A Foot to the Ball

People are like soccer balls. They need to have their asses kicked to start rolling and to eventually accomplish spectacular feats like bending round walls and scoring late on. This week was spent finding ways to get those balls rolling; and as the week wears on, to get them flying into goal.

As the enenmy 2IC for my company, who is tasked to support a 1 SIR full troop exercise - Ex Pegasus, i was instructed to plan for a defence mission and to indent necessary Signal Stores [S], Medical Support [M], Ammunition [A], Ration [R] and Transport [T] - SMART. The creation of staff aids like maps, blown ups of my company's objective etc. was not too difficult. It was the process of making the SMART indents a reality that really got me to play ball.

All week long, i was bugging people from brigade, 1 SIR and my unit for replies and confirmation of my indents. Some were admirably responsive, but the bulk were simply taking their own sweet time. It was understandably difficult to mobilise manpower and commitment to serve my concerns as i was nothing but a small fry and there were equally urgent matters and daily routines to attend to. As such, a good four-fifth of playing time was spent passing the ball around in schoolboy style.

Sometimes, football has to be nudged by some inspring playmakers in the right way to spice up the game; getting to know people at Brigade level certainly did that job. With the timer counting down to fulltime, and the possibility of our dear exercise degenerating into a calamitous debacle as logistical shambles continue, push evetually turned to shove. Someone up there in the brigade decided to issue out yellow cards, and immediately, all the support that i've hoped to recieve for my company came rushing in with positive replies. Goals are going in so quick that the game was quickly turning into a crowd pleaser.

Although there are still a few issues to iron out, i am now soundly reassured that the exercise will be a success for my guys. The last few night of moonlighting was indeed worthwhile. Football is really a beautiful game after all.