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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Was it a fun filled adventure that gave you memories to last a lifetime or was it overpriced garbage that drove your family into the poor house? Being a military cadet was awesome, since the government is actually paying you to go to camp. Cadets in general is a pretty sweet deal if you're in a low-income household, because from what I remember we didn't have to pay a dime for anything other than stuff like boot polish or spray starch. I was a sea cadet, and we could apply to go to one of a number of summer training centres across Canada, some of which specialized in things like sailing, flying or marksmanship. I went to HMCS Quadra on Vancouver Island for two years, which wasn't specialized for one specific thing, and was a more general centre for sea cadets. Your first year was usually a two-week general training course (TWGT, or Twijits) and for the next year you had to choose a trade that aligned with your interests, Boatswain, Gunnery, Band or Sail. Boatswain (or Bos'n) was the general seamanship trade, where you learn all about working on a boat. Gunnery was made out to be where the hardasses were, where you learned all about parade drill, how to survive in the woods, being a drill instructor and so on. Band and Sail are pretty self explanatory, with Sail focused on smaller boats rather than working on a ship. Second year was three weeks, third year was six weeks, where you could choose even more specialized trades like Medic, Cookery, Physical Trainer, Marine Engineering (Living on one of these for a few weeks and learning how to manage and operate it) and Shipwright (No idea what they did, other than a cute girl I had a crush on was a shipwright the next year I saw her). After that, you could be brought on as staff where you'd get a pay bump and be instructing cadets, being a divisional petty officer, running the boathouse, or whatever. It seemed like a lot of the place was run by cadets, like the regulation office where I had to write a statement after seeing a fight had one of the senior guys from my corps as its chief, the mess hall where the cookery cadets were doing their thing, or the canteen and arcade in the breezeway that was run by cadets. It's a bit over 1000 cadets in total that are there, I think. I'm from the prairies, and flying to Quadra was my first time in an airplane. I think we flew in a C-130 Hercules, or at least some sort of military plane where we were buckled in to these cargo netting seats. It was friggin' awesome, and I was disappointed when we flew in a regular chartered flight on the way home. For living arrangements, people on the two or three week program lived in Tent City, which was a series of military tents with cots and lockers set up inside. Six-week cadets lived in buildings, with the males in the H barracks and the girls in the swastika. Divisional petty officers got their own rooms in the barracks where their division lived, and staff cadets had their own barracks. There was a laundromat as well, but I can't remember if we all went there as a division at set times, or if it was come and go as you please. The everyday routine had us wake up and get ready for morning colours around 6 or 7, which is where every division would fall in and march to the parade square to raise the flag, hear the agenda for the day, have the band play and so on. The language would alternate between English and French every other day or week, I can't remember exactly - I just know you got fluent with drill commands in both languages pretty drat quick. After colours (Or was it before?) your division would march to the mess hall for breakfast, and afterwards you would do the scheduled training until lunch, then more scheduled training until dinner, then sunset, which is where the flag comes down for the day. Then there would be kye, which was an informal gathering at the mess hall around dusk where you could walk over from your barracks and mingle amongst all the other cadets in a relaxed setting, get a snack and chill out before lights out. Kye was voluntary, you could stay at your bunk and polish your boots or obsess over your uniform or w/e, or sneak around and cause mischief with your friends in other divisions/trades. I remember during my first kye I was accidentally bumped down the stairs and twisted an ankle, and I was carried to the sick bay and taken care of by senior cadets in the medic trade. I skipped the TWGT course and went straight into Bos'n for my three-week course, and the six-week course the year after. Some of the training we did was learning how to pilot boats like these motor work boats, boston whalers, zodiacs and so on. We also learned how to crew larger sailboats, from cutters to tall ships. Living on the Maple Leaf for a few days and having to be an effective crew with your division was so fuckin' awesome, especially when everyone got their rhythm right and you were hauling rear end with the wind tilting the ship almost into the water. I still remember the poo poo-eating grin on my face when it was my turn to be the helmsman and I got to steer the boat in rough water while it was raining. I think I made someone barf. The captain's name was Captain Falconer, which I thought was hilarious because Smash Bros. just came out and I was a huge dork. Other stuff we did was small arms training at the rifle range, survival skills (we'd sail a cutter to a deserted island to make our own shelter and keep watch, gunners did a hike to a remote forest and ended up getting beaver fever), navigation & communication (radio skills, semaphore, etc.), PT (Physical training, sports, running, etc.) confidence course (stereotypical obstacle course where you crawl in the mud, climb things and so on while getting yelled at in the rain), leadership classes (making lesson plans, teaching skills) and other stuff I'm probably forgetting about right now, and that's just the Bos'n trade. I also remember doing some gunner stuff sometimes, maybe as punishment, like learning ceremonial rifle drill with a hardass gunnery instructor. You built a lot of personal relationships there, since it was cadets from all across the country that you'd get to meet and share experiences with, and this was right before the internet really took off, so it was a really big deal at the time. The only real rivalry was between bos'ns and gunners, otherwise everyone was pretty cool with each other. Intimate relationships with other cadets was called fraternization (frat) and was forbidden, but c'mon. When you have a thousand teenage boys and girls living together, obviously they're going to find a way. My first kiss was at cadet camp from a girl from another part of the country. ... Probably not the kind of summer camp you're talking about, but it was fun to reminisce. Being in the cadets helped me out a lot in building confidence and leadership skills that I still use in day to day life, and it gave me a lot of memories I still look fondly on. Some of my family just immigrated here a few years ago, and my little cousin joined the sea cadets because his brother used to be a sailor, and my mom told him about how I was in it as a kid. This'll be his second year at Quadra, and he's having a fantastic time as a bandie. Coxswain Balls fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Apr 15, 2015 |
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Apr 15, 2015 09:25
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Der Luftwaffle posted:Wow, was funding massively increased in the last decade or are Sea and Air just better equipped? I was stuck as an Army cadet for 2 years in an engineer regiment which consisted at home and at camp of the critical engineering practices of nothing but endless marching, PT and biannual fuckery with air rifles on a boring rear end CFB in the middle of nowhere. What a ripoff. My last year in the cadets was around 15 years ago, so for all I know it could be a lot different today. I never actually had much contact with any Army Cadet corps, and I never had much of an idea of what you guys even did. What you're describing sounds like the Gunnery program, but the kids who were in Gunnery volunteered for it and loved doing that kind of stuff. We did a bit of cross-training with the nearby Air Cadet squadron, and they didn't seem to have any complaints about what they did. When I went skydiving a couple of years ago, we were sharing an airstrip with some Air Cadets who were learning how to fly gliders, which was really cool. That's disappointing to hear about your experiences, since all of the people I know who were in the sea and air cadets seem to have taken a lot away from it. One guy who was in my corps was in the newspaper a couple of years ago being interviewed because he joined the Navy and was on a ship with our hometown as its namesake that was patrolling the horn of Africa. It was really funny to read, because I remember him being super quiet and gentle (dude fuckin' loved Titanic, up to and including owning a piece of it), and here he is talking about how he literally battles pirates on the high seas. You're bang on about the people running things being incredibly important for the kids not having a lovely experience. My old corps that my cousin is in is hurting for civilian instructors, and if I lived in the same town I'd volunteer in a heartbeat. My corps had tons of volunteers in my time, so we had our regular parade nights on Tuesday, marksmanship at the rifle range on Thursday (Either Lee-Enfield No.8 trainers, or fancy Anschutz biathlon rifles, both in .22LR), and band/parade drill practice on Sunday. There was other stuff throughout the year, like biathlon in the winter, sail training in the summer, band/drill competitions and so on, but I don't think they've been able to do things to that extent in recent years because of the volunteer shortage. Thanks to this thread, I looked around and found an archive of the HMCS Quadra picture galleries from 2000-present. It's really cool seeing my experiences there in the first albums, and seeing my cousin in the most recent ones. http://cadetsbc.smugmug.com/HMCSQuadraCSTC
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Apr 27, 2015 22:26
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