Sensing Session

  Wow, yesterday's meeting is apparently not quite over.  Let me go back to last nights meeting with the General which was couched to us and the Soldiers as a "Sensing Session."  For the record, a sensing session is supposed to be where someone comes along and tries to guage the command climate in your unit - ie, is there sexual harrasment?  how much?  who is doing it?  do you feel comfortable talking to your chain of command.  Its usually about sexual harrasment, other harrasment and other kinds of EO stuff.  So, when we go in there at 2330, this is what we think its going to be about - and we've been on "standby" mode right outside the door for about an hour or more - so we're a little antsy. 
     We (we being all the LTs in the Squadron) go in and sit down.  The General is already there - of course.  The first thing his says is something about an "investigation" which immediately sets off bells in my head and changes my tone and attitude towards the meeting.  I know I haven't done anything wrong, but now I know to be on my guard.  Then he starts asking the LTs about EOF.  EOF stands for Escalation Of Force, or the steps we take before resorting to lethal force (ie, shouting, showing weapons, etc etc etc).  We get off to a bad start when the first LT he calls on doesnt even know what EOF stands for - I'm sure its just because he's tired and not understand the question or its context - but none-the-less, when an LT who leads patrols everyday and briefs his Soldiers on this doesnt immediately come up with the answer to an easy question like that - hell begins.  The questioning continues about EOF and ROE (Rules of Engagement), warning shots, etc etc.  And then it gets into the General asking questions that seem worded  to either A) draw a specific answer or B) are based on the answers given by the previous groups to talk to him (the NCOs and Soldiers).  I think its a mixture and the optimist in me thinks its more likely to be "B."  The questions range from whether or not the Squadron is micro-managing what the Troops do, to whether we should fire warning shots, to the perceived effectiveness of the missions we do.  I think that the Soldiers and/or NCOs pretty much told the General that most of the big missions we go on are a waste of time and we don't accomplish anything - which isn't true, but the Soldiers don't always get the bigger picture and so when THEIR particular piece of the pie has no cherries. they think the whole pie is empty (make any sense?).  After we left, an hour and a half later, I had a very bad feeling that this "anonymous" sensing session was going to come down hard on the SCO, mostly because of perceived - not actual - grieviences from Soldiers and NCOs and plain old stupidity and lack of concentration by the LTs.  Now, not everyone screwed things up and most people were good with their answers - but its always the bad ones that get the most attention you know?  One guy's answer to everything was that he didn't know because he'd only been here a couple months.  Not a good answer either.
    The General left this morning.
     This got worse today when the announcement was made that THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE need to be prepared for another sensing session (not the same groups or types of people [ie E1-E4; E5-E7; and LTs] but the EXACT SAME PEOPLE).  That does not bode well for us.  I have a feeling that tonights "sensing session" is going to be more of a "WTF were you thinking??!?!"  Followed by weeks and months of EO and EOF and ROE classes out the ass.  I really can't wait for the ass chewing tonight because it's always fun to get yelled at for something that you didn't do - mass punishment is great!!  But, it is the only way to ensure that the real fuck-ups get whats coming to them when everyone gets lumped together.  I would rather have taken a test and put my name on it so I could show that I wasn't fucked up.  The General did ask me questions, but I knew the answers to mine and once I said something about "my lane" in regards to dealing with our parent Brigade being good to deal with, and he asked what "my lane" was (which was intentional, I WANTED him to ask), I told him what my job was and he immediately understood that I didn't really have anything to do with patrols and all that and never even looked at me again.