Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
Perhaps Steve Metz could divine a good war story from the late, great Harry Summers since Steve's office at the AWC is Harry's old office. I think that is totally cool. The closest I can get to that is that my office on the first floor of Thayer Hall on the west side of it probably had Patton and his horse ride over the same spot when it was a horse riding stable back in the day.

My staff war story, unlike Schmedlap, but like other old staff hands like Tom Odom and Ron H, I have lots of time on staff. Let's see; OK, I remember in the BCT Toc when I was BCT XO in OIF1 in Tikrit within days after he took command we briefed LTG Sanchez on current operations. I remember him being really good with numbers, much better than me, but fortunately the Bde 3 was a lot smarter than I was and briefed the General and handled his numbers questions pretty well.
LTG Sanchez WAS pretty good with numbers. But sometimes he seemed a little challenged with "reality".

We were briefing him with a series of slides, and it always amazed us with how he was able to "zoom in" on a number as the slides whipped by him. But one day, we found out mere moments before the briefing started that one number was not correct. So, when the slide flipper (not me that day, thank God) got to that slide, he made a special point to mention that the numbers on the flatracks returned for the PLS was incorrect, the actual number was "umpteen" instead of "gazillion". Of course, LTG Sanchez zoomed right in on the "gazillion" number, and started grilling everyone in effective grenade range on why that number was "gazillion", despite being corrected every single time, that the "gazillion" number was misreported, and was not correct.

Between that and the constant input on slide color, I developed a certain dislike for the good LTG.