A Cadet's Journey: The first email

Sometime yesterday I received my first email regarding this blog and I'm a little excited. I want feedback from those people who randomly stumble in here looking for "US Army Air Assault School."

I hope my blog helps in any regard and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. I am not an expert, but I wear my wings proudly. I can give you knowledge on my experience, but that's it. Before I left, I went to Barnes and Noble and I looked up books to buy on Air Assault school and didn't find any. This blog is partially my response to that. If it can help in anyway, then I did some good.

Aside from that it's me recording my journey as a cadet up until I get my butter bar, and right now a big part of my cadet life has been Air Assault. I don't hide the fact that I'm Air Assault and was one of the best experiences of my life, and most people who find my site find it by searching some variant of Air Assault (thank you Feed Burner).

That being said, here's my first email I received and my response. I hope this helps.

Reservist (he didn't give a rank) Brock Thibodeaux wrote:

"Hey whatsup man. I'm an enlisted reservist right now, future cadet, and I've been bugging my unit commander to get me into air assault school this summer.

But..it doesn't look like they're gunna pay for me to go there. So I was really thinking about going as a walk on.

I read your blog and saw that you and your buddies were walk ons and got slots due to passing the obstacle course and because others got dropped.

My question is....how did you get the class dates for West Point? Also, what paperwork do I need to show up with and do I, as being enlisted, get paid active duty pay during my 10 day training period?

To tell you the truth I'll catch a greyhound if I have any chance of going to this kick ass school!

Thanks"

My response:

"Yeah man, anything you can do to get to this school, do it. If you gotta take a bus and camp out in front of West Point, do it. It's essentially what my battalion did.

As an enlisted man getting pay, I don't know. I didn't get paid to go. As a cadet, you're honored with the chance to go, and we're so mega high-speed, hoo-ah, hoo-ah that we don't care we're not getting paid.

Getting a walk on is sometimes easy (the year before I went a whole platoon of 82nd walked on, according to my friend who walked on the prior year), but for me and my four friends, we almost didn't get in. The OIC was a good guy and he saw we were motivated and hard workers and let us have our shot.

As for the class dates, I don't know. I had just gotten back from Fort Knox doing the Leader's Training Course and my friend called me on the last day and said he heard a rumor we had slots. So as soon as I got home, I went to my battalion S-1 and bugged them until they let me take the qualifier to get to go. I aced it and went.

The only paper work I brought was a letter from my Battalion Commander saying I was who I was, I was qualified and legitimately won my spot, my DoDMERB and a record APFT score card (within the last 3 months). My ID card and dog tags also came with me.

As far as the packing list, our S-1 pulled it off the internet from the 101st Sabalauski Air Assault School, however this was a problem. Sometimes the 101st boys teach Air Assault School at Camp Smith, other times it's the National Guard Warrior Training Center. Our instructors were WTC and they had their own packing list. It was a huge snafu. They wanted their list, ROTC cadets had the 101st list and the West Point kids had a West Point list. The only people who had their list were the Guard and Reservist who won slots in their battalions.

So, my advice to you is find out those school dates anyway you can, and then call up West Point and find out who is teaching that class so you have the right equipment. I don't see your BC or your CO giving you problems with going if you're dedicated to going on your own. As long as they know they're not paying, you should be good to go. "

Just to be clear, I asked his permission to reproduce his email here. If you email me, I will offer you the same courtesy.