[lksteve]

Originally Posted by LJ19

I know the difference between the two. I was just hoping you would tell a little bit more about why you wouldn't want to have been younger on your first ODA.

That's how you should have phrased the question...the truth be told, at 23, having been a junior NCO in the 82nd, I had a grasp for a bit of responsibility...I was never a junior engineer sergeant on a detachment...I was always the senior engineer....I had 20 year old candy stripers as junior engineers and my experience in the 82nd helped me with the fundamentals of training and supervising subordinates...and while at 23, I was still the kid on the team (in terms of QPs), I would have been much more of a boy among men at 20...this was in the post Vietnam era and my team sergeant was a WWII vet...shortly after getting to the team, I was awarded Master Parachutist wings...all but one of the NCOs on the team were master blasters, the detachment commaner was a senior parachutist...average age of the QPs was probably 30-35...the candy stripers were essentially raised by wolves...I needed the experience to hold my own in that environment, to be able to function effectively...if I had gone to a team as a junior engineer, with a senior NCO in place, it might have been a little different...I could have been "Peter-sahn"...that wasn't the world I lived in, though...