LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Before the sun rises over most Kentucky Army National Guard armories, Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy F. Nein has already laced up his boots.
As the Command Sergeant Major of the 75th Troop Command, Nein has made a point to show up alongside the soldiers he leads. Whether standing at the start line of an Army Fitness Test with a subordinate unit or walking the range his soldiers train on, Nein has turned a simple philosophy into a daily standard: a Command Sergeant Major belongs with his soldiers.
It is a standard he has held himself to without exception. Since assuming the role of CSM, Nein has made it his personal mission to participate in every Army Fitness Test conducted by downtrace units whose schedules allow for his attendance. He has set foot on ranges across the command, not as a visitor observing from a distance, but as a presence in the formation. No unit trains without the possibility that their brigade senior enlisted advisor will be standing right there with them, doing the same work.
For many soldiers, that visibility carries more weight than any policy directive or command guidance memorandum ever could. Seeing their Command Sergeant Major complete the same fitness tests, walk the same ranges and hold himself to the same standards sends a message that is difficult to articulate but impossible to miss: rank does not excuse you from the standard. It obligates you to exceed the standards.
"Every Soldier deserves a fit, disciplined, cohesive, and lethal Command Sergeant Major; leading from the environment that those Soldiers are in, not from behind a keyboard or desk,” Nein said. “I take my responsibility very seriously; mentoring, developing, and maturing young men and women to be mastered in land warfare while being apex predators in every environment.”
Nein speaks from experience that few can match. During his 2004 to 2005 deployment to Iraq with the 617th Military Police Company, Kentucky Army National Guard, he led his squad through one of the most intense small-unit engagements of the war. On March 20, 2005, near the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad, his squad came under fire from approximately 50 insurgents armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades while escorting a supply convoy. Rather than seek cover, Nein dismounted his soldiers, put them between the insurgents and the convoy, and led a direct counterattack into the enemy trench line. When the fight ended, 27 insurgents were dead and seven were captured. Not a single American soldier was killed.
He received the Silver Star Medal for his actions that day. The award was later upgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor in combat, making Nein the first National Guard Soldier ever to receive it.
That history is not lost on the Soldiers of 75th Troop Command, but Nein does not lead on the strength of his past. He leads by showing up in the present.
The approach mirrors the language of the NCO Creed, which calls on noncommissioned officers to place their Soldiers' welfare before their own comfort, to lead by example and to remain technically and tactically proficient. For Nein, those are not words on a wall. They are a daily routine.
"With the right equipment, the right training and the right leadership, there's nothing we can't get done," he has said, a governing principle for how he operates every day.
What makes that principle visible is the consistency behind it. Nein does not show up at one unit's fitness test for a photo opportunity and moves on. He follows the schedule, unit by unit, range by range, working through the 75th Troop Command's formations with the same deliberate commitment he brought to a trench line in Iraq two decades ago. Soldiers who have never deployed and soldiers who have served multiple combat tours receive the same version of their CSM: present, engaged and held to the same standard as everyone else in the formation.
That consistency is what separates leadership that is talked about from leadership that is felt. In the 75th Troop Command, soldiers do not simply hear about their senior NCO. They see him, and in seeing him, they understand what the NCO Creed actually requires.
"Every plan we put into place and everything we practiced went exactly the way it's supposed to," Nein once said of his squad's actions on March 20, 2005. "And it wasn't because we were a bunch of superheroes. It was because of standards, training and leadership."
Two decades later, he is still proving that point. One fitness test, one range, one formation at a time.