 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||
"Fussell defines
the term precisely. "Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes
military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by
the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige...insistence
on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so
called -- instead of horse -- or bull -- or elephant shit -- because
it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously. Chickenshit
can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with
winning the war.""
--Stephen E. Ambrose Citizen Soldiers
I'm going to go out
on a limb with journal, maybe I'll be censored, but I thought the quote
was all too appropriate for today. Cadets are on a whole cynical, the
vast majority of us hates being here and can't wait to leave, and a
good number of us seriously doubt we'll stay in past five years. There
are numerous reasons for this attitude, but the primary one is well
described in the above quote.
It's April, and though
theweatherchannel.com said that it would be snowing, it is hard to believe
that it is. So we're out at lunch formation, standing in the snow, an
inevitability we've grudgingly accepted, and at the end of formation
when we're all aching to escape the snow, we're given a hair cut inspection.
We understand the difference between some pre-combat inspection and
a West Point hair cut inspection. The latter doesn't matter if it's
put off till tomorrow's lunch on account of the weather.
I think its important to be cognizant of these little avoidable things
so that when it comes to asking people to do the big important things
they don't have a bad attitude about it.