Posted on 09/05/2015 4:32:32 AM PDT by Timber Rattler
For generations, freshmen cadets at the United States Military Academy have marked the end of a grueling summer of training with a huge nighttime pillow fight that is billed as a harmless way to blow off steam and build class spirit.
But this year the fight on the West Point, N.Y., campus turned bloody as some cadets swung pillowcases packed with hard objects, thought to be helmets, that split lips, broke at least one bone, dislocated shoulders and knocked cadets unconscious. The brawl at the publicly funded academy, where many of the Army’s top leaders are trained, left 30 cadets injured, including 24 with concussions, according to West Point.
In interviews, cadets who asked that their names not be used for fear of repercussions in West Point’s strictly controlled culture, said the fight had left one cadet with a broken leg and dislocated shoulders in others. One cadet was knocked unconscious and taken away in an ambulance and had not returned to school, they said. But a spokesman for the academy, Lt. Col. Christopher Kasker, said all cadets had returned to duty.
Though talk about the brawl on Aug. 20 had circulated on social media, West Point did not confirm it to The New York Times until Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Cadets just looking for work around to current ROE. I find it encouraging. ;>)
If we can just get them to use that level of aggression on the enemy, we’ll be fine.
CC
And, these “kids” will be expected to give orders someday that their subordinates’ lives will depend on. They don’t even have self control.
Welcome to Obama’s army!
Leave it to a couple jerks to ruin a decades old tradition.
Allen West is the kind of leadership our military needs. He willfully sacrificed his own career for the men who served under him.
I think you’re over-blowing the severity of this.
The mentality of a relatively intelligent kid (what, 20 years old?), highly trained and disciplined, who thinks this might be fun/funny ... is dangerously sick
We already have the experience of one certified whack job in the white mosque .... y'want one on the battlefield too?
Or worse ... pushing policy as an admin ?
I agree. West Point needs a hero General graduate to regulate it like the FBI had a Director promoted from within it's ranks. You see what kind of crap is in the white hut now with an unknown FBI director appointed by the liberals.
I don't know--24 concussions with one person knocked unconscious among a group of very select future officers is quite a price to pay for a prank.
Some of these cadets need to be expelled. They recklessly endangered their fellow cadets, and caused harm to them, and created real costs to the American taxpayers.
They are not officer material.
Is NOT the first time there has been brawls there.
So this is news?
Many armies through history have had similar sorts of things among junior officers. In the British army regimental “mess games” could get rough. The games they played in school and on leave were rougher. The Germans, as students, slashed at each other with sabres, looking to acquire scars.
Male bonding rituals are often rough.
This business of the pillows is mild.
-——This business of the pillows is mild.——
the pillows are perhaps a downgrade from some other form of fighting in the past
Plebes are blowing off steam. I know that I had thoughts about taking a cheapshot or 3 against my platoon leader at Annapolis when we were on the court. Thought better of it. He may have seemed a like a ***ck, but he was doing his job.
“They are not officer material.”
Not even good enough to be officers and far, far below grade for enlisted men in the Navy I knew fifty three years ago. Anyone who pulled that kind of stunt in Navy boot in ‘62 would have been out on a dishonorable and likely doing a spell behind bars. In the real world outside of West Point that sort of thing is called ASSAULT WITH INTENT TO DO SERIOUS BODILY HARM, not a pillow fight. Are these dingbats so stupid they didn’t know the danger involved?
It’s all fun and games until someone eventually gets paralyzed or killed.
Some didn't get the memo or learn from the past.
I thought 3 or 4 soda cans were the preferred load for a standard size pillow case?
'The Annual Plebe Year 2x4 Fight'?
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