While ‘circles’ remained a constant during Recruit term, there was a time when ‘extras’ started to become more prevalent.  Extras meant extra dress inspections, extra room inspections, and extra drill periods.  Special rooks, without a great deal of effort, could acquire one of each in a given day.  It was viewed as a kind of weird recruit hat trick.  At some point, all these extras just kind of meshed into a blob of extra stuff you had to do.  There was one extra drill period, however, that for me will always stand out

The extra drill always occurred late at night on the parade square and normally included representation from across the recruit flights.  On this particular night, approximately 15 of us gathered on the edge of the Square and waited for the Duty Training Officer (DTO) to take charge of us.  The night was absolutely black with a heavy fog in place.  The only thing you could see was the person on either side of you.

Despite these conditions, the DTO marched us into the middle of the Square and began putting us through our paces.  “Left Turn, Right Turn, About Turn, Order Arms, Present Arms, Shoulder Arms!”  The commands came thick and fast.  “Quick March, Halt, Stand At Ease, Attention!”  The commands continued and we did our best to keep up. 

Soon we were off on another march around the square, but by now we were close to the Mackenzie Building. We couldn’t see it … but could sense its looming presence.

While in line, the DTO gave a Left Wheel order -- which we followed.  Unfortunately, because the DTO couldn’t see much either, he didn’t appreciate how close we were to the building.  The result was that the last two files, who had the furthest to travel, found themselves tripping/climbing/falling up and over the steps of the Mackenzie Building.  We soldiered on back out into the middle of the square (I think) and halted.

This was followed by another quick series of left, right, and about turns in the pitch black.  The order for quick march was given again but this time there had been confusion with all the turns and when we set off 12 of us were heading to Fort LaSalle while the last file of three was heading for the Frigate.  None of the 12, nor the DTO, knew they (the 3) were missing in the dark! 

The distance grew to probably about 30 meters when it dawned on the ‘wayward three’ that they were alone.  They could hear the herd leaving them – so they quickly turned around and ran back to join us, fell in, and picked up the cadence.  Mercifully, the session soon ended but I made sure I did something the following day so I could experience extra drill again.  It was a lot more fun than circles!