Army Memories... In Pictures

This year's Veteran's Day trend seems to consist of changing your Facebook profile picture to one taken while you were in uniform. I'm not usually much for such trends, plus I'm loathe to change my profile pic that often (I haven't touched it in over 3 years). But if I had to, this was the last photo taken of me in uniform:

Sometimes it seems like only yesterday that I joined ROTC at UCLA, when in reality it was almost 20 years ago. Here I am, barely eking out pushups during my first PT test, and doing rappelling for the first time. Don't you love that short hair, those braces, and those huge glasses?

Somehow I survived and graduated..

Yes, that's me being pulled out from under the barbed wire

Went on to Officer's Basic Course in Fort Gordon, GA, where we worked hard...

Hey! This was legit work! We were applying advanced skills from a knot-tying class!

... and played hard... 

Karaoke (you aren't surprised, are you?) at the Officer's Club

... and graduated, ready to tackle to the world as newly-minted and trained officers!

With my squad and our training officer during the Dining Out at the end of the course

I arrived in Germany and got my own platoon:

1st platoon, 268th Signal Company, 72nd Signal Battalion. Mannheim, Germany -- 1998

And my own Humvee:

And a really awesome platoon sergeant who really took me under his wing. 

If you can believe it, we're STANDING inside that foxhole!

Signal Ball 1998, Heidelberg, Germany

I have some really fond memories of my time in the Army. I didn't like the super-early hours, and I never did get used to running for PT, but I did learn and I did grow a lot. Plus, being stationed in Germany was an awesome way to soak up other cultures and travel around Europe! I won't re-hash everything here, but you can read more about it in a post from 4 years ago: http://heckledtrio.blogspot.com/2008/11/veterans-day-ruminations.html

Happy Veteran's Day!