I barely remember Capt. Cuneo. He was big, I recall that. Not big as in tall, but as in so wide across the shoulders he had to turn sideways to get through the door. He was part of the staff for the Army ROTC department, I remember, and he was an Army Ranger. That last means I probably had very little contact with him, seeing as how I was about as far from Ranger material as you could get.

This was another comic done on request, although I can’t recall who requested it. Someone on the Army ROTC staff, I suppose. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. By now, Capt. Cuneo’s kid is probably in his early twenties and in the Army himself. Good luck to him wherever he is. I’m sure he’s making his dad proud.

Gotta love Military Ball. This was an annual event for the VTCC, a formal affair where the cadets wore uniforms or ball gowns, depending on whether you were male or female or a practical joker. General Stanton Musser (I think that was his name) made it mandatory my junior year, and there was some howling over that. A lot of people were either not keen on dressing up in the monkey suits or weren’t happy about the prospects of finding a date. I can’t recall who I went with my junior year, the year this particular strip would have been drawn. I wouldn’t be surprised if I went with JP, my dyke (one of the terms for a freshman sponsered by a junior). I know JP was my date for Ring Dance, which was also another formal affair for cadets, though as I recall, the civilian student body also participated, just not to the extent that we did (presentation of the date by an escort, presentation of the ring, sabers, uniforms, etc.). I do remember my date for Mil Ball my freshman year, and of course my date for Mil Ball my senior year was my future husband, Michael. And I didn’t go my sophomore year. But for the life of me, who I went with the year it was made mandatory is beyond me. I may not have had a date at all and just gone stag with some of my buds.

General Musser was interesting. He was a great guy, retired Air Force if I recall correctly, and popular with the VTCC. He was also aparently a fan of the Rats! cartoons. I know because I got a note from his office saying so, and because I got called down to his office one day with a request from his secretaries to draw a cartoon about the General. “Draw something about General Musser! And make it funny!” Noooooo pressure there!

Anyway, I don’t know if Military Ball is still mandatory or not. If any cadets or recent graduates are reading this, leave a comment and let me know. I’m always curious about how things have changed in the last 20 or so years…

20 or so years?! Jeeze, I’m getting old.

Beware the dreaded Freshman 15! I actually did not gain much weight while I was in college. Maybe a grand total of 5 pounds over the course of 4 years, which really isn’t much at all. It was all that running and those early morning PT sessions, plus spending all day hiking from one end of the Virginia Tech campus to another that did the trick. These days I’m not nearly as active, unfortunately, though I try.

Some cadets I knew, however, did manage to pack on the weight, which made life interesting when their uniforms started to not fit. It didn’t happen to people often, but when it did, watch out! You could lose an eye when a shirt button popped. Plus, sometimes uniforms shrank. They were made of wool, after all.

I’m still trying to get back on track after the weeklong deadly stomach virus I had last month. I’m almost there, but just when I think I’m about to catch up, something happens. More work comes through the door (paying work is good, but it keeps me hopping!), or one of the kids gets sick, or we go on a trip… Honestly, life was much easier when I was a cadet. Seriously. To all you college cadets out there reading these cartoons, appreciate the life you have while you’ve got it, because when you have a spouse and kids and a house to take care of, things get a little more complicated. Trust me on this.

I read an article a couple months ago that said the military is having problems recruiting because many teens these days flat out don’t meet the height and weight standards, and are in no shape to meet the physical demands of military life. Personally, I was in no shape to meet the physical demands of military life when I was a cadet. Yeah, my height and weight were peachy keen, but before becoming a cadet, I’d never done push-ups, sit-ups or run for any lengthy distance. I took a lot of dance classes in my early teens and was in the marching band in high school. But that, ladies and gentlemen, was the extent of my physical fitness preparation for becoming a cadet. Needless to say, I did a lot of puking at the end of company runs when I got to Virginia Tech, and I suffered all through college trying to do decent push-ups.

However, I made it through, and to this day, I still try to stay fit. I’ve started to get back into running after some time off, and I also do swimming, water aerobics and karate. The Hubster and I are testing for our 3rd degree black belts in August some time, so I must be doing something right. I try to do push-ups and sit-ups, but I’m not sure I could do enough to pass an APFT these days. Guess I better get to work on those!

Hope all you cadets who are reading this are having a great summer! And be sure to mention to these cartoons to next year’s rats. They’ll probably enjoy knowing they aren’t the only ones who have ever suffered through their rat year.

Yet another item that got derailed last week, thanks to the stomach bug. I try to get all my blog posts for the week, including the Rats! posts, done by Sunday evening. And I was just getting ready to head up to the office and scan this in when I realized what I really wanted to do instead was puke in a bucket. Life’s funny like that, you know?

Anyway, here is a scene that happened all too often when I was a cadet. I’d be right in the middle of something like a shower, dying my hair, writing a paper, etc., and someone would burn their popcorn badly enough that the fire alarms went off and we all had to head outside. Fun.

The interesting thing to note about this image is that all the rats in the last panel are named. These were the rats in Hotel Company my junior year, when I first started drawing the Rats! cartoons. I think they may have just completed company initiation, an event where new cadets are run ragged before being formally accepted into the company. As I recall, this was something that usually happened in November, prior to Fall Break. My own company initiation two years earlier was a real hoot. After spending several hours on Friday combing every last inch of the campus to find the company guidon, we were given pass for the rest of evening, with orders to be back in bed by midnight. I know once I got the sand out of my shorts (they made us low crawl through the sand traps of the campus golf course), I basically said, “Screw the pass, I’m going to bed.” Others, however, went out and stayed out. I think at least one cadet came back very late… just in time for the upper classmen to come banging on our doors at 5AM and yell at us to get into our dress uniforms for another round of torment.

Fun times, people. By the way, the best way to get a drunk rat through the hallways is to sandwich him or her between two sober rats as they drag through the dorm. Just watch it on those 90 degree turns. You might accidentally tip your buddy and send them crashing to the floor.

I remember watching lots of guys get their hair cut in the dorm hallways by other cadets. After my own experience with the local barber, I completely understand why. Still, getting your bud to give you a haircut did not guarantee you’d come out looking good. ‘Nuff said.

Click on the thumbnail above to see the cartoon.

Yea verily, I am seriously behind this week on blog posts, and this one almost didn’t make it today. Blame it on Balticon, people. That con wipes me out every year.

But I did get this week’s episode of Rats! up before the end of the day. I dedicate this episode to all LOST fans who were frustrated by the series finale. Personally, I thought it worked with only a few minor flaws, but I know some people are hopping mad about it. My condolences to you

I spent many a weekend in Jefferson National Forrest with my Army ROTC unit, tramping through the woods, camping out in the snow and the rain, getting mud in all my various hard to reach spots, and eating lots of MREs, the ultimate in haute cuisine. And let me just say to this day, I do not miss it one bit. I hated going out on Field Training Exercises (FTX). I think those things were specifically designed to screw me over. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. I was a lousy cadet. I made a fairly decent officer once I got into the actual Army, but ROTC was not for me.

Anyway, here’s hoping all this past year’s rats at the good ol’ VTCC survived the year. Good luck being upper classmen next year. I’ve got cartoons all about that too.

Ah, Land Navigation. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when, if you handed me a compass, an azimuth, a twelve-digit grid coordinate, and a topographical map, I could have told you exactly where we were, were we were going, and how long it would take us to get there. It was one of the very few things I was good at as an Army ROTC cadet, and I was a bit proud of myself when I successfully completed the Land Navigation course at Camp All American while some of my fellow ROTC cadets who outstripped me in all other areas couldn’t find their way to the first point on the list.

But Land Navigation was pretty much the only thing I was good at, sad to say.

My career as an ROTC cadet was pretty miserable. I was mediocre at weapons qualification. I stunk at PT. I couldn’t understand Troop Leadership or basic squad tactics if my life depended on it. I was a lousy cadet. And yet somehow I graduated and was commissioned into the Army Reserves. Now as an officer, I did much better, but then I was in the Transportation Corps, where we worked with vehicles and… maps! I was always good with maps.

For those of you not familiar with Land Navigation, allow me to explain the cartoon above. Cadets were always sent out in pairs for training (though for the Land Nav course at Camp All American, we were on our own). This was a safety precaution, of course. You’ll see in the cartoon the one rat lists off the course direction in degrees (which can be measured on a compass) and a distance of 1000 meters. The other rat is counting paces. Before every Land Nav course, we had to do a pace count, where we counted how many paces we had to take to match a 50 meter distance. That way we could count off the paces to mark how far we were traveling as we followed the course direction (or azimuth) on our compass and thus got from point A to point B.

Sounds simple, right? Except that not all Land Nav problems were that straight forward. Sometimes you were given a description of a landmark and it’s direction relative to you. Then you had to calculate the distance to get there. Or you were given a distance and a landmark, but had to find the direction by finding the landmark on the map. Or maybe you were just given a 12-digit grid coordinate and had to figure out all the other info from there. Or…

Simply put, Land Navigation was the same problem over and over again – figure out how to get from point A to point B – but configured many different ways. I understood that. But it was about the only thing I understood in the Army.

Good thing I went into Transportation, huh?

(**Interesting little tidbit. I write these posts the Sunday before they go up. I just realized as I write this that tonight is the season finale of my favorite show LOST, which is also the final word in this week’s cartoon. Imagine the forces of fate that had to line up to make that happen! Okay, yeah. I’m stretching it, I know. But still!**)

So I know I said last week that there were more Great General Pumpkin cartoons coming up, and there should have been but for the life of me, I can’t find them! I know I have them. I’ve seen them! But they weren’t in my Year 01 or Year 02 folder, and it’s too late at this point for me to hunt them down.

Therefore, we move on to first aid. In Army ROTC, the junior and senior cadets were expected to teach classes on common tasks to the freshmen and sophomores. First aid was one of those subjects. I tell you, there’s nothing like standing in front of a bunch of freshmen, struggling to remember the symptoms for shock or how to splint a broken leg while your ROTC instructor is standing behind you with a clip board grading every little thing you do. And it doesn’t get any easier because once you actually get into the Army (or the Air Force or the Navy or the Marines), you must continue to teach other folks how to do things like this. In fact, one of my jobs in the Army Reserves was training officer. Not only did I have to teach class, but I also had to put together the training plan for the entire unit every single month. Not an easy task to do.

Anyway, it was always kind of fun to be a freshman watching the upper classmen try to run a class, but not so much fun a couple years down the line when it was your turn to teach someone else.

I’ll keep looking for the Great General Pumpkin cartoons. I know I have them somewhere. But if I don’t find them, we’ll continue on with the Army ROTC cartoons for a few weeks, ‘kay?

Mea culpa. I don’t know why this didn’t go up first thing this morning, but you know, sometimes life happens.

Anyway, this is where the cartoons start to get out of sync with the current calendar date. Right now, in the real world, it’s Spring, it’s balmy, things are turning green everywhere and summer isn’t too far off. But in the world of Rats…

We’re into a series of cartoons I drew for October of 1989, and the subject was Pumpkin Wars. Every October, the freshman/rats had to come up with a jack o’lantern that the upper classmen dubbed the Great General Pumpkin. The Great General Pumpkin was stationed in the company area on the desk where the announcements board was posted. So long as he was there, we had to speak up and act as normal in the company area. But if the Great General Pumpkin disappeared from the company area, the rats got to be “at ease” in the halls and didn’t have to speak up to anyone. I can’t recall if it was just in the company area halls or the entire dorm. Part of me wants to say the entire dorm because I have this vague memory of being in Kilo Company area (which was where all the 2nd Battalion female dorm rooms were, regardless of what company you were in) and seeing a lot of upper classmen scowling at me because they knew our pumpkin had gone missing and I didn’t have to speak up. But I can’t be sure because my memory on that is not so clear.

Anyway, the promise of “at ease” in the hallways and no speaking up lead to some pretty wild antics on the part of the freshmen to hide the Great General Pumpkin, which in turn led to some pretty wild antics on the part of the upper classmen to find him and restore him to his place. You’ll see that play out over the next few weeks, as I drew a few more strips on the subject.

Sorry again about being late today. Honestly, I have no idea why this did not go up on time today!