Wikipedia’s 2016 description of the battle is: ”The Charge of the Light Brigade was a charge of British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, in the Crimean War. Lord Raglan, overall commander of the British forces, had intended to send the Light Brigade to pursue and harry a retreating Russian artillery battery, a task well-suited to light cavalry. However, due to miscommunication in the chain of command, the Light Brigade was instead sent on a frontal assault against a different artillery battery, one well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. Although the Light Brigade reached the battery under withering direct fire and scattered some of the gunners, the badly …show more content…
First was the discipline of memorizing something and being able to recite it with conviction. There was later a requirement to recite a poem in fifth grade in front of the entire school and I won an award because he had already drilled and drilled reciting it. I recited it in front of the family, and then in front of friends when they came to dinner. But I’m sure there was another purpose in picking this particular poem as my sister was given “The Swing”. That purpose was to train me that when a superior gives an order, you execute it without question. One of my father’s favorite sayings was: “the request of a commanding officer is the same as an order”. But it did much the opposite. Memorizing it so intensely was such an event that I thought of those British soldiers throwing their lives away in such a disgraceful fashion- a little bit like suicide bombers of today-all due to miscommunication, an event that could have been rectified by advising the commander of this issues surrounding the order, giving an opportunity for revision, then executing the final order. I could have executed CEO Redenbaugh’s order to give the Commercial Business Unit $5M to build a mock-up. The Government would have likely investigated the situation and many people, including him and myself would have been fired and potentially would have gone to jail for violating procurement regulations. I chose to ensure Red knew he was breaking the law so he could change