It was a tough month for Army command sergeant majors. In July, the commander of the 173d Airborne Brigade fired the Brigade Command Sergeant Major Matthew Carlson. In August, two DC-based sergeants majors were relieved in less than a week. CSM Veronica Knapp, the command sergeant major of the Military District of Washington, was fired on August 8, and the command sergeant major of the 1st Information Operations Command, Harold “Ed” Jarrell (never trust anyone whose nickname is related to their first, middle, or last name) getting the bad news on August 13. Meanwhile, at Fort Benning or Moore or whatever the DEI folks are calling it this week, the former command sergeant major of the 5th Squadron, 15th Cavalry, Jaime Rubio, was arraigned on two counts of domestic violence. Rubio was relieved of his position in March and is facing a general court-martial, a dishonorable discharge, and prison time. At the very least, if convicted, Rubio will retire at the lowest enlisted grade.
Three of these cases are alleged to have something in common. Carlson was fired for an alcohol-fueled sexual assault committed on a subordinate. There is no word on the sex of the subordinate, so let’s not take anything for granted.
No reasons were given for the relief of Veronica Knapp, the first female division command sergeant major and seen as being groomed to be the Sergeant Major of the Army, and Harold “Ed” Jarrell, only “loss of trust and confidence in ability to lead effectively.” But if high-quality rumor is to be believed, and I have found one of the sources to be impeccable in accuracy, the two DC sergeants major also went down, so to speak, for zipper-related offenses.
The position of command sergeant major is sort of difficult to explain to civilians. That person is the senior enlisted leader in a battalion-sized or larger formation. They probably don’t directly supervise anyone, except maybe their driver, but never underrate their informal power. They will be the first person the commander sees in the morning and the last one he sees in the evening. I’ve seen good ones who were a real value-add to the unit. As a company commander, my CSM was a Silver Star recipient and commanded the respect of every officer and man in the battalion out of character and force of personality. My sergeant major in Germany was deadweight and a detriment to military efficiency. Having a sergeant major fired, particularly for what used to be quaintly called “moral turpitude,” will have a tremendous impact. However, having one of them roaming around and acting out does incalculable damage. I can’t imagine the cost of “good order and discipline” of having the sergeant major banging junior personnel or the spouses of junior personnel or the rot in the fabric of leadership created by these people pulling like-minded subordinates along with them.
While it is good that these people are being removed from positions of responsibility, there is a larger issue of what the Army knew about this behavior and when it knew it. In my experience, it is very difficult to believe this was the first rodeo for any of the noncommissioned officers mentioned in this post. A senior noncommissioned officer doesn’t get involved in domestic violence unless he’s done it before and thinks he’s bulletproof. Someone with nearly 30 years in the military doesn’t get drunk and sexy with subordinates unless he’s been taught that he has the clout to make the incident go away. At least one of the two DC people allegedly has a track record of very open sexual predation, and no one took any action.
This kind of behavior doesn’t happen inside an organization where senior leaders are held to high standards. It happens when a club exists that protects its members until the stench threatens to become public, like a wife sending pictures to the commanding general.
One would have thought that twenty years of deployments and combat would have produced a noncommissioned officer corps as hard as nails. It didn’t. The post-Abbey Gate Army noncommissioned officer corps seems more like the one that came out of Vietnam than the one that went into Iraq. Should Trump win, he has his work cut out for him, purging the officer corps of that trash and detritus that gamed its way to the top. He must find a merciless and bloody-minded SOB to do the Army NCO corps what Sherman did to Georgia.
