This week marked the week where our comfy home in B1 south got a little more full. 12 members of Troop 8 have moved into our dorm. So now we get to be the senior troop and tell them the in's and out's of Depot dorm life. I see a lot of looks like I had 3 months ago when I showed up to the dorm. But we will help them, out like Troop 29 and 23 did for us.
This week also brought our troop our first troop bozo. While on noon parade one of the drill corporals thought that our pants and the pants of 2 other troops were too wrinkled for his standard. So he bozoed three entire troops. The next morning there was close to 100 cadets at bozo. I think they were trying for some sort of bozo record or something.
But, after our bozo parade we had a blues challenge scheduled. My hopes where not high for this challenge since we were coming from a bozo to a blue challenge. But to my delightful surprise WE PASSED. We are officially allowed to but our blues and boots on and march, not double time, around Depot. That was a huge relief, double timing around base is no picnic plus we get to wear the cool pants with the yellow stripe down the leg. We really look like real officers now.
This week also brought us our training officer's inspection. When our drill corporal gave us our blues he added this note, "If any of you fail the T.O inspection you will lose your blues." So we had some added pressure to pass this inspection. After class on Wednesday we started cleaning for the inpsection on Thursday. We started at around 5:00pm and had it mostly done by around midnight. A lot of cleaning!!
When the big day came we had to stand at our pits and wait for the training officer to come by and talk to us while our drill corporal or the Sergeant Major inspected our pit. The superintendant came up to me and asked me where I was from and why I wanted to join. He also asked me if I had any difficulties with the training. I told him that I failed my first driving benchmark and that I failed my first shooting benchmark. He then asked me if I cleared them up and I said yes. Then he asked me the serial number of my gun, which I knew and told him. He asked me a question about shooting which I also answered for him and then he thanked me and moved on.
About 10 minutes later our drill corporal came around to inspect my pit. He found that one of my long sleeve shirts had a sleeve with one button not done up, so he tossed it on my bed, then he looked at my stetson (big Mountie hat) and said I had my hat band on backwards, so that got tossed as well. Then we had a conversation.
Drill: "Fisher, where do you want to get posted?"
Me : "F division corporal."
Drill: "You are from Saskatchewan and you want to get posted in Saskatchewan. Fisher, there is a world outside of these borders."
Me: "It frightens me corporal. It's all hilly."
Drill corporal shakes head and laughs.
It went on for a while more, but he seemed to be in a good mood that day so I thought I would have some humour with him. But the good news is that no one failed the inspection so we got to keep our blues.
We had our first meeting with staffing on thursday as well, this is were we list the three divisions that we would like to be posted in. I put down F (Saskatchewan), K (Alberta) and D (Manitoba). So next week we have our interviews with Staffing and they will tell us which province we are going to. I am excited to find out!!
On a sad note we lost another cadet this week to injury again. She had injured her hip in training and it was not healing so she decided to head home and heal up then come back and complete her training. Good luck!!!
Well that is all the time I have for this week, next week should be cool, to find out where we are going, so check back next weekend. Until then GO 35!