crew. As ALWAYS happens at least once when comrades go into a fight, one comes back feeling the other has let him down.

This is part of the process of fighting together. But take it from an old warrior, what is really important here is that, for the first time, we have two of our number coming back and saying how THEY WERE OR WERE NOT BACKED UP rightly.

Please understand what I am saying here. We now have a genuine REPORT FROM THE FRONT in joint action. I cannot TEACH this. Read Pain's attack on Simmons and Simmons' reply.

Simmons makes sense, and he is talking strategy. Pain may or not accept Simmons' version, but there is none of the "Oh, GOD! My comrade didn't back me up so I'm going to take my marbles and go homer!" crap out of Pain. It sounds insulting to me for me to even MENTION that attitude in connection with Pain, but Pain should forgive me for mentioning it because it shows you the kind of people I have had to deal with.

For fifty years, instead of being a COACH FOR FIGHTERS like Pain and Lord Nelson and Simmons and Prometheus I have had to put on a Mommy skirt and pacify the kids. If I didn't one of them would cry that I was not backing him up and go off and sulking

When warriors some back sweating from a real fight, they don't always tell each other what fine jobs they did. I don't know about regular trained military coordination in today's regular army. I am used to some guys coming back saying to each other, "I WAS STUCK OVER THERE GETTING SHOT AT FROM THREE SIDES. WHERE THE F*** WERE YOU?"

But out in the middle of nowhere you didn't have a soldier whining, "Well, if people won't back up, I'll just take my weapons and go home."

I have overcome my indoctrination by the self-styled Greatest Generation. The battle to get the Mantra into the mainstream is a thousand times more important than some firefight out on the ass-end of nowhere. I only did that as a cover for intelligence work.

It's WEIRD. The last thing a man engaged in a firefight would do is some back and whine and threaten to quit because somebody didn't back him up. But here, where it counts, I spent my time trying to calm down the kids and dealing with "ALL IS LOST!" crap.

It is SUCH a relief to see Pain and Simmons come back sweating and bitching and arguing about how to handle things.

If Knute Rockne could always tell his players which one was right and which one was wrong, I'm no Knute Rockne. If a player depends entirely on his coach in high school he is not going to make it in college ball, because the coach won't be there.

YOU have to DO it. You have to WORK IT OUT with each other. That is the major part of what I mean by reports from the front. This is a SEMINAR, not grammar school. You have to get out there, DO it, and then work discuss how each of YOU performed without the ultimatums.

After all my years of wiping the prima donnas' noses — and other parts – I am finally getting a chance to work with people who can get on the front and report from the front.

Pain gets credit for putting Fleming to flight.

But I really enjoyed that exchange between Pain and Simmons. Without that sort of exchange on who does what in a TEAM effort, we will severely handicapped in future.