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what's a "little lady" type? just want to be able to follow the
discussion. paula
On Fri, 10 Jun 1994 BurkBrick -at- AOL -dot- COM wrote:
> Concerning Should/shall and Military Manuals, Barb (BurkBrick) Wrote:
> >Well, speaking as one of the grunts <smile>--
> Gulp - well, at least he's smiling. :^)
> >Most of the MilSpecs for field service documentation
> >REQUIRE_IMI_REQUIRE_ the direct imperative
> >"Turn the switch off -and a picture of the switch."
> Wish I had found this spec back then so I could have argued with my co-writer
> more authoritatively! He was one of those "been doin' it this way for 30
> years, little lady" types - tough to fight unless you have all your ducks
> lined up in a row, and even then they'll find a reason not to change.
> >We Smart Grunts in the Cavalry or SIgnal Corps might
> >tend to be offended by "The Operator shall..." and I do
> >believe I have seen an entire Infantry platoon wandering
> >the motor pool looking for Sergeant Stumblebumm
> >to switch off the scout-compartment heater in a
> >Bradley Fighting Vehicle (Sgt S being the
> >designated "Operator" dontcha know...)
> Interesting you should mention scout-compartment heaters - guess what I was
> writing about? You got it - heaters for "tracked army vehicles." The army is
> (or was) retrofitting all tanks with these new heaters because of potential
> fire hazards from the old one.
> I used to have an article (from an industry journal, which I can no longer
> find, of course) that described an incident in which a heater leaked fuel,
> which caught on fire. One of the army personnel (isn't that much better than
> grunt :^)?) grabbed a fire extinguisher, which didn't work. He grabbed
> another one, which also didn't work. He got the hell out. Fire spread. Tank
> was next to munitions. Big boom. Several deaths, many $$s of taxpayers money
> up in
> smoke. The article covered the details much better, of course, but if you
> have army experience I'm sure you
> don't need a lot of clarification.
> I suppose this story isn't completely relevant to the discussion at hand, but
> it reminds me how important many things we do are.
