JROTC colorguard folleys

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Damien

Active member
I spend a lot of my time nowadays at various colorguards that my Corps performs, believe me, I've seen more than my fair share of messups.

The first was at an event in Anchorage called the Governer's picnic. 'twas a particularly hot day, and(as I've heard) during the invocation, anyone in uniform must stand at parade rest and bow their heads(correct me if I'm wrong on that). One specific cadet, probably the blackest one in the Corps(no offense meant at all by that), was extremely hot. When the invocation was complete, he raised his head and fell straight back. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking, but it's okay, he wasn't a flag, he was a guard, and his automatic reaction put the rifle over his chest, it never hit the ground. He was fine after a while, just sweating like a new recruit on his first day of basic.

The second story occured at a place I believe it shouldn't have. It was at a memorial service right after we posted the colors. Of course, nearly everyone in the colorguard had watched SWAT the night before, or some other movie like that, I don't know. Anyways, we were wandering through the church, which is the biggest in Anchorage and also houses the Anchorage Christian School, when the brilliant commander (keep in mind he's easily amused and his little brother, who was there, is no better, so that's already half the colorguard going up there, I figured I'd follow. ) spotted a dark stairway up to the school. We went up, at his lead, and started walking through the halls, SWAT style. Okay, we're young, bored and dumb, so that's typical behavior. When we finally find the place where the food is going to be served, we find that it is swarming with Youth Corps folk. So we just stood at the door, pointing out people who look like our Corps' Senior Staff and other people we know and laughing.

I've got more, but I can't remember anymore right now.
 
I had my first color guard today. I ****ed it up. I barely (accidentally) tapped my belt with the butt of my rifle and it feel off right in the middle of the posting. :oops: :cen: . That's what happens when you have less than half an hour of practice ever.

:cry:
 
The only mess up I did was during a competition. The command of Parade Rest was given and it was exacuted without a problem but when the command of attention was given I forgot to move my left hand from my back.. :oops:

I was the Army JROTC Flag Bearier so on hand was in front with the flag.
 
No terrible screwups in my honor guard, however in our drill team the bayonet lug on one of our two (then, we now have 8) Garands broke during a series of spins and the bayonet itself flew through a window and embedded itself in a teacher's desk. Oops.
 
Thats nuttin

I'm not really part of my skool's JROTC program, but i intend to nex year so they let me hang around. they even let me compete in a couple of competitions. Now my skool wasnt prepared to carry on to another year of color gaurd (i guess, i jus dont kno how to address it), they were completely unprepared. and sense i was beta than half the people in the battalion anyway, they decided to train me for this year coming up. Well our 1st SGT. of our drill team decided to try out our new colorgaurd in the skool's last dril competition. WOW that was the worst perfomance of color guard ive ever witnessed and actuallly ben in. we were good on our step, we were all on step, thats the only thing that went rite. the guards didnt secure the the flag cases in our pistol belts rite so one of tem fell off. the guards were doing sling arms all messed up, at one point i almost drop the state flag(it slipped wen i had ordered the flag, other than that i did everything rite), the judge was so pissed, and disgusted we threw his clipboard (with all our scores) down. thats it, try and top that.
 
well, we have had plenty of :cen: ups but this is the worst that i have been in/ witnessed...

so we go, and we got to the hotel where it was to be bout an hour early, sweet, plenty of time to practice. so we practice then i happen to glance at the poles and say "shouldnt we have the 7 foot poles instead of the 9 foots?" and they say, "yeah, probably, but the ceilings are high, we should be fine..." so we continue practicing and then go inside when it was the right time. we go in and the ceilings fine, the 9' poles would have plenty of room...except in the path where we would be marching down where the ceiling was lower than the rest. Now this color guard was for a scholarship award and we happened to have our current battalion commander and our former commander who quit ROTC after recovering from cancer so he could catch up in his other classes....So we figure, ok, we just wont put the flags into the holsters, just march with em at our sides unless we want to put a hole in the ceiling. we march, and the pathway wasn't very wide either, jose who was the right riflle knocked a chair over. So we get through it and we're marching out at port arms, and hudson hits the door frame with the flag and puts a mark in it...
ever single one of us has pledged to never do an indoor color guard again unless it was in a friggin gym.... :roll:
 
At my first color guard, I had had maybe a half hour of practice.I was doing fine up until we had to go from, Present Arms, to order Arms, I almost dropped my rifle! The bad part, Lt. Melton had told me that color guard was obviously not my thing, because I wasnt getting the movements down correctly. I was kind of embarrassed when I messed up tho! :oops:
 
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