When you have children of your own things take on a little different prospective than it did before in relation to you and your parents relationship growing up. My son had his first child last December. He is already seeing how being a parent opens up new a prospective on things from his childhood. We have always had a good relationship and we now look back and laugh.
We were laughing last week about him wanting to play with electrical outlets. My wife followed him and did her best to keep him away from the outlets. I kept fussing to her to leave him alone. It wouldn’t take but one time for him to get shocked for him to leave outlets alone. Sure enough one day he got bit by a outlet. He was screaming bloody murder when we found him holding his hand and looking at the outlet. He had been messing with the outlet again. To this day he still remembers that. For a long time he wouldn’t go anywhere near an outlet. I guess he thought that it was going to reach out and bite him again. I still chuckle when I think about it. Most of the time the hard lessons we remember the best.
A long time ago, my father (RIP, big guy) told me he wouldn’t get angry for making an honest mistake - but he would be extremely pissed if I made the same one multiple times.
When I first started going through OCS in the military everyday the chain of command changed from batallion staff all the way down to squad leaders. The oficer candidates would be assigned one position to fill. Some days you had a position higher in the chain of command and some days you might only be a squad leader. Some days you might not have any position in the chain of command. We had to learn the duties and responsibilities of each position. One day I was assigned as a company commander. We were doing offensive and defensive tactics that week. One time I made a bad decision and the TAC Officers (teach advise and counsel) deemed that my decision cost me a platoon of my men. It hit me hard. I realized that if this situation was real my decision just cost me anywhere fron 30 to as many as 50 of my men. I was beating myself up about it. I started second guessing myself. The head TAC Officer Captain Fisher pulled me aside. He recognized what I was doing. I will never forget his words to me. He said, “in life you will make the wrong decisions at times. What matters is weither or not you learn from that decision or not. If you learn from that decision then it is a life lesson. If you continue to make the same wrong decision again then it is a mistake. Don’t make mistakes, make every wrong decision that you make a life lesson and in doing so you become a better officer.” I will never forget that sage advice. I have used Captain Fishers wise words ever since. I only make life lessons now and in doing so I make make better decisions in all areas of my life. If I didn’t learn anything esle in OCS that advice was worth all of the pain and suffering that I endured during OCS.
PMA has been in existence since right after WWII. Either it or ROTC is where the SCARNG gets most of it’s officers from. Sorry about the first post I had something else on my mind so PSA or PMA.
These are the origional patches for PMA. They were used for over a half a century. As you can imagine with all of the politics in our society the patch has now changed. The bottom patch is an original patch from when the Army’s field uniform was solid od green hence the colors are reversed so that the patch would be visible next to the od green. When the Army went to the woodland cammo BDU’s the colors were changed so you could see it next to the cammo background. I know you understand what the full color patch is for.
The National Guard is like an Army within the Army. Every State brings its own Army with the National Guard. Different Patches and TTP’s.
I was Federal Active Army and had next to no interaction with the National Guard until my last two and half years. I requested Alabama to retire. I got approved for Fort McClellan and stationed with the Alabama National Guard.
Only in the National Guard did I see a Retirement Ceremony where a 60 plus year old First Sergeant retire and apply for Social Security the next day. I was cautious with the Guard. I wasn’t use to people in uniform with zero combat deployments looking like a chunky monkey in uniform being revered by their unit.
BUT the National Guard knows their State and that is what makes the Guard important. The Federal Active Army is on another level. Both Federal and State do work well together I think.
I dug out a few old pics. The first set is what we did a couple times a day. We got smoked for just about everything. It wasn’t hard to find a reason for us to have our nose or butt in the grass. One person messed up then we all messed up and we all paid that price together. The hardest thing was all you had to do is say I quit and rip off the above patch and hand it to a TAC Officer.
In the first set of pictures is some of those smoke sessions. How long that they lasted was decided by the TAC Officers. In the second set we were doing some field training on offensive and defensive tactics. In the middle of the very bottom row of pictures wasn’t a mating session. If I remember correcty we were trainning on searching a ememy POW for intel, documents, weapons and then securing that POW. @Yota-walker how many fat chuncky monkeys in uniform did you see in those pics and in the privided link? Not too many I believe. I don’t know where you saw what you saw but we were held to the exact same standards of physical fitness as Regular Army soldiers were. South Carolina National Guard : Units
I don’t see any chunky monkeys sir.
Looks like those smoke sessions and field training really paid off.
Now that pow looks like he’s getting cavity searched.
Thank you for your service @1911
We all come at this through our own points of view. If that bothers you well go take up scrapbooking or something that does not offend you to write your walls of text. I don’t read those monologues. It is entertaining.
