Anecdotes from ROTC

[Poor Yorek]

PGHQ 1LT "TheDoctor" is taking the first-year army ROTC course (albeit, currently, non-contract). He told me that one of the instructors mentioned an AAR - to blank looks from the rest of the students. TheDoctor did admit that he knew the meaning of the term (presumably with glares from his peers), but I regret to report that he did not add "and, indeed, I've written several of them!"

[thomaso827]

Where's the "like" button when you need one?

[Hugmenot]

So you see, we were only helping him prepare when we let him know we'd be interested in reading his AAR's.

[thomaso827]

Gaming had been a help in several instances back in the day. 1976 in Korea, a friend kept a game set up on his dresser in the barracks, and when the company commander walked through weekly for inspection, he would come in, look at the game in progress for a few minutes, and walk out. I used the game Firepower to teach field and combat skills to junior chaplain assistants when I couldn't get time for field training. When teaching military history to the Chaplain Officer Advanced Course at Fort Monmouth, NJ, I brought in my 15mm American Civil War troops and laid out parts of the Antietam battle on table top, and one chaplain officer advanced student was an avid ASL player, so I spent many of my Staff Duty NCO nights playing against him.

Tom Oxley

[richvalle]

I used the map board from the old AH game Chancellorsville to explain the battle in my High School history class.

It went over pretty well.


I also brought up the historical tidbit that prostitutes being called Hookers was from this time as the girls were following the Union army around and were called Hooker's Girls. That didn't go over so well as my teacher was very unhappy with that comment. <shrug> I thought it was interesting.

[Dean_P]

Well, it wasn't ROTC, but during training a group in my flight were playing Risk when the Flight Commander came in and looked at the board. He turned to the guy playing the blue army and said "get the hell out of Europe, son!", turned and walked out.

Moral of the story - some positions are just not worth holding...