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More Encampment Stories

Started by C/ID-073, February 19, 2016, 07:55:33 PM

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C/ID-073

I have some good ones for you in order, least to greatest. I'd like to hear yours too!

1. It's my basic encampment in Montana, 2012. I was in delta flight, standing in formation reading to go to the chow hall from our barracks. I see about four guys in Air Force uniforms standing near our barracks mingling, obviously waiting for someone. I see one new guy exit the building and hear him yell at the others "Good morning God 'dang' (nice word version)it, it's a beautiful day to be alive!!!" It was pretty hard to keep bearing, and couple cadets broke and then got yelled at. I love that quote.

2. Still basic encampment, in the female barracks one cadet flushed the toilet and it didn't stop flushing. Water went down the drain the whole 5 days left of encampment. And was still going when we left.

3. Again, at basic, I'm sitting outside my barracks studying my SOP. Charlie flight barracks were across from mine. I suddenly hear a lot of yelling and I see Charlie flight cadets pour out of the barracks with fumes following them. Turns out when they were cleaning one cadet pour ammonia in a bucket to clean, then left. Later another cadet came in a poured bleach in that same bucket. Luckily nobody was hurt, that's probably why its funny. Lesson learn there. Needles to say, the flight commander was ticked, he came in someones barracks cursing and he threw his clipboard across the floor.

4. My first staff encampment, I'm sitting in my bunk, waiting to get woke up. The Cadet Deputy Commander came running down the hall, wearing her white V-neck tshirt glowing blue and green from broken glowsticks, screaming bloody murder. She woke up the basics like that too. One female senior member that nobody liked, she stuck her head in her room and screamed too. Later we heard the door slam shut and a bag get pushed in front of it. It was glorious. The Cadet Commander did the same with the male barracks.

5. Every staff encampment, the cadet staff, flight or support, likes to 'leave their mark'. Now, being on a legit military base, this would be difficult... Everyone sneeked out of their barracks at around midnight and literally army crawled by buildings, across the grass, to the area where the military guys do their workouts. (There is a huge grassy field, it has a couple huge tractor tires laying around, an area to sit, volleyball fields, and a track.) Now, this is a military base, so their are guards patrolling, so if we got caught, it would be really bad. Anyway, there is huge muddy ditch right next to the track, and all the cadets go in it and then army crawl to the sitting area. We gather the tractor tires and stack them on top of each other, which is hard because there is about 5 of them. We had to hide and stay low a couple times because a bus full of guards passed by. Then, we sent four cadets to go and steal the cadets flights guideons. One cadet took forever because one of the basics tackled him and fought him for the giudeon. In the middle of this, one of my female cadet friends came up to me and told me we had to get back to the barracks as fast as we could. When I asked why she told me that the female cadets cut the string off the light of the same female senior member that was mentioned above. When she realized, we would be caught for sure by not being there. So me and the other female cadets ran back to the muddy ditch and kept low for a second. Then the sprinklers turned on and SOAKED us. To make matters worse, a low flying helicopter flew over us, which would be normal for a military base, but I think he knew we were down there, because just to mess with us he turned on his spotlight and started scanning it across the area over us. I remember sitting in the ditch, hiding my face and standing as still as possible, trying not to get caught. We then booked it for the barracks and hid in the bathrooms until the coast was clear. We then made our way back to our bunks, not having time to change. So we slept in muddy, soaking wet PT Gear. We never got caught, and I got a "mission accomplished" report from a cadet the morning after. Best night ever. Though we probably shouldn't have.

Hope you enjoyed listening!
C/1stLt. Kubik
Cadet Executive Officer
Idaho - Boise Composite Squadron

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

THRAWN

Ugh. Not even sure where to begin with this...

They're not basics.

Creating poison gas is not funny. Even if no one was injured.

Strup-"Belligerent....at times...."
AFRCC SMC 10-97
NSS ISC 05-00
USAF SOS 2000
USAF ACSC 2011
US NWC 2016
USMC CSCDEP 2023

Holding Pattern

All I can say is...

Man, my encampments were downright BORING.  ;D

Garibaldi

Quote from: Starfleet Auxiliary on February 19, 2016, 09:40:02 PM
All I can say is...

Man, my encampments were downright BORING.  ;D

Not mine. There was absolutely NO SHORTAGE of interesting extra-curriculars at any of mine.
Still a major after all these years.
ES dude, leadership ossifer, publik affaires
Opinionated and wrong 99% of the time about all things

Fubar

Cadet, please don't take what will undoubted be a string of posts pointing out the number of CAP violations that you described as a personal attack. As a young person, you will make mistakes. I wish I could tell you that stops as you get older, but really, it doesn't. But wow, you are very lucky that nobody was hurt, arrested, or both.

By your signature, you are a cadet officer. As a leader, what would your response be if someone came up to you and said a group of cadets you were personally responsible for was behaving in the following manner:


  • Violating base rules by sneaking around the facility, possibly endangering CAP's ability to ever return to the base again
  • Violating activity rules by wandering about the base unsupervised
  • Engaged in hazing of cadet students

It is amazing how perspective will change our behaviors. A friend of mine is one of the biggest goof-offs you'll meet. Always having fun, always making jokes, always looking for a good prank. Then one day he gets promoted and now he's in charge. Suddenly he's telling folks to shape up, stop with the pranks, stay focused on the work. Of course immediately everyone starts giving him a hard time for being a hypocrite and thinks he should be more understanding. He response essentially boiled down to his responsibilities had changed, it's now part of his job to keep everyone on task, and suddenly his rear-end was on the line for the behavior of others.

The senior member leadership certainly discovered a couple of areas they can improve on. First, none of these violations would occur if the cadets were properly supervised. Cadets should not be working with cleaning chemicals on their own. They should be confirmed in bed after lights out.

The activities you described, waking up cadets, sneaking around in the dirt, being out after curfew, these are all examples of a lack of maturity and good judgement. It's unfortunate that one of your senior cadets didn't posses the leadership skills to keep the staff inline. Hopefully you've learned from your youthful errors and if you ever come across this situation again, you will be that cadet leader who will keep this sort of thing from happening.

Oh and cutting the string off a senior member's room light? Well sometimes a prank is just a good prank  :D Sometimes I think we need a senior member protection program.

C/ID-073

(@Fubar) Sir, or Ma'am,
I was simply just sharing a couple CAP memories. Now being an officer and have matured more as a person and as a cadet I now know that those were really stupid things for me to do and that I shouldn't have. Now that I am a leader and am responsible for a lot of cadets I would never advise them to do anything that would be breaking the rules or putting them or myself in danger. I know that as a leader I am a role model for my fellow cadets and that I wouldn't want to be a bad influence in any way.

That particular staff encampment I have to tell you was horribly run, as you could guess. That was one of the first years hazing was really shoved down our throats. But the senior members there had no problem hazing the cadets. And the senior members had absolutely no idea how to do their jobs or teach cadets how to do things right. Cadet staff went to bed in tears because of how frustrated they were. After that encampment I learned that one upper ranking cadet, punched not one but two holes in the barracks wall because of how frustrated they were with the senior members. The reason I did what I did was because I was only 13 years old at the time and I was immature and peer pressure got to me. I was communications as a staff position and it was the single most boring encampment ever. The seniors members didn't let us do anything to entertain ourselves so we ended up doing drill with paperclips (no joke). The only thing I have to show from that encampment was a pair of shiny BDU boots, because I couldn't do anything else. As for my basic, cadet staff got yelled at for things the senior members did wrong. Neither were 'good' encampments but I made the best of them, and I just try to hang onto the good memories, whether they were stupid or not.

I didn't mean for this post to tell cadets to sneak out and break the rules. I know what I did was stupid, and I wouldn't do it again. But then, I was just living in the moment. I apologize if I made myself sound like a complete idiot. I know if I still acted like that and didn't mature into the leader I am now, I wouldn't be cadet commander.

Respectfully,
C/1stLt. Kubik

Cadet Executive Officer
Idaho - Boise Composite Squadron

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

Fubar

Quote from: C/ID-073 on February 20, 2016, 01:02:42 AMI didn't mean for this post to tell cadets to sneak out and break the rules. I know what I did was stupid, and I wouldn't do it again. But then, I was just living in the moment. I apologize if I made myself sound like a complete idiot. I know if I still acted like that and didn't mature into the leader I am now, I wouldn't be cadet commander.

I wouldn't say you made yourself sound like a complete idiot, more of a young person who lacked maturity who made decisions based on what sounded fun instead of considering possible consequences. You know, like every other young person who's ever walked this earth.

If we really want a fun forum to read, we should start a topic where everyone here posts something dumb they did in their youth. We might overload the system though.

Also let me add my apologies for how the senior members failed you at these encampments. Granted, we only have your version of events, but taking those at face value your adult leadership should have done a much better job shepherding your leadership development. Obviously seniors won't allow cadets to do everything they want to do (such as belly crawl across an active military base), but they should do a better job with providing meaningful tasks and guidance.

I'm glad you recognize the poor judgement you demonstrated. Hopefully it will keep you out of similar situations in the future. That process has worked for me (most of the time).