At Fort Knox, during the recovery phase of training (turning in equipment to CIF - Central Issuing Facility, cleaning your equipment, packing up, etc), we were tasked with basically taking it easy and just scrubbing our equipment. We knew it was busy work, but it had to be done. We were running up and down from our barracks getting our equipment and cleaning what was necessary little by little. Some people were doing laundry, but none of us were sure if we were allowed to do so (if a Drill Sergeant doesn't tell you you CAN, then you should probably assume you CAN'T).
So, like I stated in an earlier post, most of my fellow cadets down there were slack jawed idiots with no discipline. When doing your laundry and then later drying it, if you didn't sit on the dryer, someone would take your clothes out and replace it with their own.
On one day during recovery a cadet took out someone's laundry from the dryer and put in his own. What we didn't know at the time was that the laundry belonged to our Senior Drill Sergeant for our platoon (3rd). We only found out about the greivous offense at a certain exact moment.
The doors to our bay swing open violently:
"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! YOU'RE NO LONGER WELCOME IN MY HOUSE! GRAB YOUR SHIT AND GET OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW! MOVE IT! WITH A QUICKNESS! GET OUT NOW!"
I grabbed whatever stuff I hadn't grabbed so far, stuffed it all in my laundry bag and wet weather bag so I can continue doing my duties for recovery. I'm fourth or fifth to last to leave, and due to my late position I see the Drill Sergeant come out of his office with a chain and a lock. That's right. He freaking chained us out of our own barracks. How bad ass is that?
At the time I was scared shitless, as I'm pretty sure anyone who was in the bay at the time was, but thinking back on it, that's some kind of shit you only see in a movie, and I lived it.
Later on, as we're cleaning our stuff outside, a Lieutenant came up to us and asked us why we were all just standing around with nothing to do.
"Sir, Drill Sergeant just kicked us out of the bay."
"What do you mean?"
"He chained up the doors, sir."
At that, he starts laughing and walks away shaking his head.
I don't remember how the bays got unlocked, but it wasn't until sometime later.
Our Drill Sergeant was a bad ass, no joke.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
Posted by LT at 9:35 PM 0 comments
Monday, December 10, 2007
Air Assault School: My favorite animal.
On the second day of training on the rappel tower at Air Assault school, we were instructed to hook ourselves into the tower once the Air Assault Sergeants OK'd us to get into position. Now, it's somewhat difficult to hook yourself in properly if you've never done it before and have only watched Sergeants do it for you. It's impossible to do it while you're belay man (the guy watching your descent, ready to pull your line taut if you begin to fall - a safety mechanism at Air Assault school) is hanging onto the rope and pulling on it.
I get into the kneeling position and try to hook myself into the rope. The rope won't budge. "Slack!" I yell to my belay man. He relents, for about 2 seconds, and I've only pulled about an inch of rope free. I repeat this about 14 times until I finally get hooked in, only each time I yelled slack and my belay man relented, I had eventually pulled about 2 more feet of rope than I had needed. Then the order came to get into the "L-shaped" (rappelling start point) position. I look at my rope and realize if I attempt the L-shape, I'm falling backwards immediately as there is too much slack.
"Air Assault Sergeant, I think I have too much slack."
"Well, would you look at that. HEY SGT. ADAMS...WE'VE GOT A POSSUM!"
SGT Adams runs over.
"I think we do."
"Go on, get into the L-Shape Air Assault. Here, I'll assist you."
The Air Assault Sergeant then pulled my rope tight and held it there with his own body weight. I begin to put myself in the L-shape, locking out my knees and leaning my ass over the edge of the tower.
My initial instructor just looks at SGT Adams and says "Why the fuck are you helping him?"
"You're right, why am I?
And at that cue, he let's go. I tumble backwards, like a diver entering the water from a boat (if you've ever seen a Discovery Channel special on underwater exploration, you'll know what I mean). I don't let go of my brake hand, in fact I hold onto it for dear life, and I end up 5 feet down the rope, hanging completely upside down.
Air Assault Sergeant: "WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL?"
Me: "The Possum, Air Assault Sergeant, the Possum!"
Him: "Would you like to right yourself?"
Me: "YES!"
Him: "Straighten out your knees and you should be fine."
I listen to him and I right myself, I then begin my descent as normal.
Possuming happens a few times every class, I've been told, so I don't really mind. In fact, I'm so fucked up I thought it was pretty damn fun. I would actually Possum again on purpose in the future just because it's one of the weirdest and adrenaline pumping feelings.
Posted by LT at 2:34 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Air Assault School, Completed.
I wrote this about 2 hours after getting home from Air Assault School. I'm sore and tired and haven't had a decent meal all day.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Air Assault School, Completed. I just got back from Air Assault School. It was an emotional roller coaster, with highs and lows, but over all, it was worth it because I got my wings. If this post is grammatically horrible, please excuse me. I've been up since 3:30 am and the words are beginning to blur, I'm just writing while all is fresh. |
Posted by LT at 2:04 AM 7 comments
Air Assault School bound
I was not even back from Fort Knox a full week yet, when I was called in to my ROTC office and given a test to qualify for Air Assault School. This is a post from that day.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Air Assault School Today, I qualified for the United States Army Air Assault School at Camp Smith (up by West Point). |
Posted by LT at 2:02 AM 0 comments
Sundry stories from Fort Knox
I attended something called the Leader's Training Course (LTC) at Fort Knox this summer from June 24th until July 21st. This was my first writing upon returning home with a fresh memory:
July 24, 2007.
Overall, my final reflection is that most of the cadets there were/are idiots and don't deserve to be in the Army. It's ok, they won't make it past LDAC, which is the Officer Assessment course, and they won't pass muster there, so I'm not too worried. Most of the people there were doing it for the wrong reasons, such as college tuition and their "parents were making them." So what happens when you get a bunch of people that don't want to be somewhere being forced to do things they don't want to do? They act like worthless, whiney, spoiled little brats, and that's exactly what they did. One girl would stand at attention with her arms folded and her head down, which finally prompted a drill sergeant reaction one day:
"What position are you at, cadet? The position of attention or the position of "I don't give a fuck!?"
Stupid stuff like that would constantly get my platoon (and company) dropped, which could have easily been resolved had the worthless cadets pretended to be team players and learn to give a shit for the people who wanted to be there (e.g. me and a few other dedicated cadets). Of course they didn't, since only a few other (about seven) cadets and myself would clean the entire barracks and latrines. One day, another platoon came in and used our latrines after they were cleaned and left it a mess which meant we were greeted with an angry drill sergeant when we got back from training.
"The Sergeant Major came for a visit today and inspected our barracks. It was horrible. He said it's the worst barracks he'd ever seen. There's fucking dick hairs all over the urinals, there's urine stains on the toilets. You live like fucking animals. He yelled at the Company First Sergeant, since he's in charge of the barracks, and guess what? Shit rolls down hill, so I got in trouble. And let me tell you, it's straight dick to ass, with no buffer zone, and I don't fucking like it. So now we're going to clean these barracks until they fucking shine."
We spent most of our time in garrison doing barracks maintenance because of dumb ass people ruining my universe. In garrison life sucked, the training was actually fun, which is usually not the case during training.
Now, we had this one kid in my squad who was 17, just graduated high school, was from New Jersey and weighed 115 pounds soaking wet. The Senior Drill Sergeant gave him the nick name Doogi and it stuck. He always threw temper tantrums and acted like a bitch, which I told him so on many occasions. After a while I told him I'd punch him in the face every time he threw a temper tantrum, and he wised up.
Anyway, for Day Land Navigation, Doogie wound up being my partner. So on our way to our very first point usin the dead reckoning method (meaning pick an azimuth to your point and walk in a straight line towards it), I was the compass man and he was the pace man. So we get to one point, I shoot the azimuth to the next point in the middle of the forest and start walking. After about 10 steps, I fall into a hole that must have been built by the Vietnamese. This shit was a 10 foot deep sink hole that was covered by brush and leaves and shit. I take my spill and manage to grab on to two thorn bushes on either side of the hole in order to keep myself from breaking my neck. The whole time Doogie is standing there, watching me. Finally, after about 30 seconds of him just watching me struggle to hold on for dear life (I fell on my back with my head slanted down, there was no way I wasn't breaking my neck if I fell), I finally scream at him, "What the fuck are you waiting for? Help me up, you asshole!" He snapped into gear and gave me a hand, and I managed to right myself. I am the only fucking person I know who can almost kill himself doing fucking Land Nav. The post script to that vignette is that I had other friends in the woods nearby and all the said is that they heard my voice randomly say "Help me up, you asshole!" and all they could do was laugh when I told them the rest of that story.
The only other one I can think of right now is my personal favorite story of the entire time I was there, and of course, it's something stupid I did. We had a field exercise that required us to spend four days out in the field, so at night we built poncho hooches (spreading out a poncho and tying the four corners to trees to make a tent-like structure). Now, my hooch had three trees near by it, and one tree about 10-15 feet off in the woods, which required a longer piece of 550 cord (military all purpose rope) to tie the 4th end to. This was also a great guiding line to take a piss in the woods during the middle of the night if you had to go. We also built a fire at night for warmth and light (we weren't being that tactical since we had whiney bitches in our company, or MOSTLY whiney bitches in our company). So one morning, I'm woken up at 0450 in the morning, and the temperature is about 40 degrees, since it gets cold at night in Kentucky. I'm freezing my balls off and decide to walk towards the fire to warm up and have a delicious MRE for breakfast. Once I get to the fire, I realize I have to take a piss, and I'm barely awake and groggy as hell. So I walk to my hooch, find the rope, guide myself out to the forest, whip it out and start relieving myself. Instantly, I hear my stream of justice hit something that's not the cold dirt of a Kentucky morning. I mentally think "Oh shit" and adjust my stream. Then I look down and in the limited light there is, I realize I've just pissed all over someone's equipment. I then look around to see if anyone saw me do it (especially the person's who's equipment it is) and see a silouette just staring at me. So I think to myself "Wow, he's gonna be pissed when he finds his shit," I finish up and then go back to the fire. After my MRE, I go back to my hooch to get my tooth brush and get dressed. That's when I realized it. I picked up my patrol cap, only to find it wet and warm. That's right folks, you guessed it. I followed the wrong rope and pissed all over my own shit. Upon this discovery, I wasn't even mad or slightly pissed off. I just stood there and said to myself "Man...I deserved that." I then later found out the silouette looking at me was my hooch-mate who was laughing at me and wondering why I was pissing all over my shit.
That's all for now, I'll probably have more later.
Posted by LT at 1:52 AM 1 comments
Full Contracted Cadet
Sworn to Defend the Constitution On February 15, 2007, I raised my right hand to God and swore my oath to defend the United States Constitution. |
Posted by LT at 1:51 AM 0 comments
My First Ruck March
After my Air Assault School experience, I find this entry comical. Youth is wasted on the young and dumb.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Alex tries to be a hot shot; God punishes him. At my leadership lab this Thursday, we were all told that on Friday morning, instead of doing regular Army PT, we'd be going on a 4-mile ruck march. Instead of wearing PT gear (Army t-shirt, shorts and running shoes), we'd have to wear our BDUs (fatigues). I've never gone on an extended march, let alone a ruck march, so I was pretty excited despite having to get up at 4 am to be able to get to the earlier start time. |
Posted by LT at 1:48 AM 6 comments
My First APFT.
This seemed so long ago. It's amazing to see how much I've grown in a year, both physically and in my writing ability.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
"Keep up with me or you're going to fail." I took my frist PT test for ROTC today and I think it's one of the most bad ass stories I've had so far in the program. |
Posted by LT at 1:47 AM 1 comments
Onward!
This site will be home to my old and yet to be written Cadetland stories. I've posted some of these on my MySpace blog, but since MySpace is dying, I figure I'd find a more professional (as professional as blogs are) outlet for my story.
I'm just one dumb cadet out of many thousands out there. I just happen to like writing.
Posted by LT at 1:43 AM 0 comments