Humorous inspection story No. 1 of 3
The requirements for keeping your unit and rank patches on your Class A and Class B uniforms up to date at my first unit were rather lax. We were rarely ever required to wear them simply because of the type of duty we pulled. One day, we had to stand inspection in our Class A uniforms because of an IG inspection we were enduring.
On this particular day, my roommate had not bothered to update his rank or his unit patches. He had about a half-hour to get his $hit together before we had to assemble. Since he had no time to sew on either of his patches, he decided to glue them on.
As we assembled in front of the barracks, the MPs formed their own ranks two deep. Shampane left the room and made his way down the stairs to the assembly area, the whole time with his hands over his patches...trying to keep them pressed on. I was in the back row and my roommate, Shampane, stood directly in front of me. Of course, I was checking out his glue-job to see if they were holding on...and they weren't. I could see the top edge of each of the patches starting to peel away. The inspecting officer was slowly making his way down the ranks. I looked around without turning my head and carefully reached my hand up from behind and pressed each patch back into place. As luck would have it, just as the officer passed with a glance to Shampane, the patches started to peel away again. Within a few seconds, the unit patch had peeled away completely and fell to the ground, but the inspecting officer had already made his way to the end of the ranks. Crisis averted!...but, only momentarily. It did not go unnoticed. The falling patch had caught our platoon leader's eye. After our leaders were free to dismiss us, the Lt held Shampane back to chew his ass.
To make things even tougher, our rooms had to stand inspection as well. With wall lockers open, Shampane had to display his Class A's, peeling patches and all, in his locker while he stood next to it at attention. I can't say that they weren't noticed, but nothing was said about them. I had a good laugh over it.
Mike