Female navy captain relieved of command for cruelty and maltreatment of crew
President John F. Kennedy, a naval officer in World War II, once told a friend how a Navy chief would describe a broken down jeep: “This fucking fucker is all fucked up!”
The phrase “curse like a sailor” has a basis in fact. Sailors do curse.
But it appears that Navy Captain Holly Graf took the tradition a bit too far. As TIME reports, Captain Graf cursed and abused her officers and crew, which led to her being relieved of the command of her ship.
I served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War and I never heard the ship’s captain or any senior officer curse or insult another officer or enlisted sailor in a public setting. Cursing was an everday part of our language, and some officers and chiefs cursed their men, but excessive cursing and manhandling a subordinate were not considered management tools.
Today we have women serving on Navy ships and so I suspect that cursing has been curtailed. In the case of Captain Graf, the Navy’s Inspector General’s report details the actions of a poor officer and poor commanding officer, in my view.
During my time as a Defense Department civilian I served as an investigating officer and I wrote reports concerning misconduct and other offenses. Having read portions of the Inspector General’s report, I believe that Captain Graf deserved to be relieved of her command, and perhaps she should not have been given the command of the ship in the first place.
I’m glad to see that political correctness did not shield Captain Graf simply because she was a woman. She was a poor commanding officer who happened to be a woman. One of the best officers I worked for was a female Air Force Colonel and several of the worst officers I worked for were men.
Commanding officers should be judged on their performance and not be given a pass due to their race or gender, and it appears that Captain Graf was judged solely on her performance.
A Navy Captain of a ship at sea is a powerful position, but the power is not absolute, as we see from the case of Captain Graf.
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I know in todays world this is not the normal Marine unit. In the 80’s the first unit I reported to had no women in it. It was a front line anti aircraft missle battalion and things in the field went smoothly (as smoothly as can be expected in the Marines). Women Marines (WM’s) had their own barracks on the base and males were not allowed across the red line painted around the building unless they were on duty and had orders to be there. Later on I went to a support group and WM’s were everywhere, even shared the same barracks as men. They occupied the top floor and you still were not to go up there …. but as long as no one knew… Then they mixed them into rooms next to the mens rooms…. the barracks got alot wilder, kind of like a frat party. Young men and women in great shape and full of hormones…. it was fun but not near as diciplined as my first unit. The field situation was alot worse. I know of several guys and gals caught doing the wild thing in the field and losing rank for it. Girls not wanting to get dirty. Girls not wanting to chase the grunt units and doing the resupplies beacuse you could go several days to weeks with showers etc because of water rationing. etc etc tec …… The highlight was Asia. They did not seperate the men and womens restrooms at the time at the bars in town and the head was a porcelain hole in the floor that you squatted over in plain view. It was a mad rush for the head when a good looking WM got up and headed in that direction…… Good times.
I happen to appreciate what this Captain did. Not having been there I can still laugh. Standing a subordinate in the corner for a timme out is pricelss and just like the crybaby generation he came from he complained his feelings were hurt and that couldnt be tolerated. I see sissies like this every day in the active army. Say a cross word to them and their literal first thoughts are to call the MP’s. Wonder what they do when someone is trying to kill them in a combat zone. In todays military I would be in prison. Many years ago when I was a Company Commander I once told a CW3 that if he opened his mouth one more time and lied to me again I was going to come across my desk and stab him in the eye with my ink pen. Now days I’d be in jail even though I saved the 5th Corps Commander from being relieved.
Now I’m hardly a soft-hearted liberal and I too think that today’s military is too politically correct.
But having said that, I believe Captain Graf was rightly canned.
I was raised by a WWII Navy chief UDT frogman and he ran our house like a Navy command. I would go on in my 37-years of combined military-civilian service to supervise a good number of people.
I was tough on the few bad ones I had under me, but overall, I believe nearly all of my subordinates were good ones because I treated them like professionals.
Captain Graf was way over the top. Ethics aside, I don’t think it her way was the best way to run any kind of command or organization.
To me, cursing, insulting and silly acts may be OK for Boot Camp, but it is certainly not the way to treat a military professional.
This is not leadership. This is an ego trip for an insecure officer.
This is also no way to help the retention of highly trained military people. I would have been insulted and would have refused to stand a “time out.” I would have prefered a court martial.
And if an officer physically threatened me, I would said, let’s go. As I’m a former South Philly street kid and middleweight boxer, I was never threatened by a boss.
There was one chief who I thought was going to get physical with me when I was an 18-year-old seaman.
A petty officer got too close and screamed in my face and I punched him, knocking his two front teeth out.
The chief, who was a tough guy, stepped in and ordered me out of the compartment. He ordered me to go to the admin office, which was unoccupied.
I waited there for him, thinking he was going to take me on. He was much bigger than me. He was a heavyweight boxer and I had seen fight in the gym.
When he came to the office I was prepared to go down fighting, but he took another, and better approach.
He expressed his disappointed in me. He said that he wanted to punch out some officers every day, but we were in the military and we had to control our tempers and our actions. We were professionals and we had to work together.
The chief said we had a war to fight and we were a team, even if some our teammates were assholes.
That speech hit me harder than any punch he could have delivered. Physcial threats, curses and insults would have only made me defensive. They would have not made me a better sailor or man.
This chief later helped me aviod the brig. This chief was a true leader.
Captain Graf, in my view, was not.