Anyone else with a son/daughter in Class 08-17 A/B?

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Permalink Reply by Tony Belmont on January 9, 2017 at 4:16pm

Its good that your son and the others made it OK. Their safety is more important than anything else. As a point of interest from an old combat vet, that years later in the service worked as a brig chaser (Someone who went after you if you went AWOL). Whenever anyone in the service is to be at a specific location and can't make it for whatever reason, be it OCS, Boot Camp, or next duty station the first thing to do is call the base. Speak to the duty officer and report the delay and the reason for the delay. Ask that officer to please note the call in their log book. This in most cases will avoid AWOL charges.

Tony Belmont

Permalink Reply by LTB on January 9, 2017 at 8:46pm

Presumably they'll be educated on who to contact if they can't be at a specific location at a designated time over the course of the next 12 weeks. Doubtful many of them understand the process at this point in time since most are fresh out of college but... there could be some kids with parents who served who already are familiar with what to do to avoid being AWOL.

Our son wouldn't have known. He was texting his recruiter every time one of his flights was canceled, delayed, or re-routed to keep him in the loop. According to our son, his recruiter was always on top of things. He had his personal cell phone # in the event of an emergency. While this was not an emergency, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong resulting in him getting to Newport two days later than had been planned. I'm sure our son's recruiter provided him with instruction on how to handle this situation which he would have shared with the other 6 young people he connected with. I'm just glad all of them stuck it out together and chose to get on that flight to CT as opposed to waiting indefinitely for a flight into RI. Who knows, maybe some of them will become friends for life. 

Haven't heard from our son since that last phone call. It's probably safe to assume enough young people made their way to the Officer Training Command that the class went on as scheduled.