| L-1 as it exists today formed from the merger of Companies F-1 and M-1, 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade back in 1986. The real story, however, is a lot more interesting than just that. As a member of Company F-1, I can give the the genesis of L-1 from that perspective. The roots of L-1 lie in a tragic incident that occurred when my class--'87--were pissheads. That year, Bruce Goodrich joined our class as a frog. As was the tradition at the time, frogs received special attention from the butts and zips before they were truly considered members of their respective class. To make a very long story short, Cadet Goodrich was taken on a midnight run, suffered heatstroke, had a heart attack and died. Needless to say, F-1 went into a tailspin. The whiteblets were moved to other outfits, and the Trigon, in its infinite wisdom, provided F-1 with a new junior and senior class. The F-1 Class of '87 was struck particularly hard by this because, at the time, there was nothing we felt stronger about than our company. Now, all the traditions we held so dear were ripped away. We felt it was up to us to maintain those traditions and keep F-1 alive. Some of the imported whitebelts had other ideas. Our XO came from our sister outift, B-1, and we all got along well with him. Our CO on the other hand was a 1st Batt import and we suffered a difficult relationship early on. To his credit, however, we made it through the rough patch and he earned our respect to a degree where we ultimately presented him with F-1 Corps brass (the knight's had shaved off and the brass curved). That was a special day for all of us. The imported butts, however, never rose to their inherited positions. Sadly, they were a class of also rans. They didn't like us and we didn't like them. When they took over as zips, F-1 was merely a shell of what we once knew. Finally, we had had enough. In the spring semester of our butt year, these zips had us down in the hallway after evening chow. They were ticked off over some mickey mouse BS and were taking it out on us. I don't know how it happened, but the Class of '87 did an amazing thing that day. Without any prior planning, without any coordination whatsoever, we stopped doing pushups, stood up and went to our rooms leaving the imported zips in the hallway. This was less a case of insubordination and more or an announcement that we were taking over. And we did. The Class of '87 came to the sad conclusion that F-1, as we knew it and loved it from our fish days, was dead. At the same time, Company M-1 was going through it's own problems. I don't recall what the problems were specifically, but their numbers were down and things weren't looking good. The solution was obvious. We would merge F-1 and M-1 and start a new company, create new traditions, and have a single, solid outfit with high retention and motivation. At the time, I was Sergeant Major of the Batt. James Berry was First Sergeant of M-1 and Bob McTasney was First Sergeant of F-1. Unbeknownst to the zips in either outfit, we went to the Trigon with our proposal. We couldn't believe it when the Trigon said yes. The one remaining question was what we would call ourselves. L-1 was the unanimous choice of the Class of '87. The reason being that years earlier, a pre-existing L-1 had been disbanded for some sort of misconduct. At the time, we thought that was pretty red. 2nd Batt had the reputation of being hell raisers, so we figured L-1, with its history would be a pretty good fit. However, because of L-1's earlier history, the trigon balked at another Company L-1. In a moment of inspiration andl perhaps desperation, I told them that the new company had to be named L-1 because none of the remaining letters in the alphabet sounded very good. To this day I don't know how that lame story held up, but the Trigon bought it and L-1 was born. Kent Hammaker became the first CO and the rest if history. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A little extra information: (also from Ross Weiland '87) C-1 was disbanded after my pisshead year (1984-85). Many of the pissheads (class of '87) from C-1 joined the class of '87 in F-1 as sergebutts. Now one above '87 joined F-1 and I don't think of the younger guys did either. I don't remember where they all went, but F-1 took most of the class of '87. They were our sister outfit, so it was an easy fit. So, C-1 did provide some bodies for the formation of L-1, but they had already been in F-1 for a year at that point. B-1 did not disband until after we were long dead, so I can't speak for where they went. It seems likely, however, that many of them merged into L-1 as L-1 and B-1 were sister outfits my zip year (86-87). |
| History of the "new" L-1 as told by Ross Weiland '87 |
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