Rotc

[tdeane]

I feel like I can share so much with you guys, why not this one. I think it's humorous (to me, but I guess I have a sick mind).
My parents were divorced while I was growing up and going through high school. I split time between Missouri (dad) and Alabama (mom) for school, but the one constant for me was Army Cadets, ROTC.
My CO for ROTC in Mo. was a former V'nam Vet infantry officer and he loved to take us out to the Busch Wildlife Area/Preserve for Recon education (ranger files, cover and concealment, survival, escape and evasion, LRRP's, and so on). I can't remember his name to save my life. He was awesome. We were 15, 16 years old and he was teaching us combat techniques and really taught us alot. "I'm going to keep you alive.", he would say.
Then, for my sophomore year, I moved to Bama and joined ROTC there while attending Fairhope High School. The CO was Major Tommy Smith (a chaplain, who I later ran into during Desert Storm and he took me with him on a mail run and goodwill visit to Iraq for the 3rd Armour Div.). Well, I took what my previous CO (in St. Louis) taught me and tried to apply it to the Alabama group. Keep in mind, a Chaplain was a CO of the Bama group and he didn't like it to much that I was passing along this info to the other kids in ROTC.
Well, a group of us formed in the Bama group and all we did was the things that this CPT. in St. Louis showed me. We had a 6 man (bandit) squad. We would break off from the rest of the ROTC group when we hit the field and commenced to be the aggressor and do raids at night and then slip away to our area, which due to this CPT's war experience and training, that was perfectly hidden and camouflaged.
After a summer of camps and field exercises and three months of raids, ambushes, patrols and such the Alabama ROTC CO, the Chaplain, had enough of our activities.
He called us in and we were removed from ROTC for the reason of trying to teach the other kids para-military activities and guerrilla war tactics. We were told that ROTC is a tool to train the future officers of our military, not a tool to train combat hungry rebels.
After this I returned to St. Louis to finish high school and ROTC. I told my CO in St. Lou of what had happened and all he did was laugh and said something like, "That's a Chaplain for ya!" I told him I was kicked out for what he had taught me and how I executed everything just how he showed me. "Good, you were trained perfect." The guy was COOL!
Well, after school I enlisted in the Army and wanted to go infantry, but my recruiter said I had too high of an ASVAB score to get lost in the grunt way of life and he sent me to Medic school.
I had alot of fun in ROTC, but I have yet to come across anyone else who may have been "kicked out".
I graduated High School in 1990, Parkway North Senior High, St. Louis Mo.
I thought I would share this story.

[SEATJERKER]

...Now thats something I can relate to................