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Posted on 09/04/2015 11:50:41 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Thirty cadets who just completed their first-year summer training at the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point were injured when an annual pillow fight tradition turned bloody, The New York Times reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
If someone doesn’t get shivved at a pillow fight, then it wasn’t any fun.
obammie boys
I’ll take the Animal House pillow fight anytime.
Generals Lee, Grant, Eisenhower, and Patton are turning over in their graves.
Initiations in one form or another have been common in the military ever sense. That said unless it was a punishment being inflicted upon someone causing trouble it was usually held in check by common sense and fear of accountability where no serious physical injuries occurred. We had one for snipes now banned that would likely bring a Court Martial today. Uncomfortable as all get out but non injuring. Life goes on LOL.
Predictable: Plebes stuffed into the pillowcases the helmets the upperclassmen gave them to wear. Cadets/midshipmen are expected to be resourceful.
Holy crap! That looks just like my old Basic Training platoon one night. They put new bars of soap in they’re wool socks and smacked the hell out of a recruit. It’s a tradition.
GO NAVY!!!
In my Marine NCO days I would have said something disparaging about future Army officers or the US Army in general, but I have out grown that sort of thing....nah. We would have just had a blanket party on the Island.
I was on Staff duty that night
we never heard a damn thing.
I don't know about that. Eisenhower and Monty had some doosies.
Pussies.
Blanket parties were a punishment done on someone by a group being punished because of actions of that individual and were not an initiation. DI's CC's DS, etc back in the day were also allowed to use physical force as a means of disciplining troops. It worked. But this was a fraternal or group initiation all joined in on. Common sense should have prevailed. The fact it went that far shows it wasn't.
I'm not anti hazing been there done that had it done at least three different times in three different manners. One included having my face rubbed into the belly of an 0-4 who had ketchup, mustard, grease, Tabasco sauce smeared on it. No one was immune not even Admirals because it was Navy tradition.
The snipes {of which I was such} had one as well. It was called "Greasing". New usually E-1 or E-2 showing up on the ship once he got assigned to his shop after a three month mess cooking rotation got initiated by his shop. He would be sent to some obscure space to do something. The shop would wait about 30 minutes and all would show up with a rope and a can of graphite grease. In a matter of seconds the guy would be hung by his feet from an overhead water pipe clothing removed and grease applies to the external portion of the body as well as inside of the clothes and the clothes then put back on the person. If memory serves me right it takes a can or two of scouring powder and about an hour to get it off LOL. That was done only once and the initiated one would be laughing at the next guy fresh from Basic. No one was physically injured. You were initiating a shipmate and often a friend. Common sense was used.
We had other pranks. A small cup of R-12 tossed into a rack at 0200, tricing someones bottom rack in the middle of the night, sending green recruits on pain scavenger hunts especially for a BT Punch down in the boiler rooms. The look on their face when the BT turned around and popped them in the arm was priceless and harmless. But the most unnerving to new guys was the rumors game.
I suspect the instructors at the academy will address the events and all though tradition continue an example of what not to do the next time made very clear by extra assignments for the next few months for those involved.
“30 military cadets hurt in West Point pillow fight”
A headline only in Obama’s America.
Maybe Pajama Boy was involved?
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