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Water Fights
When you pack 2,000
guys into 12 dorms, and keep them in close proximity
24 hours a day for five to seven days a week, then mix
in stressors like being away from home (and women),
having to do well in classes, and the rigors of the
Cadet Corps, tensions build up quickly. Fortunately,
the traditions of the Corps provided lots of ways to
relieve the stress before physical violence broke out
-quadding, fart-offs, babo-bombs, Pearl Harbor Day,
food fights, and water fights.
Water fights usually took place in the
late Spring when the weather turned warm. Since pretty
much the entire Corps got involved, and since fish usually
aren't sufficiently working together early in the Fall
semester when it's still warm outside, as a rule, there
were no water fights then. Also, since a large majority
of cadets left town anytime there wasn't a home football
game, water fights usually took place on a weeknight,
right after chow.
The normal routine in Duncan Dining Hall
for evening chow was for the cadets to enter, take their
places, get finished with "firsts", and be
somewhere in the process of starting "seconds"
when the announcements started over the P.A. system.
The first word was always, "Battalion", which
was the cue for fish
to hit a brace, pissheads
to stop eating and sit at attention, sergebutts
to bang their elbows on the table, and zips
to barely take notice. If there was to be a yell practice
that night (Thursdays for away football games, midnight
yell practice on Fridays for home games), the announcements
ended with the single word, "Tonight!", which
was the signal for wildcatting.
Water fights were initiated by some kind
of fart-off (see the Fart-Off
memory.) A couple of memorable ones are given in the
Duncan
Doings memory. Anyway, once the fart-off was issued,
the place emptied like someone had yelled "Free
Beer Outside!" Cadets made bee-lines for their
rooms and holes, quickly changed into athletic shorts,
outfit T-shirts, and tennis shoes.
It was usually the fish's job to provide
ammunition, so they all grabbed the metal trash cans
from their holes and headed for the first-floor crappers.
There they opened the window, turned on all the cold-water
showers, and started filling the metal trash cans. Other
fish grabbed all the 30-gallon rubber trash cans they
could find in the dorm, dumped any contents on the floor,
and stationed them under the crapper windows outside
the dorm. The inside fish used the metal cans as a bucket
brigade to keep the outside containers full as an "ammo
dump". Upper classmen could quickly submerge their
metal trash cans in the 30-gallon reservoirs and be
ready to dowse (or douche) someone.
The standard alignment for water fights
was the BQs
against the CTs,
but, occasionally it would be the Cruchies
versus the Air
Craps, or even one side of the quad against the
other. As befitting military organizations, there were
impromptu strategies developed to mass attacks against
an enemy. There were charges, feints, counter-charges,
ambushes, and every other tactic in or out of "the
book."
There were usually at least a couple of
guys in each dorm who were really prepared, and had
a sling-shot made of surgical tubing and two-by-fours
ready to set up on the roof and launch water balloons.
It was amazing to see how far they could launch their
missiles, and how accurate they were! Pity the cadet
who left his window open!
The battle went on for no more than an
hour, but it was long enough usually for everyone to
get thoroughly wet and muddy, for at least one cadet
to get beaned when a metal trash can slipped out of
someone's hands, and for at least one other to sprain
an ankle or knee trying to get traction on wet and muddy
grass.
And, of course, the fish got to mop up
the water and mud tracked into the halls by the returning
combatants.
John (Yankus) Yantis
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