What’s the process in the US and other militaries for releasing incurable screwups in basic training? I was watching “Full Metal Jacket” over the weekend, and it was clear that no military would ever want Private Pyle. He was absolutely, positively going to get someone, maybe lots of people killed if he ever went into combat. The whole beat/berate/abuse them into compliance method cannot really be 100% effective, so I’d have to assume there’s some procedure for the military to just kick out recruits who can’t hack it.
My experience in Basic Training did not happen during war time like the movie and it is only anecdotal.
They can give administrative discharges for those unsuitable for the military. They don’t count against you like a dishonorable but you don’t have veterans status.
We had one kid who couldn’t do simple things like shine boots or make his bed properly. He was a nice kid but looking back on it he probably was autistic. God knows how the recruiter got him past the doctors. As a recruit you have no idea what is going on behind closed doors. We figured the Drills were going to push him through so we tried to help him as best we could. But they did notice. Before we went to a range with real bullets for the first time he was pulled out of the platoon. He was on his way home before we graduated.
My experience in Basic Training did not happen during war time like the movie and it is only anecdotal.
They can give administrative discharges for those unsuitable for the military. They don’t count against you like a dishonorable but you don’t have veterans status.
We had one kid who couldn’t do simple things like shine boots or make his bed properly. He was a nice kid but looking back on it he probably was autistic. God knows how the recruiter got him past the doctors. As a recruit you have no idea what is going on behind closed doors. We figured the Drills were going to push him through so we tried to help him as best we could. But they did notice. Before we went to a range with real bullets for the first time he was pulled out of the platoon. He was on his way home before we graduated.
In the US it’s as simple as the admin discharges mentioned above due to them being incompatible with military service. It’s probably worth noting that even in the extreme situation depicted in the movie Pyle wasn’t an “incurable screwup.” He was in fact quite competent with regards to the required skills by the end. He was also quite mentally unstable from the beginning. Mental health issues can lead to medical discharge even after basic training.
Also note in the movie that, even before Pvt. Pyle got shaped up, the military was still making good use of him. Ermey was using him to hone Pvt. Joker’s leadership skills, to the benefit of both. It didn’t end up being enough for Pyle, but it did end up working for Joker.
British army recruits can be sent home anytime during basic training. There are nearly always a lot more recruits than places, so the bar is set pretty high.
Totally incompatible people make it through both basic and AIT, speaking of Army here. With the close scrutiny, fellow soldiers helping and very few decisions to be made, basic and AIT can be squeaked by. I dealt with those graduates and in 3 instances the soldier could not make it in the regular Army. The administrative discharge is still available in those instances. Unfortunately, a lot of sergeants simply charge them with one minor thing or another until they are discharged with dishonorable and bad conduct discharges. Or they again squeak through until the admin can no longer be applied. When I was in the admin could still be applied up to 6 months after reaching your permanent duty station.
A cousin of mine got discharged from the US Marine Corps during Basic, I’m not sure what the exact type was but it was not a dishonorable. The official reason was breaking his ankle: the unofficial reason was “being stupid enough to not go to see the doc after breaking his ankle”. The sergeant who sent him to the infirmary told him that if he had gone to see the doc when he’d hurt himself, he could have made it through, but no matter what the propaganda says the US Marines actually expect their recruits to have a functioning brain - the idiotic display involved in trying to run the course with a broken ankle evidenced that he did not.
There was a woman in my platoon in basic who was sent home after the first week, when we were first issued M-16s to learn how they worked and to take them apart and clean them, but before ever being issued ammo or learning how to shoot. She was apparently under the mistaken impression that since she signed up to be a medic, she would never have to carry or handle firearms at all, which she was morally opposed to. :smack:
I gotta hand it to her recruiter. Talking someone into joining the Army who is deeply opposed to even touching a gun takes balls.
One thing I didn’t know until I showed up for basic training (Navy, early 1990s) was that if you screwed up or failed a test, you normally weren’t kicked out. They would just move you back a couple of weeks with a new company of recruits. This was called being ASMO’d.
We had a guy show up in out company that had been ASMO’d something like 7 times for continually failing the swim test. Which meant he’d already been in 8-week basic training for over 16 weeks. I’m happy to say that he did finally pass the test with us.
The idea that I could be stuck in basic for longer than 8 weeks horrified me so much that I worked my ass of at everything and ended up being the “honor recruit” of my company!
I think the general term is ‘Failure to Adapt Discharge’. It has a more official name. It covers a lot of bases that aren’t severe enough for a Bad Conduct discharge, but they don’t want you in the service.
My brother, a 'Nam vet, told me some (probably – certainly! – apocryphal) stores of guys angling for discharge from Basic training. One of them rode an imaginary motorcycle everywhere he went, and another picked up every scrap of paper he came across, only to discard it, saying, “That’s not it”.
The punch line is that after receiving a Section 8 discharge, the first guy rode his motorcycle through the gates of the base, pulled over to the side of the road, dismounted, and walked off.
The other guy received his discharge papers, looked at them, and said, “That’s it!”.
There has been at least one Medal of Honor awardee who was a conscientious objector who never touched a weapon.
There have been 3 but this is the one I remember. Desmond Doss.
But someone who goes into Basic Training and then suddenly declares they can’t touch a weapon will get kicked out. There is a specific procedure to be recognized as a conscientious objector.
Not military but I knew woman who hated guns. She was hired to work in the jail back when all jail staff were sworn deputies and not civilian correction officers. She went through both the police and correction academies successfully training with a weapon but thought she wouldn’t have to carry one on duty inside the jail.
She was wrong. During inmate transports to court or hospitals deputies are armed, as well as during perimeter patrols of the facilities. She kept telling her coworkers that she hated guns and would never ever, EVER draw her weapon and use it, no matter what. Other deputies started filing complaints and grievances based on that they refused to work with someone who would not use force in a life & death situation. After some counseling the white shirts thought they had got her to think right but all she did was shut up about it for a while. Eventually she was convinced to take an early retirement.
I was on the road so I didn’t have to deal with her much. But the bit that I did I thought she was odd as hell and was in the wrong line of work.
Reading the medal of honor citation for Mr. Doss is amazing. The idea that anyone would be able to perform any one of those actions is amazing. He performed many and survived them all. That list is just incredible.
In the 80s documentary “Family Ties”, Skippy got a “failure to adapt” discharge for being an incurable screwup
I heard the “That’s not it” tale re the British Army in World War II – from an uncle who was, sorta-kinda, a veteran of that scene.
When I first arrived at basic, I met two women who were being outprocessed as “failure to adapt” because apparently they were really young and away from home for the first time, and started crying a lot from homesickness. I’d seen that in college freshmen, so I suppose it isn’t surprising that it would happen to soldiers from time to time, but the Army wasn’t prepared to deal with it.
We also had a couple of women who wanted out as soon as they got there (I have no idea why they joined in the first place). They started out going on sick call every. single. morning. So they missed PT every day, and then were never in shape for the hikes and other things, and complained about every bloody thing. They told us that the doctors had said “blah, blah, impossible if you took high school biology, thing” to them. They got sent home, but the DSs stretched it out longer than they needed to just to make them miserable. We were happy to see them go.
People who didn’t make it through basic, but didn’t get discharged, and had to start over again, were called “recycles.” We had one women with us who was on her third cycle. The word about was that if she didn’t make it, she was going home, because you only get three chances. I don’t remember what happened to her. We had a second recycle who made it with us, but she did screw up a lot.
Two people from my company got recycled. One was for a legitimate medical reason-- she got sick, and missed enough that she needed to restart. The other had the worst attitude in the whole company, and didn’t pass the PT test. I’m guessing she got a “bad attitude” (failure to adapt) discharge.