Attention to Detail and Parades

Yesterday I sat down to watch this year’s Tournament of Roses parade, something I try to do every year, hangover permitting.  I noticed something when I started making comments to my wife about the lack of precision in some of the marching units.  Something that is drilled into all Soldiers, me included, is the importance of attention to detail; making sure all the small things are done correctly.  This is, of course, very important in the military where the small things have a tendency to rise up and bite you in the ass at the least opportune moment.  This tendency was further distilled in me with an assignment to The Old Guard, which guards the Tomb of the Unknowns, performs military funerals in Arlington National Cemetery, and ceremonies throughout the nation’s capitol.  Precision is demanded and raised to an art form in that unit, a truly zero defects outfit.  I served in a leadership position charged with ensuring the incredibly high standards were met and maintained.  I was interviewed for an article in the Smithsonian magazine about military funerals at Arlington.  The author and I viewed a couple together and he asked me about the notes I was taking.  I told him about some minor problems I noticed with the funerals that needed to be corrected, a slight ripping (not sounding like one shot) of the volleys and how several of the Soldiers were late in a several movements which should have been done in unison.  The author just nodded and later when I read the article he marveled that I noted anything in what, to him, had been a flawless ceremony.  I thought at the time, “Civilians!”  Later in my career I was in charge of training officer cadets.  One of the easiest, yet hardest to accomplish, drills involved attention to detail.  I put one of the cadets in charge and told him/her to have everyone show up in the same uniform with their equipment positioned in the exact same fashion.  Being cocky college kids, they figured this was easy and the leader would just tell everyone how he/she wanted them to show up.  The first thing I did when they did assemble was to inspect.  I found, each time, multiple, although small, differences on each cadet.  This became a torture session for the leader whose people had failed so miserably in this simple task.  I would then give them 15 minutes to fix the problems I had noted.  Invariably it took three or four inspections before they finally were even close to meeting standards.  While this was painful for the cadet leaders and left them wondering why I was being so “picky” they were learning valuable lessons they would need in their military careers.  They learned to check to ensure guidance was met, to enforce standards, and to assume responsibility for their mission.   While this is all well and good, this tendency, drilled into me for nearly three decades, has robbed me, to a certain extent, of the pleasure of watching a parade or a ceremony without noting the errors being made.  I can even find issues with the rockettes.  This is something simple but at the same time, I felt a sense of loss, something else sacrificed to a military career, extremely minor though it might be.