 |
 |
 |
|
Command Sgt. Major Dwight Brown Looks beyond the Uniform
By: George E. Curry
NNPA News Service
Originally posted 5/6/2003
DOHA, Qatar (NNPA)—Early in Dwight J. Brown’s Army career, he received word that his wife had been involved in an accident. It had been snowing heavily that day and her automobile had skidded off the road.
“I had a sergeant major—a White guy—that fit all the stereotypes of a racist Southerner,” Brown recalls in an interview at his living quarters at Camp As Ayliyah. “I stopped this guy and said, “Hey, I got to leave. I got to go see about my wife. This man looked me up and down and said, ‘You go on this time but you need a haircut when you get back.’”
In retelling the story, it is clear that the incident still bothers Brown.
“He didn’t give a crap about the fact that I just said my wife had run off the side of the road. That has remained with me and has probably caused me to check the way I deal with people.”
Brown has plenty of people to deal with. Not only is he a sergeant major—the highest position that can be attained by enlisted personnel—he holds that rank for the U.S. Central Command, which covers about 25 countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the current war in Iraq, he is responsible for approximately 280,000 soldiers. In addition to advising Gen. Tommy Franks on issues that impact enlisted men and women, Brown makes frequent trips to the front lines, checking on his troops.
“I stress the importance of staying focused and not allowing complacency to set in,” Brown says. “I remind them to stay vigilant and be prepared to kill or be killed at any moment and that we are all responsible for getting our buddies back home alive.”
Brown left his Lexington, Ky., home at age 19 to join the Army.
“I had no direction or guidance,” Brown recalls. “I woke up one day and said, ‘This stuff is getting old.’ So I joined the Army for four years and it didn’t take me long to realize that this was my calling.”
As Brown discovered his calling, he also discovered an unpleasant side to military life.
“I came in 1973 and it was a terrible environment,” he calls. “Morale was low and racism was high. We were coming out of Vietnam. The n-word was flying around. The military had problems.
“I had come in as a young hot-headed kid and grew up in that environment. It wasn’t long before I realized that I could make a difference. I could make an impact on bringing equality into the United States, particularly the military.”
As he moved up in rank, Brown did so with confidence.
“I always knew I was special,” he recounts. “There were 12 of us and I was the third from the youngest. Mom and Dad didn’t have a whole bunch but each one of us knew we had our own place with them and they always instilled in us that there was no star out of our reach.
“Even as a little kid, they always trained us to accent our strengths and build on the weaknesses. If you had problems reading, take advantage of your skills to write and work on the reading. Whatever your weakness, don’t lay around and wallow in it.”
Brown noticed that often when the Army encountered soldiers with glaring weaknesses, they’d place them under his command.
“They’d send me the junkies and the jerks, particularly if they were Black. And I could turn many of those kids around. Even now, troubled soldiers gravitate to me.”
It’s easy to see why. Sgt. Maj. Brown is a man with a quick handshake and an even quicker smile.
“I deal with the person first,” Brown explains. “If I can get the person’s attention, I can fix all the little technical stuff. I try to be sensitive to the person behind the uniform.”
And there are other considerations.
“I’m a Christian. So that’s my first call,” Brown says. “I have to govern my military occupation with that, too. So it’s a broader calling. When I say calling, I mean I was put in the right place for all the right reasons. And I know it’s my calling to be sensitive to people.”
In general, sergeant majors are the taskmasters. And even while discussing the need for sensitivity, Brown shows no reluctance to kick butt, if that’s what’s needed.
“I can be sensitive to them in a positive way or I can be sensitive to them in a negative way,” Brown explains. “When I identify a guy as just wanting to be a stone knucklehead, I’m going after him.”
The soldier doesn’t have to be a knucklehead for Brown to go after him.
“I don’t want kids up here fighting and having to worry about whether this guy is couching down behind a vehicle because he’s protesting about something or he’s not disciplined enough to get down independently and shoot his weapon and protect his position. I would never put a solider in that position.
“As strong and as hard as I work at building a person to his or her total potential, I will recognize the guy who has already met his potential and that potential is below what we need. I’ll send him home.”
To a lesser degree, it bothers Brown that so few African-American entertainers will come to visit U.S. troops.
“Chris Rock, CeCe Winans and a few others have been over. When you look at the number of entertainers and talent that volunteer time to come over entertain the servicemen, the number of Blacks who do it is a drop in the bucket.”
Brown has demonstrated his dedication to the Army throughout his career. When he first made sergeant major, he had shipped his car home from Germany and was scheduled to attend the sergeant major academy as troops were being deployed to Desert Storm, the 1991 military operation in the Persian Gulf.
“If I was one of the guys, I’d never respect a guy who jumped ship and went off to school,” Brown says. “What a coward I would have been if I hadn’t stuck with those kids. I took all of my boys and brought them back alive.”
He has another life-and-death memory.
“There was a kid I went to church with before we were assigned to Somalia,” he recalls. “He was a young guy, married with a couple of kids. He was rambunctious. For some reason, he started to cling to me. After we went to Somalia, every time I turned the corner, he would pop up. He wasn’t in my unit, but we talked a lot. We talked about some of his marital problems, we talked about his background—the kid just clung to me.
“He had gotten shot. This guy called me into his room. He told me, ‘Looks like I’m not going to make it back. I had a dream that I’m going to die over here.’ I said, ‘Come on, you can’t get scared. You’re trained.’ He said, ‘No, I’m serious. I’m never going to see my wife and kids again.”
As Brown retells the story, it’s almost as if he’s reliving each excruciating moment.
“I went back to see him one day,” Brown says softly. “They had him sedated pretty good. And we woke up long enough to see me. He looked me in the eyes. He said, ‘I told you I wasn’t going to make it back.’ He died en route back home. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about that before. But that always stood out with me.
“What if I had just walked away from that guy? He was able to mend relationships with his family and other people during this process. Had I just walked away and no one else had stepped in, he probably never would have done it.”
Because he gets satisfaction from helping others, Brown is not making plans to retire. Not yet, anyway.
“I still like what I’m doing,” he explains. “It’s not about the money because soldiers don’t make any money. When I retire, I’m going to have to work somewhere. So why leave something I like to do something I don’t?”
And when Brown decides to go, he wants to leave his mark.
“I have another calling that goes along with this social calling and that is to help the Black community,” he explains. “I hope that one day, some kid’s going to look back—after having come from the various dysfunctional environments that we know—and he can sit back when he’s finally made something of himself and say, ‘That old guy Brown, he helped me get here.’”
####
|
|
|
|
