The thin tan and khaki line

It was the military that invented scouting. During the times of the Anglo-Boer War, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell was very upset with the level physical training and the absence of the spirit of camaraderie and team spirit of his soldiers. “One Zulu warrior is worth ten of my recruits,” said the colonel

After retiring from the army, Baden-Powell organized the first summer camp for young scouts in 1907, believing that these qualities must be cultivated in future soldiers of the empire from boy years. The idea turned out to be so successful that two years later scouts appeared in the Russian Empire and a year later in America.

In the USSR, they transformed into pioneer organization, while America with time became the leader of the American scouting movement and camps became an unrealizable dream for young scouts in other countries. Unrealizable because Americans, who by their national character are very benevolent and open people, do not let foreign kids even close to their scouting camps. Even adults who are interested in scouting or want to borrow the experience are rejected under different politically correct pretexts. We will not disclose what it took us to achieve this, but for Kyiv Weekly the Boy Scouts of America made an exception and let us into the nursery of the future of the nation, as they call it.

Scouting camps operate throughout the entire country, the majority of them being under the auspices of a church, including Orthodox churches. In addition, the U.S. government has allocated a huge territory (reservation) for the scouts in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where an entire network of camps called the Blue Ridge Scout Reservation is situated. A shift at the camp is one week long. You can stay for another and third week or even longer. However, scouts do not usually stay long in one camp. They move on to the next camp along with their scout leader. The objective of a scout is not to have fun at the camp, but to learn the skills that a young scout should master. In fact, mastering every skill is confirmed by conferral of a merit badge or other element of insignia. By the number of insignia on the shirt of a scout leader or the chief of the camp, you can see that this is no place for outsiders.

Members of the senior management of the scouting movement are highly respected and well paid citizens. Scout leaders are volunteers that do not earn anything in their first year. Their summer occupation pays out starting from the fourth year, when they can earn US $200 a week. Over the nine weeks of the summer season (including one week of training mandatory for all scout leaders regardless of their experience and badges) this turns out to be a pretty neat sum even by American standards.

The government supports the scouting movement in different ways, but not financially. Scouting is financed by large business corporations, such as, for example, Marriott. For them, scouting is a school of leadership of their future managers where they learn to make decisions. Those who are interested in that understand that it is not a cheap thing. For example, a week at the camp we visited costs US $250 (traveling expenses are not included). Besides, there are additional costs. For example, in order to master the art of sewing Indian moccasins, one has to buy leather material at the camp’s shop. In our camp, the scouts learned to shoot from a bow, gun, rifle, pump shotgun, swim and canoe. And we assure you the drilling was very serious. The peculiarity was that any exercise and any collective act in the camp, including breakfast, lunch and dinner ended with a scout leader raising three fingers held together (a signal for everybody to keep silent) and citing a cadence that the scout group recites in unison so loudly that you have to cover your ears to muffle the sound.

For a Ukrainian of an older generation this is reminiscent of their pioneer childhood and the cadence “Who’s there marching along as one? Our friendly pioneer squad!” But that would be a mistake. Scout cadences are very utilitarian. “Do not point the gun at anyone. Only morons point the gun!” (this cadence is chanted after a shooting drill). Or simply:

There ain´t no bugs on me, on me.

There ain´t no bugs on me

There may be bugs on some

            of you mugs

But there ain´t no bugs on me.

Seeing how serious the scouts are when they chant these cadences, we could hardly keep from laughing. We even asked the chaplain of the camp, who makes them up. Maybe the gentlemen from the scouting headquarters in Dallas coin them? The chaplain smiled politely and replied that the scouts at the camps come up with the cadences, but also said that they usually turn to the most successful American businessmen to write leadership development programs. The majority of such businessmen were scouts when they were young in the highest rank in the scouting hierarchy and were named eagle scouts. They treat such requests just as seriously as their transactions on global financial markets.

Besides a Protestant chaplain, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi or even Buddhist lama can visit the camp on Fridays, if necessary. Belief in God is an axiom for scouts. On the left sleeve of a khaki colored scout’s shirt is a stripe with the number of the squad and on the right an emblem with the American flag.

When you look at the line of a thousand of scouts when the “stars and stripes” are raised up the flagpole and then lowered, one can’t help but recall the Ukrainian scouting organization Plast. It is one of the oldest scouting organizations in the world, which appeared in 1911 on the territory of Austro-Hungary, but except for a short period during the revolutionary years and until the 1990s developed outside the territory of Ukraine. To date, there are 10,000 scouts from all 24 oblasts of Ukraine and Crimea in Plast. Although, Plast organizations operate, besides Ukraine, in eight other countries, including the U.S., the World Organization of the Scout Movement still treats their union called Confederation of Ukrainian Plast Organizations with caution, believing that Plast concentrates too much on instilling Ukrainian nationalism in kids.

As one of the characters of a Hollywood film once said about scouts, “Only this thin khaki-color line separates us from chaos”.

This year, the American scouts celebrate their 100th anniversary. Around 100,000 of them will gather in a camp town near Washington, D.C. It is already impossible to book accommodation in the surrounding area of the camp. U.S. President Barack Obama was not invited to the celebration. He is the first American president over the past 80 years that has never been a scout.