The Smell-O-Vision
thedailywtf.com
thedailywtf.com
While Windows XP will offer to to do a repair when it gets shutdown suddenly normally doing that won't cause filesystem corruption or even HARDWARE damage as is implied in the story.
My guess from the description is that the generator power is probably dirty - the right fix would have been an online UPS here with an app that shuts the machine down on power loss.
A second factor might be that the PC was set to start automatically when Power was applied and while booting up it gets turned off again several times I think a Windows XP (and windows 7) machine will then ask for user interaction.
You can turn this Function off tho and Windows will ignore power loss after that.
That's my thought.
I've done enough end-user work to know I really should try to avoid all possible issues relating the user, assuming my work allows a timeline to do so.
Small generator manuals often suggest that the generator motor be warmed up and running smoothly before an electrical load is applied.
Possible scenario: generator motor is hard to start, or awkward to choke/unchoke, "starting" involves 2 or 3 rounds of: start generator, motor runs rough, choke setting is fumbled, generator stalls, PC halts before boot completes, lather, rinse, repeat.
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity
Put yourself in the place of that "grunt": would you expect a toaster or a microwave to be carefully shut down first, or expect it to be just fine when you turn the power off?
IMHO, if their software is expected to be used in real-world, on-the-road situations by untrained generalists, then it is the failure of the software firm to have built resilience as a feature.
To suck at requirements elicitation, suck at UX and then blame the user is not appropriate, IMHO. Did the "grunt" ask you to choose Windows XP as the vehicle of choice for your implementation? Ironically, it is exactly this kind of disconnect with paying customers and fellow humans beings that causes management to view programmers as the "grunt"-workers.
Sorry for the screed. Summary: UX "R" compassion.
Not a native speaker, but since the customer is the military, "grunt" is likely not meant derogatory, but just is (quoting Wikipedia) "an infantry man, in military slang".
The repeated facepalming is clearly outgroup derogation, though. That's just thedailywtf.com; their articles are always like that. I had them in my feed reader, but got tired of that writing style eventually.
Military slang is a whole wonderful world of its own