Platoon sergeants, God bless them all!

Big Red Car here on another perfect Texas spring day. Ahhhh, on Earth as it is in Austin By God Texas, y’all.

The Boss was up in Lexington, Virginia recently to give a talk at an entrepreneurs event. Lexington is, of course, the home of his alma mater, Virginia Military Institute – a hard place to be, a good place to be from.

VMI has an expansive campus carry program including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John at the foot of Stonewall’s statue. Those four cannons are combat veterans of the Mexican War and the Civil War. You get a rifle, a bayonet, maybe a sword, plus tanks, howitzers, cannons. Stonewall taught at VMI.

VMI is steeped in the history of the nation and the Civil War. The VMI cadets fought as a unit in the Civil War emerging victorious at the Battle of New Market wherein they conducted a bayonet charge across a muddy field and took Yankee cannons at bayonet point. They also took substantial casualties both killed (10 KIA) and wounded (45 WIA).

Lexington is also the home to Washington & Lee University, a bastion of Southern education. Rob’t E Lee is buried at W & L.

When you go to VMI, you look up your Brother Rats (classmates) who live in the area and you find a chance to swap some stories. The nature of your relationship is so close that if you haven’t seen them in 45 years you pick up right where you left off last time you saw them.

Which is a long way to say a discussion about platoon sergeants ensued. Platoon sergeants are the secret source which is applied to green shavetails to turn them into platoon leaders and soldiers. It is the beginning of a tutelage which is like a craft guild apprenticeship.

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