Forced to Lead
... is more rough and cold unlike the one we had arrived in. Again with a sense of urgency, we rush off the bus to our dorms that are made of two long separate rooms with thirty beds each. We gather in a small room after we had set up our beds and lockers. We are forced to sit shoulder to shoulder on the floor, as the room falls silent when a short, muscular man with a dark complexion enters and sits at the desk in the front of the room. He has a dark colored mustache, a barb wire tattoo around his right bicep, and speaks with a demanding voice. Positions are then randomly appointed to us by the instructor who seems to be finding pleasure in our confusion. There is the dorm chief who is in charge when the instructor is not around, and under him are four element leaders who command smaller portions of the group, called a flight. Everyone else was then given a very simple responsibility and I was assigned the position of a bed aligner, in which my duties were to place all the beds in line with one another. Since I have a small job and no one under my command, I have been classified as a follower. A week has past and I had become very good at my job of simply aligning beds when the instructor stops me during a constant chore of folding clothes to tell me that I am now the dorm chief. My first task is to take the flight to eat at the chow hall located in the same building as our dorms, and this should be a simple task, for all I have to do is stand by a wall and monitor people as they go through the line. This turns out not to be the case; in fact, I am now being watched by more people and getting in trouble more often. Once my flight has gotten their food and sat at their tables of four, I can now make my way through the line, and as I enter the large cafeteria and pass the instructor table at the center of the room, an instructor, who is not mine, stands and calls for me to stop. This unknown man informs me of how leaders represent their entire group, and begins to ask me several questions. “Who is your instructor?” this tall, skinny man asks, and I reply with a sense of confusion by such a simple question, “Staff Sergeant Carver”. This man has not been satisfied and asks another question, “What Air Force instruction gives t...