Musing on Mr. Bieniemy's Field Promotion and Hard Coaching

It's all about getting through hard crap together. The hard crap fertilizes you. Makes you grow. Hell, you may even bloom.

Sounds like something from Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor from Gladiator.

I don't know if you have read any Bernard Cornwell. He liked to write about doing the hard stuff. Hand to hand combat. Marching into a hail of musket balls. Civil War soldiering and Medieval Chopbone warfare.

His best character was Richard Sharpe. Sharpe was played by Sean Bean in the 1990s. The whole Sharpe series of movies is basically about leadership. Hard coaching leadership. Like Mr. Eric Bieniemy, Sharpe was promoted from the field.

In this scene, he is presented with the men he is going to lead. He's told they're the Chosen Men.

                                  "Chosen men eh? Well, I didna chose ya."

The Ultimate Hard Coacher was Louis Gossett Jr. as Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman. In this scene, he tries to get Officer Candidate Zack Mayo, played by Richard Gere, to quit Officer Training. Really, he's testing Mayo's desire to be an Officer. Trying to find his gut level. Progress with this particular candidate is possible only at that level. 

You'll notice the screenwriter's closeted homoeroticism. What's known as a mancrush. These scenes are not for kids.

 

"I got nowhere else to go!"

Of course, that wasn't enough. Mayo's best friend in the above encouraging him not to quit? Commits suicide. Mayo blames Foley for it. They hash it out in the ring.

 

"You can quit now Mayo."

 

That was a lot of "hard coaching".

It isn't likely that Bieniemy will fight anybody like Sharpe and Foley. These movies aren't politically correct. Officer and a Gentleman is almost completely sexist and homophobic but for the fact Foley has a female officer trainee. She has to get help from Mayo on the obstacle course. Today, she'd have helped Mayo and Foley would be openly gay.

Sharpe is a womanizer and curses like a sailor. Sharpe would have loved Winterfell. So much softcore. So little time.

But the psychological arc of leadership is here. Stripped bare. Nonwoke. 

Stiff like a hot cup of pure black Cowboy Coffee. 

Excuse my language.