Training wasn’t just about discipline, though. It was about making sure they knew how to stay alive if they ever had to deploy. Since my platoon was made up of medics, I focused on hands-on medical training — things like CPR, putting on casts, and other practical skills they’d actually need in the field.
The Army required all of us to learn how to use atropine — the antidote for nerve gas. Essentially, if the enemy chose to employ chemical weapons, we were expected to administer this antidote to ourselves. The injector looked kind of like a hot dog with a needle that could double as a tent stake. Not exactly comforting.
Every organization seems to have at least one person who struggles more than the rest. In our platoon, that person was “Mike.” No matter how much support or guidance he received, Mike had a knack for finding trouble. I came to the realization that individuals like Mike appear in our lives to teach us patience and perseverance as leaders.
Every organization has one of these guys— the one who just can’t seem to get it together no matter what. Let’s call him “Mike.” You can train him, coach him, even walk him step-by-step through the simplest task, and somehow he’ll still find a brand-new way to mess it up. It’s almost a talent at that point. I’m convinced God puts people like Mike in your path not to test your leadership skills — but to test your patience. And trust me, it works.
I figured his self-esteem could use a little boost, so I thought, hey, this class is simple enough — maybe if Mike teaches it, he’ll gain some confidence and a little respect from the team. What could possibly go wrong, right? I gathered everyone together, handed him the training injector, and walked him through it—several times. “Red end goes against the leg. Green end on your thumb,” I repeated, like a broken record. We even had a practice dummy laid out so he couldn’t mess it up. “Red on leg, green on thumb,” I said again, just to be sure.
Seconds later, he flipped it. Green on leg, red on thumb. That needle fired straight through his thumb like a harpoon. So now, instead of one dummy in the room, I had two — me and Mike.
Atropine has some interesting side effects. His pupils dilated to the size of dinner plates, he was sweating buckets, slurring his words, twitching like he’d downed a hundred cups of coffee — which, in a way, he kind of had. If you’ve got a weak heart, the stuff can kill you. Lesson learned: realistic training cuts both ways. I learned not to use real atropine for demonstrations, and the rest of the platoon learned how to treat an atropine overdose. Two lessons for the price of one.
Excerpt: Fish on Fridays—Available on Amazon Summer of 2026 |
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