Chapter 5 'You Dizzy Bastard, Get in Step'

Wow! The title says it all!  The poor kids were disciplined military style.  The punishments for not doing what they were supposed to seemed pretty rough.  Especially when they talked about the little 6 year olds that were summoned to the rock pile.  Even the other older students thought that the discipline didn't match the age. 

As far as the drill competitions went I could just picture the young group not being able to keep up with the older, faster groups and them all joining hands to stay together.  That just breaks my heart because they still wanted to try and had that sense of teamwork.  I cannot picture my daughter being put through such a grueling task.  It seems in the end, the students think that it made them stronger.  I really like the sense of humor these people seem to have when retelling the stories. I get it. I wonder if some people that read this don't get the humor in it.  These people that have been through this know what they were put through and where they came from and how it made them into what they are today and they can actually laugh about some of it, at least.  Eventually the strictness of the discipline decreased.  Some spoke of being able to go to town on Saturdays and other activites.  I am glad that they had some extracurricular activites to do.

I found these pictures and I imagine that when these people graduated from Chilocco, that it was not as strict.  As you can see, their attire was not uniform. I thought it was interesting to compare the students as the times changed.