The Lieutenant's Untold Story

As a youngster, you should hangout more with oldies. The interaction with the seniors is a learning experience which also helps to grow in life. In the army, senior officer want their youngsters to interact with them. Here is the story of young Lieutenant who was made to interact with the seniors on the raising day.

Our newly commissioned Lieutenant was unaware about the bombshells which he is going to face in the unit. To his good luck, Unit was about to rejoice the raising day and all the veterans were invited.  On the evening of the raising day party, the Lieutenant was keeping his mouth impenetrable and observing things going around. He was placed among the retired officers, most of them were Generals.

When the veterans came to know that the baby of the battalion is newly commissioned then the discussion took a turn. Everybody started recalling their old days of pre-commissioning training in the academy.

One veteran asked the baby of the battalion that what his 5 Km Battle proficiency run timing was. The Lieutenant was best in academy and with pride he told them that he used to finish with the timing of 18 minutes. The veteran face suggested that he was not impressed by his timing. A smile appeared on his face and he looked towards others. He said ‘What a disgrace! I think these days the gentleman cadets are not trained, in our time we used to finish 5 Km run with the battle load in 12 minutes.’

As soon as the sentence ended on 12 minutes, the Lieutenant’s eyes popped out, he couldn’t believe what he heard. The other veteran added that during his time the excellent bar was 15 minutes to finish off, and these days they have increased it to 25 minutes. The lieutenant was in utter disbelief and he was thinking that all of them belong to some Martian era.

Another veteran asked the youngster that how many chins-up he can do. This time he knew that they will be impressed as in the academy he had done 38 chin ups beating the instructor. With a confident smile he said ‘sir I can do 38’. There was huge laugh among the veterans and one of them said during their time, the passing standard was minimum 40 chin ups.

The baby of the battalion thought that he has graduated from some different academy and the rest of the veterans had graduated from some other one. He was in jolt, and he asked them did they graduate from same military academy. The veterans were laughing and replied that they belong to same turf where he had sweated and bled to earn the brass. Suddenly, one veteran paid attention to the tummy of the youngster which was inside like he would not eat from a long time. He asked ‘son, why your tummy is inside?’ The youngster replied that he does thousand abdominal crunches before sleeping. In a shock the veteran replied ‘only thousand! Son, in our time we used to do three thousand. You need to work hard my boy to survive in this battalion. We had set high standards.’

Now the young Lieutenant distinguished that they all belong to some different planet. In the hindrance of not able to impress the veterans, the youngster grabbed a glass of whiskey. The veterans narrated their stories that how they used to climb the rope with one hand, another said that he had climbed the rope without touching the rope.

Soon the youngster was overpowered by the alcohol; he sarcastically said ‘In your time, you would have completed the 60 Km route march in two hours’. There was an awkward silence, everybody was surprised and the senior most among the veterans replied ‘How do you know that son?’ There were tears in the eyes of the youngster which were also feeling shy to come out of his eyes, as may be the tears of the veterans would come at a faster speed.

The party was over, the youngster retired to his bed. The next morning the young lieutenant was on fire. No, not because of alcohol! It was the chemical reaction of his last sarcastic remarks made by him. He was assigned to carry out a trans border patrol inside the enemy territory which was of length of fifteen kilometers. As soon as he finished of the task and started debriefing the commanding officer, commanding officer asked him 'why you haven't shaved?'. Now he knew the days have changed, the stars have vanished, and the good time is a extinct phrase for him. It is a complete different story that how the youngster was sorted out by the commanding officer.

Moral of the story: Whatever you do, senior can always do that thing better than you. It is a universal fact.