Re: Sidenote to "dont should..

[BurkBrick -at- AOL -dot- COM]

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.

Barb