The drill sergeants knew it. The cadets knew it. Heck, even our lieutenant knew it. The rite of passage ceremony was upfront stupid. We did our last training mission, the ruckmarch. At the end of the march were a bunch of COs and NCOs waiting. They were probably on a mission to watch us and clap.
Charlie Company gaggles around a field surounded by 13 trees. The number symbolizes some stuff to make us feel proud and all that jazz. While we waited for them to get things ready, they play all these "America" and "pumped up" music. Yeah it was a little awkward hearing all these bogus songs standing at parade rest. Apparently this was when we were supposed to be crying. The only things going on in my mind was a) how the hell did one of my toes start bleeding? b) will the DS be yelling at us after this was over? and c) when's breakfast?
After a little introduction and a prayer, we had the lighting of the candles that represented the army values in the clever acronym of LDRSHIP. We got gifts from ROTC too. We got a hat, a tshirt, and a little LTC graduate dogtag made of plastic. Now, who really will wear the plastic dogtag after this is over?
Here's the really lame part of the RoP: Each platoon ran through a bunch of cheers and high fives. We had to look happy and give them high fives back. But it got better (not really) at the end of the tunnel. Our good old drill sergeants yelled at us to get our gear back on because we were marching back to the company area.
No comments:
Post a Comment