My First Day as a Subbie

2Lt R. I. Lund
1 October 2009

 

No words could describe how I felt the day I found out I would be joining Lord Strathcona’s Horse. It took me four years of training and school to finally get to this day, and I’m not going to lie I was nervous. The last thing any of us wanted to do was screw up or make a bad impression on our first day. Fortunately we had our senior subaltern Lt. Dave Williams to help us out.

We arrived early the first day to meet with him and he gave us a quick run down of what we would be doing that morning and then it was off to see the Adjutant. That meeting was a memorable one indeed, I’ll always remember what the Adjutant said, particularly “Is that a black tie?” Screw up number one for the group of new subalterns.

After the meeting it was back with the senior subaltern as he took us on a tour of the COs library. Apparently that’s not a good idea, with Dave out of the room taking a phone call, the Adjutant walks in. Screw up number two, that one seemed almost too perfect if you ask me. Coffee break couldn’t start soon enough for us, with two screw ups in the books we made our way to Brigade coffee break in the mess. This was our first opportunity to meet a lot of the other Strathcona officers. Much of coffee break was us wandering about shaking hands and introducing ourselves but it was a good time, we were able to chat and relax a bit.

After coffee break all we had left was to do some in clearance for the rest of the day, we should be safe. At least I thought I was safe, forgot about my wallet though as we hit the kit shop. A good $300 later we were kitted out with some stylish Strathcona wear, the scary thing is we couldn’t buy everything we needed. It is definitely not cheap being a Strathcona but it’s all worth it in the end.

Our short week had several more interesting screw ups, but on Friday the CO finally let us in on the joke, all of those screw ups during the week they were planned, except for the tie that was real. We were now more than just badged officers, we were finally part of the family, and it was a day and a week we’ll never forget.