What was the best unit you served in and why was it the best?

3/187 Infantry "IRON RAKKASANS", 101st. No bullshit leadership, LTC David Petraeus and CSM Donald Purdy. Standards were everything and non-negotiable. Intense, realistic training, high level of discipline. Leaders and Soldiers were held accountable. It was "old school Army" in the 90's. As tough and rigid as it was, there was high esprit de corps because it had the reputation in the 101st as being the toughest and best trained battalion in the division.

Any command that maximize mission performance opportunities and minimized adminiscrap. So for me, that was Naval Support Force, Antarctica. There was so much real work to do, a lot was ignored or forgiven. Like Maj John Bell said, that was the place where my stunts would have me in Leavenworth otherwise. That night I gassed the XO or stranded him at South Pole. Having a snow-bast baptize the Chief of Chaplains properly. Running the high quality booze racket. The list goes on.

Company C, Marine Barracks Bangor, Naval Submarine Base Bangor, WA. I was the company commander. It was the best, because I had the Barracks Commanders whose command philosophy was:

"Not one of these Marines signed up to stand in a bullet proof box and guard a tree line that nothing but deer and Canadian Geese are going to come out of. As long as no one is seriously hurt, and nothing really expensive is broken, your mission Captain Bell is to make sure that on Friday of training week, these Marines can walk in to the E Club, strike heroic poses and tell heroic TRUE stories about the insane crap that they did this week. It would be best if some of them were bleeding all of them were bruised and the Marines smelled so bad the submariners move to the other side of the club".

God Bless those two LtCols, they meant every word of what they said. If I had pulled any of the insane crap we did anywhere else in the Marine Corps, I would have been relieved and cashiered. For three years Peter Pan would have been jealous of me.