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Drill Sergeant Baker was a cool DS; he'd get pissed off and yell the shit out of himself at times, but he was still very well respected from all of us. DS Baker was in charge of 1st squad. He took care of my squad and our lieutenant. He was also pretty young; he was the only one not married. In fact, he was only a few years older than me. It's also interesting to think about; in a different life we could have been friends or we could have been enemies. Life takes us in all sorts of possibilities.
The first day we got to learn from him was on our group ice-breaking day where we did all sorts of physical puzzles. We had to work together as a team to solve them. The details in that would be covered later, but during that day we actually smiled and laughed. DS Baker also got kind of bored by the puzzles, and he actually gave us hints on how to solve them. I was grateful for that because he was relating to how we felt. We got to ask him questions about the Army and what he thought of us as a platoon so far. One comment that particularly stood out for me, was when we asked him if he met any fuckups. He talked about one kid who didn't know where he was going and dropping things, and it turned out it was the guy from Africa who was also in our squad! So we all laughed because he didn't even realize that the guy he was insulting was sitting next to him. Of course, in reality drill sergeants don't need to learn names.
Throughout the month there, DS Baker would push us hard along with DS Rhine-Russell and DS Dimick. We did some stupid shit, and of course we had to get punished for them. I was pretty annoyed by all the dumb shit we did, but it was expected I suppose. How would we lead soldiers when we are not even disciplined ourselves? It was a good point, and another reason for NCOs to dislike officers and cadets.
We had four drill sergeants (DS) assigned to each platoon during LTC, and one in particular stood out today when I decided to write. DS Rhine-Russell was the only female DS in our platoon. I think that is why she was also the toughest DS we had. She would come in with an apathetic attitude in the morning, chewing gum, and looking like she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. She wasn't that tall either, so that physical appearance would fool someone into thinking she wasn't going to be hard.
I remember she was always there for a smoking session. A smoking session is when the privates/cadets messed up something and is decided that physical punishment is needed. It varies from the smoker to smoker: it could be pushups, mountain climbers, overhead arm claps, flutter kicks, side straddle hops, etc.
Her favorite lines to say during the smoking sessions was, "Wah wah wah, want to go home; want my milk and cookies."
A fellow cadet of mine said Rhine-Russell instead of DS Rhine-Russell in one of his conversations and she was actually walking by. She overheard it, and as punishment she made him write a five page essay on some random Army value. That was a horrible punishment considering we only had five hours of sleep a night.
It's always funny when you look back on it, but at that time it sucked a lot.
DS Rhine-Russell was in charge of the female barracks, and she was extremely picky on how neat it had to be. She told them later that she was hard on them because they are a minority in the army. Women have it a lot tougher, so they have to set their own standards higher than the rest. I thought that was a pretty good philosophy to teach by.
Just when we all thought she hated us, DS Rhine-Russell actually told the girls that she was proud of them. I don't know if it was part of her job to tell them that, but I would like to believe she meant it. I'm sure they'd like to believe it too.
During our FTX, the DS were very laid-back and had fun with the cadets. Even DS Rhine-Russell had some fun. Of course, by fun, it was at some cadets' expense.
