Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 60

I’m Faded
1st Lt. Robert P. Callahan Jr., U.S. Army

I

n February 2015, Leonard Wong and Stephen
Gerras published Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty
in the Army Profession.1 This study portrayed an
Army that purports to value honesty, but the leaders of
which have sacrificed their integrity in order to meet
an excessive number of administrative requirements. In
order to regain our integrity, Wong and Gerras suggest
that we, as an Army, acknowledge our organizational
and individual fallibilities and have a candid conversation about reconciling who we are with who we want to
be. I would like to add to that conversation by discussing how I fell short of who I would like to be.

From Black and White to Shades of Gray
In 2009, I was screened by the Department of
Defense Medical Review Board (DODMERB); in
2010, I was examined at a Military Entrance Processing
Station (MEPS); and in 2013, I completed a Class 1
flight physical.2 I had to fill out a thorough medical history for each of these exams. At the end of each history,
I certified that the history was “true and complete” and
that “no person advised me to conceal or falsify any
information.” I completed accurate histories for the
DODMERB and MEPS, but I turned in an incomplete
history for my flight physical. I had changed between
2010 and 2013, but I cannot tell you exactly why I
chose to turn in an incomplete medical history.
A couple events stand out as probable factors for
influencing my decision to not turn in a complete medical
history. A drill sergeant informing my basic training platoon that “your units won’t care who you are or what you
did before the Army as long as you’re not a scumbag when
you get there,” taught me that some standards are more important to meet than others. An upper-class cadet ribbing
one of my peers for telling the truth on his DODMERB
because the upperclassman “thought everyone lied on that
thing,” lowered the standard from absolute to conditional
honesty. Joking that “you can’t tell the Army the truth
about how you drink; they would go crazy,” further trivialized telling the truth at all times. Sadly, I cannot tell you
if those events specifically led me to act without integrity.
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Instead, I can only tell you that I did not care about signing
my name to a document that I knew was incorrect.
I completed the histories for both MEPS and the
DODMERB during an application process. My recruiter
sent me home with a stack of paperwork for MEPS, and
I accessed an online questionnaire for the DODMERB.
I was applying to join the Army, and I wanted to make
sure I gave an honest account of myself. I completed
the history for my initial flight physical before attending
the Leadership Development and Assessment Course
(LDAC) after my junior year of college. I put my demographic information in the appropriate boxes, checked
whichever boxes on the questionnaire required the least
effort, and signed my forms before continuing onto my
next appointment. Completing my paperwork on time
was more important than completing it truthfully.

Accountable to Whom?
I made a troubling choice when I placed a greater
weight on completeness than on accuracy. As a cadet, I
was working toward earning a commission in the U.S.
Army; a commission that is nominally predicated on
earning the president’s “special trust and confidence”
in my “patriotism and fidelity.”3 I believe volunteering
to join the Army demonstrated my patriotism, but did
I truly act in a manner worthy of anyone’s trust and
confidence in my fidelity?
Perhaps a commission grants officers the authority
to choose which requirements are worth the time and
effort of meeting if satisfying every requirement is not
possible. Robert E. Atkinson Jr. posits military officers
are required to disobey illegal and immoral orders.4
According to Atkinson, illegality and immorality
should be understood in the context of the professional
values of military officers, the legal values of the constitutional and international laws which bind the United
States, and the moral values that each officer personally
holds. If an order conflicts with the common good,
then an officer is bound to disobey it.
An officer cannot obey an impossible order. Officers
act as agents of the public trust, and a commander is
March-April 2016  MILITARY REVIEW