When I was a young private I made a very stupid financial mistake that finally caught up to me while I was on a long leave between duty assignments. I arrived at Ft. Bragg, excited to be at my new station, and learned within a week that I’d left a bill unpaid long enough that the creditor finally did what they can do to soldiers more easily than they can do to most anyone else, and had the Army garnish my wages.
I have no idea what it’s like now, but at the time that meant that they just took all your paycheck minus maybe $20 to cover stuff you don’t get for “free” or couldn’t beg from the supply sergeant, so I was looking at six or eight weeks of being flat broke: I’d spent all my money living it up on leave.
The whole thing was pretty humiliating: Brand new to my unit, wanting to make a good impression, and suddenly my entire chain of command had me down as a deadbeat.
My team chief told me what was going on and said it was a bad look for me, and he asked if I was going to be okay. The one bright spot was that I’d set up a bunch of allotments, and the Army wouldn’t disrupt those, so other bills were getting paid, and some money I was sending home wouldn’t be touched. So I was going to be fine, I was just embarrassed, and $20 was going to be okay to cover toothpaste, starch, and boot polish. My team chief was careful to point out that boot polish and starch were my new priorities, because I needed to not look like the bum I appeared to be.
He ended the conversation with “you’re one of those new 31Us … so you know a lot about computers?”
Yes, I knew a lot about computers. So much so that back in advanced training, when we got to the instructional block on the UNIX-based combat control system the instructor had gotten sick of me answering all his questions about UNIX in too much detail and just put me in the front of the class to explain it to everyone else.
“Can you come over to my house for dinner? I need help with mine.”
So I came over and helped him with a computer he’d just gotten and couldn’t get to work. Then he offered to drive me back to the barracks.
On the way back he said, “I need to stop by the store,” so I said okay. He put a bunch of stuff in his cart – shoe polish, starch, three cartons of my brand of smokes, coffee, junk food. When he let me off at the barracks he handed me the bags.
“Save your money for beer until this is over.”
I said thanks, embarrassed. He said “mission first, people always.”
On this particular day I am trying to pay that forward. It is not being made easy by everyone but the human in the middle of it all, but I’m going to try.