The command sergeant major, in any Army unit, is notorious for coming up with creative team-building events that infuse the crushing effect of “the suck.” Ruck marches, never short on pain and misery, become even worse when you combine Arizona’s high temperatures with gas masks and full packs.
The photo, posted to the military’s imagery and video database in 2017, captures the very essence of a command sergeant major. The image may be old, but the pain and regret in that shot are eternal.
Craig Owens, the former command sergeant major of the 200th Military Police Command, U.S. Army Reserve, hosted a “Command Sergeant Major Huddle,” to discuss “critical topics” relevant to increasing deployment readiness. Owens’ exercise was held at one of his units, the 387th Military Police Battalion, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Now, for those who have never heard of a “CSM Huddle,” they are team-building exercises for command sergeant majors. (For any current or former CSMs reading this, yes, we know it’s “sergeants major.”) The huddles allow senior enlisted leaders to collaborate, share best practices, and talk through the issues and challenges they face in their roles.
While CSMs can be hardasses, they often have their soldiers’ backs. What sometimes goes unseen are all those hours they spend marching over to the S-1 to make sure a junior soldier’s pay issue has been fixed, then to the S-4 to see what the hold up is with some piece of gear or other, then back to the S-1 again, this time to make sure a promising soldier’s promotion paperwork isn’t just sitting there in a forgotten stack.
While some CSM Huddles are held in an office with hot coffee, Owens appears to have decided to do it in the most command sergeant major way possible: By having everyone strap a heavy ass pack to their back, don a gas mask, and start rucking in that year’s unseasonably warm Arizona heat.
And it’s worth noting that it was not a nice day for a walk. The weather for Phoenix, not far from Scottsdale, had an average high of 99.8 degrees Fahrenheit in September 2017, and art included in an Air Force public service announcement about the heat even showed this same huddle of CSMs marching along as joggers in lightweight attire ran by.
For Owens and his fellow command sergeants major, they chose a novel activity for their team meeting. Besides the fact that gas masks make it difficult to talk, they force the wearer to breathe through a filtered opening in the mask, which can lead to a “face soup” situation, which makes talking difficult.
Clearly, command sergeants major are not immune to the good idea fairy, as evidenced by this wild CSM huddle back in 2017.