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3. My bunk-mate, Steve, will come up in my tales time and again. We were ushered into a classroom and were told to sit down. In front of us was a stack of paperwork. New to the military, it looked very impressive. Little check boxes and other busy lists, explanations as to how to fill out the form correctly, and number sequences and acronyms that came from a different language. This language? Militareeze. Someone at the front of the room told us to fill out the forms. We did so.
When things were being collected, the Warrant officer stopped and started calling names: “Private Jones!”
“Yes Sir!” came the reply. See the story above for the fallout that ensued. We learned to call him ‘Warrant’.
“Private Steve!” he bellowed.
Steve answered correctly. “Yes Warrant!”
“You have to be shitting me. Your name is Steve?”
“Yes Warrant!”
“YOUR LAST NAME IS STEVE?!” Again, there was a color to his face that was past the red stage and into the purple and blue.
“No Warrant, Steve is my first name.”
“Then tell me why the fuck you put that name above the line that says ‘Last Name’!”
“I got confused, Warrant.” Steve was visibly shaken by this point.
“If anyone else made mistakes on their paperwork, now is the time to correct them. I am not in a good mood today.” We all were visibly shaken at this point.
Private Steve was not having a very good first day in the army.
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