Importance of Accoutability

The Importance of Accountability

Being a Marine the higher ups never fail to stress or say that accountability is one of the most important things in the line of work, but all of the younger Marines never seem to quite grasp just how important it can truly be. Not being able to keep proper accountability of those who are in your shop can have such dire consequences to go as far as causing death, not keeping proper accountability for a piece of gear can also cause death not only to you but to another service member as well, it can probably even cause another catastrophe like that of September 11. Marines are known to be the first to fight as in always being the first to arrive at the place of war but do you think that would be possible to do so if they weren't always accountable for everything they had? Can you picture yourself being in country and an enemy grabbing a holds of one of your valuable equipment items due to the fact that you weren't able to hold proper accountability for it, do you know the different ways in which this scenario can go completely wrong?

While on recruit training we are each given a rifle, this rifle goes just about everywhere you go. When the end of the day approaches and we do our daily count it will always go rifle and then recruit due to the fact that the weapon accountability is more important than the recruit accountability. While a recruit I never really quite grasped why that would be true, why would you care more about a rifle than you would about a person, but now having gotten a little wiser I see the bigger picture behind it. After September 11 we are living among terrorist, for all you know the person to your left and right at this moment can be a terrorist and all they are waiting for is for the perfect opportunity to attack. Sit back for a moment and imagine its Friday morning, there is about give or take 800 recruits getting ready for graduation, now imagine that there would happen to be a terrorist on base on that special day. The terrorist is walking around the battalions and see's that recruits are still on chow,( now remember everywhere we go our weapons go with us but we aren't allowed to bring weapons into the chow hall so there will always be at least 2 Marines or in this case recruits behind as designated rifle watch) and at this