I'm enjoying reading this but it would be helpful to me if you could stop once in a while and explain the acronyms.
It's a page back or so BMCM, something like that?
I know ROTC from the seventies, AFROTC, made me giggle and remember the 70's before I figured that one out.

My experience was cool, to me. I've worked civilian with the Canadian Army and with the British Merchant Marines. That one got me dining in the officers' mess. The former job was installing MG mounts on the front passenger side of jeeps. Not my idea, don't know who thought that idea up. Anyway, I'm young, long haired and having a great time. Two regulars gave me a very hard time about my hair not knowing the CO was right behind them. They were disciplined, hard. I thanked the CO the next day, and he says, "I don't like long hair anymore than they do, but I didn't fight two wars for nothing."
That was a lesson that has stayed with me since then.