Here’s another one. While I’ve never trained with Marines myself, friends of mine who have have told me that they seem like fine warriors. Their methods and attitudes were different from ours, but they did their job (and that’s the highest compliment you can give).
As for my own basic training, it was 16 weeks of intense physical exertion (plus 8 more weeks of advanced infantry training, which is the same thing but with less saluting), psychological pressure, sleep deprivation and professional conditioning… but no DIs, thank God. The IDF dosn’t believe in them. We were trained as an integral unit by our own officers and NCOs, so the guys shouting at us in basic were the same guys lying next to us in ambushes in Lebanon six months later. On the one hand, it made them restrain their abuse. On the other, they had to train us well - their very lives depended on it.
No that there wasn’t any physical abuse. Beside the pushups (200 in a row, the whole platoon, on one memorable occasion) and the running (“See that rock? Around it, right to left, 30 seconds, MOVE.”“Again.”“Again.” Ad nausium, sometimes literally), we knew that thistles meant we had to practice our crawling; and have you ever tried to reassemble a machinegun with a sergeant banging his fists on your helmet and shouting “you’re under fire!” in your ear, while the rest of the guys are trying to keep themselves from laughing? Good times.
Huh…so DI’s have to follow specific rules set up by the Democrat controlled Congress of the late-80’s writing the laws. These were the same idiots that set it up so after getting my GED during my junior year in HS so I could hit college a year early, had a system in place that kept me from the USMC. See, I didn’t have an actual diploma, though I took the ASVAB and scored high enough to warrant any job choice other than pilot. I don’t have 20/40 uncorected vision.
The recruits go through BT with no verbal assaults, or physical punishment? Good thing we took out Hussein, I have a feeling punks of his ilk wouldn’t bother with such rules.
God bless every person who has and will serve for the USA. My family is forever indebted, I just wish I could have
Wow, you simultaneously praise the soldiers while suggesting that their training might not be sufficient for them to do the job because the DIs couldn’t go overboard with the abuse?
Talk about a back-handed compliment there. :rolleyes:
Which points up a major difference to the US system, and most particularly the Air Force.
Once I completed basic training, I never saw a single one of the fellows I trained with again. We were sent (most of us) on to specialist schools. The exceptions were the few who went into very simple fields - the guys who work the whole time in the dining hall, for example.
After completing tech school, I never saw a single one of the guys I was there with again, either.
This is typical of the Air Force. As I understand it, some (maybe all) of an Army boot camp platoon will stay together afterwards - but even there, you’ll have a good percentage of specialists who get seperated out for further technical training.
From the few Army guys I knew, I had the impression that it was also quite common for them to change assignments as individuals. A most memorable departure party (at which I caught food poisoning) was for an Army fellow who was going stateside as an individual - not with his platoon or other unit.
Things are, of course, different when there is actual fighting going on where you are assigned. Then personnel movements are (naturally) unit oriented. Even then, though, individuals can be transferred independently.
Since so many people have mentioned FMJ and mentioned reading Starship Troopers, people should look into the book Short Timers on which the movie was based. I think it may have been renamed to FMJ by now but that was the original title.
The book deals much more with the mental aspect of both boot camp and Vietnam.
I don’t see the connection. Would you like to clear it up? acsenray: IIRC, Christopher Walken’s Toomey exhibited a great deal of cruelty, something my instructors did not. (If you see the play, you’ll note Toomey is portrayed differently depending on the director.) My instructors NEVER exhibited rage to any of my platoon; their outbursts appeared to be quite measured and calculated. Also, they were often very, very funny.
Thanks, Mr. B. When I saw the movie, I couldn’t believe the portrayal was of a realistic drill sergeant. And given his erratic and sometimes what seemed to me pathological behaviour, it made the epilogue, in which the main character goes on about how they learned to appreciate Toomey later, rather unbelievable.
Hate to bring this up, but I got two words for you “stress cards”. Believe it or not, sometime during the 90’s someone thought it was a good idea to issue stress cards to the recruits. If they were too stressed by the Drill Sergeant they presented the card and had to be given a stress break. No one thought this was a good idea and we certainly didn’t have them at Ft Knox in 89. I hear they decided to do away with that idea a couple of years ago.
Too true. One of the most difficult things for me was keeping a straight face when one of them would would wax eloquently profane. Smiling or laughing would only draw unpleasant attention to a recruit, but I swear some of the drills were funnier than Richord Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Sam Kinison all rolled into one. Walken’s portrayal of Drill Sgt. Merwin Toomey brought back memories of how funny those guys could be.