“Once a per­son has passed through Cadets you will know, that per­son will stand out from among the rest,” Sub Lieu­tenant of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cadet Force Dave El­liot said as he proud­ly as­sist­ed in lead­ing the lat­est batch of re­cruits cel­e­brat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s 60th an­niver­sary in To­ba­go re­cent­ly.

The Cadet Force, a mil­i­tary-based vol­un­tary youth or­gan­i­sa­tion, tar­gets male and fe­male stu­dents from sec­ondary schools.

It aims to train and in­spire young men and women to be mod­el cit­i­zens through in­still­ing qual­i­ties such as dis­ci­pline, loy­al­ty and du­ty.

“Cadets are taught to be proud, alert, put their shirt in their pants, comb their hair and cut their nails, as part of their per­son­al reg­i­men to take care of their ap­pear­ance,” El­liot told To­ba­go To­day.

He not­ed that cadets car­ry them­selves with ut­most pride; don’t walk and slouch, crawl or bounce and are trained to re­spect au­thor­i­ty and the fun­da­men­tals of team­work.

That train­ing adds to their per­son­al de­vel­op­ment and pre­pares them to face life’s chal­lenges.

El­liot, who has over 20 years of ser­vice with Cadet Force, spoke with pride and ex­hil­a­ra­tion about the en­tire cadet team, es­pe­cial­ly the ma­rine crew he leads which holds meet­ings at the Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary School.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cadet Force has sub-sec­tions which in­clude the Naval Sec­tion, Air Guard, Medics Mess­ing and In­fantry. My team at Rox­bor­ough are well-dis­ci­plined and al­ways ea­ger to learn and be part of the group.”

Not­ing that cadets’ train­ing is pat­terned af­ter ba­sic mil­i­tary prac­tice and dis­ci­pline, plac­ing em­pha­sis on drills, field craft such as hik­ing and camp­ing, weapons train­ing, skill at arms and map read­ing, El­liot said the en­tire train­ing has a spe­cif­ic pur­pose.

“The key to all of these drills is ul­ti­mate­ly to pro­duce a cadet or re­cruit that is proud, obe­di­ent and alert - ba­sis of team­work,” El­liot said.

“The aim of these drills is to height­en aware­ness. Re­cruits must al­ways be ready. When I stand and call their name they need to be alert, hear and re­spond. An­oth­er be­lief we live by is com­ply­ing and then com­plain­ing, even as se­nior of­fi­cers we have to ad­here to these rules.”

He said the Cadet Force con­tin­ues to thrive in To­ba­go, as se­niors give of their time and en­er­gy to see the or­gan­i­sa­tion grow from strength to strength.