Military Cliques
So I thought it over a little bit about Army life and I thought of another aspect of the Army. They love to set up cliques. There are the obvious splits between services, but it happens by rank as well, of course. There’s the division between enlisted and officers. Then each of those has divisions between senior and junior. Some of it is by regulations; where officers cannot legally have a relationship with enlisted personnel, to avoid conflict of interests.
Right now I’m at the time where we have the “Lieutenant Mafia.” It was also called the LPA (Lt. Protection Agency). We know we need to roll deep with an entourage.
Then there are pairings that go beyond rank. LTs have their Platoon Sergeant, CPTs have First Sergeants, LTC-CSM (Command Sergeant Major). So the Army definitely does like to classify people into groups. Part of it is to facilitate command, as with those teams between officers and NCOs (Noncommissioned Officers). Otherwise, it’s also just part of a standard hierarchical organization to maintain good order and discipline.
I’m commenting on this because I’m not comfortable with cliques. I’ve never been one to join a group that excludes others. That’s also why I drift and pop up from time to time (in reference to my entry yesterday). I prefer to get that well-rounded environment where I mix with different groups.
Now I do like the mentoring in the Army. There’s always a senior person who will take you under his experienced wing and teach you the tricks of the trade. And the Army… loves plagiarism. Unless you’re at a school. Then you gotta be honest. But for the rest of the time, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Someone’s already done it right and done it better.
Otherwise, it’s a dark day outside. It started off very windy. There wasn’t a sandstorm, but dust was getting kicked up. After lunch, while I was in a meeting, it started to downpour. So now it’s muddy, cold and rainy out there. One of the Soldiers was saying, “If I wanted rain, I would have stayed in Seattle!”
2LT Adam Ochylski
