Committing the Creed to Memory

Committing the Creed to Memory

The Creed of the Noncommissioned Officer is, to some, just words that must be uttered during ceremonies and those times when new sergeants earn their stripes. To others, there is no higher thought. These Soldiers live their time while in uniform trying their best to uphold everything written in those three paragraphs. Some choose what those words mean; others make little effort in deciding but let others decide for them. When I entered the service of my country 11 years ago, I had no clue that such a creed existed. My family included wartime veterans; my grandfathers served in World War II. They both served honorably and passed down many stories of both tragic and valorous deeds. So when it was my turn to commit the creed to memory as so many other NCOs had done in the past, I tried to learn it while supplying a meaning to the words. It wasn’t easy, nor did it come as fast as I had hoped it would. How hard is it to really read something, remember it and figure out what the words mean? But I had been influenced enough by many NCOs and by the stories my grandfathers had passed on to me. It came to me that if NCOs form the “backbone of the Army,” then the creed itself embodies the essence of that backbone. The creed, though relatively new in the history of the United States Army, reflects meanings that span the centuries. From the Minutemen who took up arms in 1775 to defend a fledgling country, to modern leaders who guide warriors across the deserts and mountains and into the cities of southwest Asia, they have demonstrated the essence of the NCO Creed. As this thought came to me, I wondered if I was over-analyzing the whole thing. How many other young NCOs had correlated the words of the NCO Creed to the deeds of the past? My time in Iraq has given me insight, I think. I have seen small teams and squads forged into formidable fighting groups, and I have seen others that inspired distrust from senior leaders. The troops who performed admirably had NCOs who...

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