Risk Management Magazine

While the refrigerator power failure was unanticipated and unavoidable, this was a close call. There were several issues that could have gone better.

It was 3 a.m. on a Sunday when I received a call from the brigade staff duty NCO. As a company first sergeant, you dread the middle-of-the-night phone call because the news is never good. This call wasn’t an exception. One of our Soldiers had been involved in an accident just 200 meters away from the battalion and brigade headquarters. I hung up the phone, crawled out of bed and prepared for the worst.

I was raised in the country, where the lack of immediate entertainment left most of us kids looking for hobbies. Mine was motorcycles. I started riding at the young age of 5, and by the time I was 8, I’d worked myself up to the Honda XR75.