First Coin Ever
2001, Fort Hood, TX. Private me got in trouble. It wasn't anything crazy. Honestly, my NCO would invent reasons for us to be in trouble so he could smoke the crap out of us. This time though, as punishment, he volunteered me for 13th COSCOM Flag Detail. He said I'd have to get up crazy early every morning, put on my dress uniform, and do the flag, then do it again at the end of the day. It was a two-week detail. It was supposed to be horrible. One of the other NCOs in my unit took pity on me. At the end of every day for about a week, he taught me how to fold the flag. How to unfold the flag. How to raise it, how to lower it. He taught me about the flag regulations, and proper respect for the flag in general. Dude was freaking awesome. Well, when I got there, it wasn't in dress uniform at all. And it got me out of PT for two weeks, as well as end of day formation. When we folded the flag each day, a Master Sergeant at the duty desk would drill us on the regulation covering the flag. Each day, he'd walk by and ask each of us a question. I was the only one who never missed a question. On the last day of the detail, the General came by and gave a few of us coins. He said he'd been watching us each day from his window several floors above. Apparently, he was impressed that a bunch of privates did so well. He told us a group of NCOs the previous detail accidentally hung the flag upside down one day. When I got back to my unit, the awesome NCO saw that I got a coin from the General for a job well done, so he wrote me up a CoA as well. My two-week punishment turned into a CoA and a General's coin. It was awesome. My NCO was furious. That made it even more awesome.