Born Leader

By Jim Davitch

Maj Davis heard the question and knew the answer; he just looked at his feet and pretended not to. The enlisted man in front of him was looking for Davis to provide direction and to be a leader and Davis wanted to be able to do both, or at least act like someone who could. To Davis, the difference between being a leader and pretending to lead was that pretenders felt the crushing burden of fraudulency he felt every day.
“What do you mean?” Davis responded, scanning the floor.
“There’s blood in the hallway,” Sergeant Hanson replied, repeating himself. “It's leaking from under the door. What should we do?”
Davis pretended again, this time to make it seem like he was focusing on reading something important, but he had not read anything important in a while.
“I’ll make a call,” Davis and said without knowing whom to call or what to say when he called.

It was 10 a.m. just then, but Major Davis had barely slept the night before. When Senior Master Sergeant Hanson and the captain knocked on his door at 3 a.m. he woke right up because he was afraid something bad had happened, or was about to happen. Sometimes people woke him up because information had come in and he needed to wake the lieutenant colonel and explain it to him. When Sergeant Hanson and the captain he was with knocked that morning, something bad already happened. Davis could tell and he thought the right thing to do was to answer the door and look competent as quickly as possible.
Davis disliked waking up quickly because it minimized the amount of time he had to get into character. Abbreviated sleep felt like basic training again; the master sergeant banging trash cans in the hallway like he was pretending he was a movie drill sergeant. Davis thought movie drill sergeants seemed to know what they were doing, they acted their parts well with their shined black boots, hat, and tight shirt that looked painted-on. Major Davis envied how good they were at pretending.
That morning Major Davis was temporarily in charge. He woke up right away and started pretending much earlier in the day than he normally would. He put on his shirt. It felt heavy to him.
That morning Senior Master Sergeant Brian Hanson was standing outside of his door next to the night shift captain. The captain was young and she looked at her feet, then to the left into a field across the street, then the right, then back to her feet. The captain was holding a radio with an antenna and she twisted one of the knobs near the base of the antenna clockwise with her thumb and her finger before turning it back counterclockwise. She did this repeatedly without looking at Davis and without speaking. Sergeant Hanson was older, in his thirties about Davis’s age, but he had only been with the unit a few days. The captain and the sergeant were both dressed in their uniforms. The captain stood with the radio and the sergeant stood behind her in the dark. Davis wore shorts and a T-shirt and he stood framed in the doorway. None of them talked for a few seconds. So Davis lifted his hands to his hips like he did when he was pretending to look confident. He said to the two opposite him, “Early morning. What’s going on?”
“Sir, Lieutenant Smith killed himself.” Sergeant Hanson said after waiting a beat for the captain to speak.
Right after Sergeant Hanson spoke he looked relieved and Major Davis thought that was strange. Davis knew, later, what that relief felt like. He learned when you tell someone something awful, you unburden yourself. You pass the responsibility of that knowledge elsewhere, making it their problem too. Davis thought it was a selfish, terrible, transference but Sergeant Hanson did it to Davis and later Davis would do it to other people.
Major Davis was sitting in the lieutenant colonel's office later that day when he heard about the blood that needed to be cleaned up. The lieutenant colonel was the boss but he had gone to Kandahar for a few days, so Davis had to pretend to be him until he returned. His office was small but it had a door and Major Davis thought if he had an office and a door he would probably keep it closed. But then he remembered someone telling him that a leader is supposed to be accessible, so he thought he would probably keep it open and pretend he wanted people to come in.
Davis thought about what their boss would do about the blood. Davis said he would reach out to someone. But he did not know of anyone that could help so he asked Sergeant Hanson who he thought Davis should call.
“I don’t know. But we need to call someone quick because the contractors living in the dorm room next door are complaining.”

That morning at 3 a.m. Davis felt bad for the dead lieutenant’s family. The lieutenant was young and probably had parents. When he left, his parents must have thought he’d be coming home. Routine deployment, safe location, they probably looked forward to seeing him. At the airport his dad probably would have grabbed his hand and squeezed hard and looked him in the eyes and saw his boy again. His dad would have been proud. His mom would have probably gotten to him first, though. She probably would have put her arms around him and then slowly closed her eyes. She might’ve said thank you, quietly, gratefully, under her breath, thinking that her prayers worked. She might’ve cried a little and then smiled and his dad might’ve taken his bag so he could’ve put an arm around his mom. All of that might have happened but instead it did not. Davis thought about all of that.
Mostly, though, Major Davis felt embarrassed. He should have known the dead lieutenant better but he did not and he never would. The lieutenant seemed aloof and quiet and that reminded Davis of himself. The lieutenant used to look straight ahead when he walked down the hallway. Or, would look down at the ground. One time a general officer asked Davis where he was from, where he went to college, why he got into the military, where his parents lived and he was shocked at how natural the general sounded because he would never ask so many questions of anyone. But he wished he could. He was embarrassed because his only interaction with the lieutenant was to avoid eye-contact when they passed each other. He was embarrassed most because he dreaded the eventuality of someone asking him about what the lieutenant was like. The colonel might call him later and ask those kinds of questions. “Did you have any indication that he was planning to hurt himself?” the boss would probably ask him. He knew he would not be able to pretend to know anything. He knew he should have known but he did not and he could not pretend to.

“Can you sit down, please?” Major Davis asked Sergeant Hanson. The sergeant complied, easing opposite Davis into an uncomfortable chair in the lieutenant colonel's office. Sergeant Hanson knew Davis was a pretender but Hanson did not make it obvious and because of that he made Davis relaxed.
“Did you know him?” Davis asked.
“No, not really. I haven’t been able to meet everyone yet,” he said half-apologetically, half-accusingly. They both knew it was more Davis’s job than Hanson’s to know the officers in the unit. By military tradition, Sergeant Hanson took care of the enlisted folks while Major Davis was supposed to watch out for the officers and the civilians. It was slightly unfair to Sergeant Hanson; there were many more enlisted. He knew it and he knew Davis knew it.
“Did he give you, any... indication?” and as soon as he spoke his eyes shifted to the floor.
“No,” Hanson said, definitively. Sergeant Hanson looked straight at Major Davis, then it looked like Hanson was going to lean forward to shift his momentum and stand-up.
“Why do you think people do it?” Davis asked, full of shame. He wanted to hear what Hanson would say but dreaded asking. He simultaneously hated the present conversation and hated that he wanted someone to explain things that did not make sense to him.
Sergeant Hanson, surprisingly, leaned back. Maybe, Davis thought, the sergeant wanted to talk about it too, but probably not. “I think some people have problems we can’t know about,” Sergeant Hanson said.
Major Davis looked at him, now more embarrassed than ever and wished he never asked anything. Now, Davis thought, the sergeant undoubtedly knew that he did not know anything. The Major knew it would always be that way between them. Since Davis could not pretend anymore, he just wanted Sergeant Hanson to leave the room and close the door. He wanted to be better, but it was clear to both of them he wasn’t and never would be.
But maybe, he thought to himself, he could get the blood cleaned up, keep it from spreading into the hallway outside the room where the lieutenant killed himself that morning. Maybe he would just go take care of it, bring a bucket and a mop. People would say, “That Major Davis just got up and fixed the problem, did it himself. Didn’t wait for anyone.” People would talk about how he just had a knack for knowing the right thing to do. An innate sense, they would say. They would talk about how in a world of pretenders, Major Davis was legit, he was solid. They would mention how he was a natural. Born leader, they would say.
“Is that all, Sir?” Sergeant Hanson asked as he looked over his shoulder out the door.

****

Jim Davitch is an Air Force officer. He graduated from Penn State and has written for Joint Force Quarterly, Strategy Bridge, Air & Space Power Journal, Over the Horizons Journal, Michigan War Studies Review, and the Angry Staff Officer blog. He previously taught at the USAF Weapons School and the US Air Force Academy. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs.