On my second tour in Vietnam, I was assigned as an

infantry battalion executive officer, second in command, in

the 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). I was very pleased with

the assignment. As it happened, I had just graduated with

honors from the Command and General Staff College at Fort

Leavenworth, Kansas. Shortly after I arrived in Vietnam, a

photo of the top five graduates appeared in Army Times. The

division commanding general saw it, and I was pulled up to

the division staff to serve as the operations officer, responsible

for coordinating the combat operations of a twenty-thousand-

man division. I was only a major and it was a lieutenant

colonel’s position. I would have preferred to stay with my

battalion, but wasn’t given that choice. It turned out to be very

demanding and a stretch for me, but it marked a turning point

in my career. Someone was watching.

Years later, as a brigadier general in an infantry division,

I thought I was doing my best to train soldiers and serve my

commander. He disagreed and rated me below standards. The

report is still in my file. It could have ended my career, but

more senior leaders saw other qualities and capabilities[4]in me

and moved me up into more challenging positions, where I

did well.

Doing your best for your boss doesn’t mean you will

always like or approve of what he wants you to do; there will

be times when you will have very different priorities from

his. In the military, your superiors may have very different

ideas than you do about what should be your most important

mission. In some of my units my superiors put an intense

focus on reenlistment rates, AWOL rate, and saving bonds

participation. Most of us down below would have preferred to

keep our primary focus on training. Sure, those management

priorities were important in principle, but they often seemed

in practice to be distractions from our real work. I never

tried to fight my superiors’ priorities. Instead I worked hard

to accomplish the tasks they set as quickly and decisively as I

could. The sooner I could satisfy my superiors, the sooner they

would stop bugging me about them, and the quicker I could

move on to my own priorities. Always give the king his due

first.

What TWO key ideas of the memoir are illustrated in this passage?