Military tartans

[GatorUK]

Hmmm Mike...now you have me thinking...a CPO tartan?

[davedove]

one of the kids that had on what looked like some rejected start trek rank insignia butted in front of us and informed us he was a company commander.

Obviously, no one had yet told this kid that the men eat first. I always had a lot more respect for the officers that got in line just like everyone else.

[Miah]

Hmmm Mike...now you have me thinking...a CPO tartan?

Well a NCO tartan would be pretty cool.
I know CPO is like it's own little world in the Navy it is kinda like the Marine's SNCO but it always struck me as more distingusied or something.

But i think that a ALL military NCO tartan might be cool maybe get the involvment of the NCO orginzations and what-not.

[Archangel]

I'm enjoying reading this but it would be helpful to me if you could stop once in a while and explain the acronyms.
It's a page back or so BMCM, something like that?
I know ROTC from the seventies, AFROTC, made me giggle and remember the 70's before I figured that one out.

My experience was cool, to me. I've worked civilian with the Canadian Army and with the British Merchant Marines. That one got me dining in the officers' mess. The former job was installing MG mounts on the front passenger side of jeeps. Not my idea, don't know who thought that idea up. Anyway, I'm young, long haired and having a great time. Two regulars gave me a very hard time about my hair not knowing the CO was right behind them. They were disciplined, hard. I thanked the CO the next day, and he says, "I don't like long hair anymore than they do, but I didn't fight two wars for nothing."
That was a lesson that has stayed with me since then.

[GatorUK]

I'm retired Navy, Dad was retired Marine Corps, and now I'm an Army civilian. Don't know if I can do an Army kilt yet.

[GatorUK]

BMCM=Boatswain's Mate Master Chief

[Mike n NC]

BMCM=Boatswain's Mate Master Chief

Don't know what they are like in the new, kinder, gentler Navy but when I was a young sailor, even the skipper asked permission to speak to him. Most had been in for 25+ years, a lot over 30 and had been drunk, laid, tatooed and in the lock up (after a really good brawl) in most every port in the world. They were the finest kind of sailor and knew more about ships, seas and sailing than 3 or 4 ring knockers.
Rough as a cob on the outside but you couldn't ask for a better man at your back in rough seas, be they in a bar, on a beach landing or on the deep.

A CPO kilt, hmmm...There was a Chief Knuckle Dragger on here for a while who had one with a fouled anchor on it. I think Jeff made it for him. I'll ask him when I call to order my next PK.

Mike

[Dwarf]

I had some like that happen to me when I was in the Marine Corps.

... and was heading into the chow hall with a few of the guys from my shop. there were a gaggle of kids in half Marine uniforms we giggled and went on about our way but one of the kids that had on what looked like some rejected start trek rank insignia butted in front of us and informed us he was a company commander.

Unacceptable behaviour from an officer. I attended the ROTC as an exchange student and never behaved like that, nor witnessed any.

James will, I hope, agree with me that officers eat AFTER the men.

The way we were brought up in my Regiment, was as officers your duty was to the men under you. They came first. So as happened when visitors came and scoffed communally with us in the field, if there wasn't enough food: TOUGH, we, the officers, went hungry.

As a young subaltern you only get 30 jocks, you sign for them and when you "hand them back" they should be fitter, better trained and there should still be 30! Look after them and they will in turn watch your back.

[Mike n NC]

We may do it a little differently, can't speak for the anyone else but the Marines do it this way...
In the field the junior tooper heads up the chow line the senior officer goes last.
In garrison the senior officer goes first the junior troopers last.

Mike

[An t-Ileach]

When I was in the service, the old rule-of-thumb was still being quoted as the absolutely infallible way for officers to behave in the sequence "horses, men, self": the horses were fed and watered and bedded down, then the soldiers, then the officer. Of course, we didn't have any horses...