Yesterday myself, along with my fellow hold unders got shipped over to battalion headquarters for detail work. This happens to us a lot since they have a lot of weeds over there. However, as it turns out we weren't weeding. There were a bunch of Sgt. Majors there doing board interviews for NCO's trying to get into a very elite little club of NCO's. They do all kinds of assessments on the candidates, a few of which require a soldier (one of us hold unders) to stand in and assist. Someone had to play the part of a casualty while the candidate demonstrated combat first aid, in another room they observed the candidate teaching a private drill and ceremony, and then there was an assessment where the candidate marched the remaining hold unders around a field. Since my drill sergeants hadn't taught me one of the key marching moves I was dismissed from the marching field and sent into the room to receive the drill and ceremony instruction. That also meant that I had to just sit there for the rest of the interview watching the NCO suffer while the SM grilled him. It was like the worst job interview you can imagine. The SM is super intimidating , and the first thing he wanted to see was the NCO's dog tags and belt to make sure that they were meeting regulation. They were always a little below standard and then there was the awkward conversation about the deficiency:

SM: "Why is your belt buckle all scratched up? Isn't it regulation for that to be a black belt buckle?"

NCO: "Yes, SM"

SM: "Do you not think that it's important for your belt to meet the standards?"

NCO: "I do think it's important SM."

SM: "So why is yours all scratched up?"

NCO: "No excuse SM"

SM: "I'm going to suggest that you get that fixed as soon as possible Sgt."

NCO: "Yes, SM"

Then he finally lets them take a seat to start the interview. The interview is terrible. The SM would, in my opinion, intentionally design the interview to highlight deficiencies in some little folder of work goals, or some such thing that the NCO had submitted. It was impossible to sit there and not feel a little bit of pity for the NCO who was already visibly nervous about the whole thing, and then squirming under the unrelenting stare of the SM when he had them cornered on some inadequacy. To make things all the more awkward, the SM would ask questions, and then interrupt the NCO in the middle of answering. The question he interrupted with was usually entirely unrelated to the original question, so the NCO was constantly scrambling trying to formulate a good response before he'd get cut off again. It was really kind of painful to watch, especially when I felt like the NCO was not doing well.

The whole thing was very interesting to observe, but kind of freaked me out a bit since I will eventually have to go to board interviews, that I presume will be of a vaguely similar nature to try and get promoted so I can finally get some stripes. It's a ways off though. The 1st Sgt. put me in charge of marching the platoon the other day. Let's just say that I provided quite a bit of amusement to the rest of the platoon. It's a work in progress. I guess all those days of daydreaming through formation at basic are catching up with me in a bad kind of way. Maybe DS Scott was on to something when he told me that I needed to stay more alert in his formation...maybe.