Thought I would start a thread where real warriors could swap yarns about the center of modern warfare - the staff. COIN, SSTR, MCO, Thermonuclear War all share one thing: staff officers. Only one rule: no second-hand war stories. However, feel free to poach any found here next time you're sitting around the lobby of the Doubletree knockin' back a few appletinis.

Here's my favorite:

Back in the day, we were preparing to take on the 3rd Guards Shock Army at Hohenfels, when the brigade assistant S-2 got up to brief. Everything was going well when the brigade commander interrupted. "What was the basic load of AT missiles carried by the T-80?", he asked. The A/S-2 looked up from his notes.

"I don't know, sir."

The brigade commander was a good guy, not prone to torturing briefers, so he let it pass.

Next day, the same young intelligence officer got up to brief again. At the end of his briefing, the brigade commander again asked how many AT missiles the T-80 carried.

The captain took a deep breath and replied in a tone one normally reserved for dealing with slow children. "Sir, as I briefed yesterday...I don't know!"

He never briefed again.