Colonel David Sutherland

This morning I read about a colonel in Iraq who, IMO, will probably never deserve to be labled a REMF by the soldiers under his command.

Wars have created some interesting slang and acronyms.  WWII is widely credited with creating FUBAR and SNAFU, Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair/(insert appropriate ‘R’ word here) and Situation Normal - All Fucked Up respectively.  The word “frag” was coined during the Vietnam War, and it generally means “to assassinate a despised superior officer with a fragmentation grenade tossed into their tent.” And REMF, Rear-Echelon Mother-Fucker, is used by frontline troops to describe useless officers directing the war from safety a long way from the front lines.

I read an article today about a man who, in my opinion, should never, ever be called a REMF by any soldier under his command, Army Col. David Sutherland, commander of the American combat brigade in Diyala Province, Iraq.  Col. Sutherland and his brigade chaplain, Maj. Charlie Fenton, have made it their crusade to visit every single severely wounded and dead soldier under Sutherland’s command. My only concern is whether this crusade is distracting the brigade commander enough from his other command duties that he’s not as effective a commander as he might otherwise be, and thus might be putting other soldiers at greater risk.  Since I can’t know the answer to that, I choose to believe that Col. Sutherland’s professionalism would never allow himself to do something, however important for the morale of his soldiers and his own sanity, that would put one of his soldiers at additional undue risk.

Col. Sutherland, Maj. Fenton, I’d like to say thank you to you both.  And good luck.