The Jacob's Ladder
by Ryan801army
Copyright© 2024 by Ryan801army
Flash Story: 2nd Army story of the series. Adventures on Jacob's Ladder
Tags: True Story Military
A little background for this one first. As I stated previously I enlisted in the Army at 30, so I’d lived and had responsibilities. I even had a goal: I wanted to fly under the radar. I would be perfectly content if the Drill Sergeants didn’t know how to pronounce my name at graduation. The only problem with that is I had traits that would prove to make that hard.
One of the first ones was I was competitive. I didn’t want to just get by on my fitness test (PT test), I wanted to excel. So I worked at my workouts and as a distance runner growing up my running camr back quick. So an older short guy outrunning most of the company made me stand out. I also couldn’t just stand by and watch someone struggle if I could coach and provide help. Unfortunately one of our sharp eyed Drill Sergeants noticed this, which is the point of this story.
The Jacob’s Ladder is a roughly 20 foot giant ladder. The first few rungs spaced enough to give you confidence, but the it gets further apart the higher you go. Being short, I was not looking forward to the top portion where the rungs were furthest apart. It looked like it was going to be questionable at best.
Being at Ft Jackson though we had female recruits and in my platoon 4 of them were what the head Drill Sergeant called micro Privates: None of them hit 5 feet tall. One of whom was directly in front of me in line. She started up and made quick progress ... until she got to the part I was dreading and was stuck. After a couple minutes of loud “encouragement” from the Drill Sergeant he turned to me and told me to get her up and over.
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