It helped that everyone enlisted immediately agreed, but it escalated up the chain of command very quickly after we asked for a written order until it was agreed that it was a miscommunication and never happened.
To be fair they could order you to do a lot and just hope you do the implied, even verbally said, but unwritten thing. But when I was in we had clear training about what was and wasn’t unlawful to prevent abuse. If we had done it and had no proof we were really 100% officially ordered then it could have been pinned on us. Which is why my first response was, is that an order? Followed with citing the written order that said we could not do that thing and asking for a written order to do the thing. Just following orders works both ways.
For the uninitiated, asking for your verbal orders to be written out or asking for another soldier to be present in the military is a giant red flag. You can’t just say no in most cases. But the sub text is the experienced enlisted soldier knows it’s going to go horribly wrong. It’s generally the last warning an officer gets if they’re doing truly stupid things.
I refused an unlawful order once.
It helped that everyone enlisted immediately agreed, but it escalated up the chain of command very quickly after we asked for a written order until it was agreed that it was a miscommunication and never happened.
To be fair they could order you to do a lot and just hope you do the implied, even verbally said, but unwritten thing. But when I was in we had clear training about what was and wasn’t unlawful to prevent abuse. If we had done it and had no proof we were really 100% officially ordered then it could have been pinned on us. Which is why my first response was, is that an order? Followed with citing the written order that said we could not do that thing and asking for a written order to do the thing. Just following orders works both ways.
For the uninitiated, asking for your verbal orders to be written out or asking for another soldier to be present in the military is a giant red flag. You can’t just say no in most cases. But the sub text is the experienced enlisted soldier knows it’s going to go horribly wrong. It’s generally the last warning an officer gets if they’re doing truly stupid things.
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