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Media Credit: Laura Muth ROTC cadets conducted Field Training Exercises (FTX) at last weekend.

It had just recently stopped snowing last Friday night when I walked up the slick metal steps to the Johns Hopkins University Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) building.

Before Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Pomper and I had even finalized the plans for me to join the Blue Jay Battalion, Hopkins's ROTC cadet corps, on their Field Training Exercise (FTX), he had spoken to me about how embedded journalists sometimes inconvenienced troops.

Within minutes of my entry, I had already begun to do so.

The previous week I had been issued equipment to wear during the weekend of exercises. It was stored in a locker in the ROTC building.

Unfortunately, the key to said locker was locked inside the supply room, and the supply technician had already left.

"Major Bushyager is on his way," Second Lieutenant Joseph Henderson, the cadre member taking the remaining several cadets and me to Edgewood training facility that night, assured me.

"He'll have a plan. He always does."

"Like the time he kicked in one of the doors," a cadet added cheerfully.

Sure enough, a few minutes later Major Jeremy Bushyager, the enrollment officer, entered the building.

However, this time he took a more delicate approach to gaining entry to the supply room, finagling the window open enough to undo the latch and allow a cadet to jump in.

Once I was "squared away," (the Army way of saying once I was no longer a hopeless mess) we set off in a van, with Bushyager leading us in an SUV.

Country music is apparently Continued from Page A1

an important part of any drive with members of the ROTC, and singing along was basically a requirement.

"You should have seen them the time we had a Disney CD," Henderson told me over the shouting of Tim McGraw lyrics.

However, the real excitement began shortly after I dumped my borrowed army gear in the barracks.

While I would be spending the night in the barracks with the seniors (MS-IVs), sophomores (MS-IIs) and freshmen (MS-Is) cadets, the juniors (MS-IIIs) were spending the night at a patrol base they had set up.

Basically, they had their sleeping bags on the ground in the middle of the woods.

The MS-IVs had planned a bit of a surprise for the MS-IIIs that night. Shortly after arrival, I set out with them for an ambush.

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