Risk Management Magazine

It was a typical day for the Headquarters and Headquarters Company scout platoon. Everyone came in early that day to pack and get ready for a field exercise.

As the staff sergeant walked into the military courtroom to hear his fate, he had no idea what was about to happen to his military career. If he had only stopped and thought about what could go wrong, the sequence of events would certainly have been different.

While in Afghanistan on my fourth deployment, I was stationed at Forward Operating Base Findlay-Shields, which was one of the safest locations I’d been over the past 10 years. The FOB was just across the street from Jalalabad, and nothing much happened there during my entire stay — except for that one day.