Though they are relatively new to military service, some (not all) cadets believe they are already seasoned officers. In reality, every academy recruit has more service time ahead than behind. However, that doesn’t stop few of them from trying to police every rule in the book or from being overly entitled.
Here are six times that cadets got a little too cocky, bringing misery to both officers and their fellow recruits, courtesy of a Reddit post on r/Army.
That time a cadet acted like the uniform police
“Back in my HS/college years I used to wear camo pants. I had BDU and ACU pattern. I once got bitched at by a fellow cadet when I was in AFROTC over it, she said I was out of regs. I just shrugged it off, funny thing is none of the senior cadets ever said anything about it. A lot of the cadets acted like they were gods gift to the military, especially a good chunk of the Arnold Air Society folks.”
—not_a_hero_824
That time a cadet acted like the uniform police ... and almost got clocked
“I almost got into a fistfight with a cadet at my college gym because I was wearing one of our tan undershirts (hadn’t done laundry in a while) and he told me I was out of regs and tried to make me give my unit info so someone could counsel me”
—jmill72
That time a cadet thought his lowly rank could single-handedly take on Russia
“...when I finally got out in ’13 I was in college, I had met a cadet who said, and I quote, ‘if the Russians invaded us we’d be the first line defense, cadets are hardcore, and we’d be the first to fight because we’re trained so well.’ I not so quietly put him in place by telling him most of the cadets I’ve known would piss themselves at the first firefight they got into.”
—throwawayyeayeah
That time a cadet decided rattling cages was a necessary part of capture the flag
“The most cringeworthy and entitled moment I’ve experienced in ROTC so far was a guy who was a serial tackler. We were near the end of FTX and had finished our paintball tactical missions so we decided to play a game of capture the flag. The two teams charged at each other and this guy f*cking body slams a freshmen. A second time this happened was at a sports PT so we were playing, ironically, capture the flag again in the snow. This time he tackles a girl. The cadet CSM was like ‘uhhh you know you can’t just tackle someone right?’ And then tried to get him to do like 10 push-ups as ‘punishment’ but then the guy goes ‘You can’t smoke me, it’s in the regs’. He is not representative of our program, but it’s quite the story.”
—Luke54163
That time cadets were so bad at training they needed a false confidence boost
“I did warrior forge for Cadets in 2010 at JBLM. My hours were 2am to 6pm every day with one day off a week. Cadets slept well, ate well, had good barracks and didn’t start their lanes until 8 am. (We’d get on cattle carts at 3 am, be there by 4 am, set up, out to lanes by 5-6am and then prep for another 2 hours) in fact we worked so long and hard we finally were authorized by 1st sgt to sleep on the lanes when cadets weren’t going through them. The cadets would come through and do their stupid fake patrols and fuck up at every move (whether it was setting their claymore trap backwards, or establishing ambushes with them in plain sight, or screwing up battle drill 1A whatever you want to put your imagination to) we would have to sit back and pretend to not know they had screwed up. My lane specifically was the ‘ambush’ lane so they would ambush us and then cuff us and take us in or whatever. For the first few days we made most of the cadets look stupid, so finally our senior NCO and our LT at our lanes for us OPFOR told us ‘let them win and let them do whatever they need to do, they are just getting the hang of this.’”
—throwawayyeayeah
That time cadets decided they knew everything
“I was bullshitting with some of the new PL’s in the company as they went through our EIB lane, and suggested assistant PL’s, so they could have an opportunity to see how a platoon works and operates and everything it entails before having it thrust upon them. Their near collective responses, ‘I’ve been leading platoons for years, between ROTC/USMA, IBOLC and Ranger school, we know how a platoon works.’ Yea bro, whatever you gotta tell yourself at night.”
—BlueClash
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