Night land nav. I’m finding my boxes easily. BUT, I come to the stream. There is a log across the water. And on the other side, there are a few folks with flashlights looking at maps. I yell across the stream. “Hey, can I use this log to cross?” One tells back sure!!“ I reply, thinking they are fellow WO’s, “screw you, You just want me to fall off it”. We all laugh. But I shimmy across the log like a squirrel. Then realize I’d just told one of the Captains to SO!!! Yikes. He signed me off and I returned to my room.
The next day in class, this captain is the instructor. Of course he leads off with the story about a WO who told him to screw off. But he followed it up by describing the log. “It was well used, because it was shiny. That’s from (unlike the WO, who ran across the log) LTs mounting it and sliding across. All those bumps [from long gone branches] on the log? Those are scrotums left behind by LTs who were afraid to run across. Like a certain WO. I was scrunched down in my seat. Of course my roommate was laughing and pointing at me.
I ran in to the Capt in the Hawk a couple weeks later. He said that he takes that position on purpose, because at least one student asks the same question, and responds like I did. I bought him a beer.
