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Originally Posted by The Reaper
Consider this.
The team can only move as fast as the slowest guy. They can only ruck at the pace of the last man. If required to run, they can only beat feet at the pace of the slowest runner. When swimming, while you can, as noted, be towed along on a Budweiser line, who wants to be the sea anchor holding the team back? How would you feel if you failed in your mission, or lost teammates because you couldn't keep up? In case you missed it, this ain't tiddleywinks we are playing, the bullets are real in this game.
While we all have our strengths and weaknesses, we cannot all be the best on the team at everything. At the same time, you do not want to be the worst on the team at anything. I am not saying that we should strive for mediocrity, but if you are not the slowest member, you are probably not slowing the team down and are able to help the ones who are. Anything that you are the worst at, you should be working on it to improve, constantly. Complacency will get you killed.
When I first arrived on an ODA, the Team Sergeant told me that Tuesdays were swim days, meet at Lee Pool when it opened at 0600. Now I am not a strong swimmer, I prefer to do most of my swimming with a nice cold drink waiting poolside. I was worried about my ability to keep up. We got into the pool to do 1500 meters and I soon noticed that my teammates were finishing up and leaving well before I was done. When I got out of the pool, the Team Sergeant was the only one not yet done and still had a long way to go to finish, but he was doing his best. I expected that he would soon decide that we could find something else to do on Tuesday mornings, but he kept insisting that we swim on Tuesdays, even though we were a HALO team. He never quit working on it, frequently on his own time, because he considered himself to be in need of improvement. He never let the fact that it was very obvious that he was the slowest deter him from practicing regularly. He made all of us better, because he was more concerned for the team than he was for his personal comfort or avoiding possible embarrassment. By the time he left, the team had shaved several minutes off of our mile swim times, despite the fact that it was not our primary infil method. The entire team (including the TS) could finish the swim in about the same amount of time that it took for the average guy when we started going to the pool. And the TS taught me a valuable lesson.
Bottom line, it shouldn't be about you, if it is, there is a problem. It is about the team and how you can make it better. Think about it.
TR
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