Being part of the Army cadets has been an interesting experience so far. The only reason I joined the army cadets at my school was because all my friends were, and being a shy geek, I didn't want to do computer club on a Thursday afternoon. Usually you would find me at home on irc, looking at porn, or getting overexcited by the latest release of Half-Life.
I have the "great pleasure" of going to a private school, which is quite nice, but it means everything thinks I’m posh which starts to get a little irritating after the fifty billionth time of being called posh. Anyway my school has a Combined Cadet Force, and I signed up at the ripe age of 14.
In the begining...
For the first 12 weeks we were given to a psycho "I was in world war 2" care-taker who decided that it was his duty to talk about vodka, ask us stupid questions, and basically make us all hate him. It was one of the most horrible experiences that I have ever been through, apart from maybe the anal probe. What made this entertaining is that all our school years so-called "hard lads" quit after about 2-3 weeks. Which left me and the lads who were actually hard (excuse my English, blame the army). I hope you haven't misinterpreted what I meant by hard.
After the first year of "intensive" training by the "fantastic" officers we got onto the meat of being in the cadets - The self-reliance course. The idea is to plan and partake, with a small group of people, a 15 kilometre walk with a 18kg burden. When arrived at your destination you were required to build a fire to be lit by a single match, and then cook raw meat on this fire. Later in the evening you and your team take the night orienteering challenge, and in the morning, you take part in a stalk and shoot event. As a geek, I am stereotypically unfit but by some mysterious work of magic I completed the weekend successfully. Afterwards I rewarded myself with a bacon and egg toasted sandwich.
However, Sometimes someone got a bit overexcited with the dimmer switch
Things did not always go according to plan. A few members of the "cool people" decided that I was there simply for their own enjoyment, unfortunately the effect this had on my mind wasn't the nicest thing to have ever happened. But I won't bore you with the details...
Then comes the outrageously groovey amounts of fun
Now I have been in the cadets for 4 years some really fun things have happened, there is nothing like performing a section attack on a position when you have "Jessica". Jessica being the LSW (light support weapon), which is a lovely 5.56mm weapon, which does nothing, better than fire outrageous amounts of rounds. Not only that but also this Sunday (17/9/00) I am going to be jumping out of a plane, just for the fun of it. The conclusion being that being a geek in the army cadets, has to be one of the most fun things I have ever encountered.