I was watching Full Metal Jacket earlier today and got to wondering: How tough WERE drill instructors…say pre-1970? R. Lee Ermy said a lot of the stuff he did in the film would have gotten him court martialed (hitting and choking recruits, etc.) so I imagine they couldn’t have been too bad, but I’ve also heard that they would put their hands on you quite often. Anyone here have any personal experience with drill instructors?
Edit. Hit send before I was ready so the title is meaningless. Sorry!
I gave it a title and moved it to IMHO since it was asking for personal experiences.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Thanks!
My DIs (late 1961) were still recovering from the infamous Ribbon Creek Incident at Parris Island, where an inebriated DI led his platoon on a midnight “march” through a swamp, and several recruits drowned. This was in 1956, I think. The word was that if Truman had still been in the white House at the time, it would have been The End for the Marine Corps. It was a close thing.
I was at San Diego, where conditions were different (no swamps) so I guess the incident had a lesser impact, but our DIs told us up front that a certain amount of physical mistreatment might take place, and they admitted that they were at our mercy as far as reporting it. They added that if a DI was reported and his career suffered as a result, the recruit who snitched him off would find the remainder of his basic training experience…interesting.
In twelve weeks there I saw one DI punch a recruit in the stomach (the recruit had dropped his rifle on the DI’s polished shoe, and act for which there is no mercy available, as everyone, including the recruit, knew).
Generally, the DIs could punish or discipline us by more subtle (and legal) means. For smokers, cigarettes were a miserable trial, as no-one could smoke until the DI said, “The smoking lamp is lit”. The smart recruits who were smokers became non-smokers quickly.
Air Force basic training in San Antonio - 1966. The DI’s shouted at us frequently but there was never physical contact. It was pretty much a cake walk, sans icing.
I went in just after 9/11. They were tough in the sense that they had high expectations and did not hesitate to pounce on even the most minor infractions. They shouted and cursed frequently. PT punishment (eg doing pushups or some other exercise) was usually the first resort for discipline. Sometimes I got smoked (read: exercised) so bad that I would rather they had just hit me and got it over with.
For the most part, they were tough but fair. I came away with it with definite mixed feelings about their methods. There were a few of them that emphasized obedience over reason and common sense, and I didn’t have much respect for them. Dealing with those kinds of people did not make me disciplined as much as it just made me pissed off and resentful. I generally respected my Drill Sergeants, but there was another platoon whose Drills were just dicks for no reason. Rumor has it that platoon deliberately messed up on their final inspection just to make the Drills look bad.
We had one Drill Sergeant that liked to repeat R Lee Ermy’s lines. Those of us who had seen the movie just laughed. He was nowhere near as scary as Hartman.
The “worst” punishment I ever saw was when one of the platoons (not mine) somehow acquired a bunch of sodas that they were not allowed to have. In addition to a world-class smoking, the Company Commander gave Article 15’s to like a dozen people. You get smoked, you get better, but paperwork follows you for a lifetime. It could be fifteen years later and you’d still have to admit that you got an Article 15 at some point. I doubt anyone would pay much attention to an Article 15 received during Basic, but if you are applying to a commissioning program or in the middle of a selective retention board (read: downsizing) and your packet gets compared to someone with a clean record, it might come to bite you in the ass.
Also went shortly after 9/11 (Navy Officer Candidate School, led by Marine Drill Instructors) – it was very tough, but I never saw any assault. The most physical contact was poking and occasional pushing, IIRC. They were relentless in the exercise-as-punishment, though.
I found out afterwards that a few of our (male) DIs were having sex with Officer Candidate women, which I see as borderline rape, considering the power imbalance – DIs were essentially gods to us for a few months, with the power to make our days good or terrible on a whim, and it’s unconscionable that some used that power for sex. The ones that were caught were severely punished – demoted several ranks – but not drummed out, as they should have been, IMO.
I was in basic training in 2008 and our drill sergeants actually did hit us, but they only did it when we were at ranges and during the gas chamber, but it wasn’t like they belted you in the face, more like a sucker punch in the stomach but I did see them kick a few guys in the nuts. I don’t think anybody ever reported anything, I thought it was pretty funny actually.
Army basic training – Fort Gordon, GA – winter 1966/67
I had been on sick call in the morning with a sore knee; doctor wrapped my knee with an elastic bandage. Later in the day during some sort of exercise a DI came behind and bumped the back of my knee with his knee, yelling “Bend that leg”. The head DI immediately got an “Oh shit” look on his face and ran over to pull the guy away from me and have a short conversation.
Lots of yelling, cursing, and name calling with their hat brim almost touching the recruits face, but that was the only actual physical contact I recall between any recruit and DI.
My brother was pre-70 US Army; his opinion has always been that FMJ was 80% accurate and 20% bullshit. The level of physical assault, having a recruit march with his pants around his ankles and sucking his thumb, was pure Hollywood. The in-your-face screaming, the psychological pressure, the swearing he saw a lot; and having gone career he got to see it over time as a lot of that changed. In his experience, when he joined, DIs would sometimes in rare circumstances “lay hands” on a recruit but it was more often a cuff to the head or a wack across the body with the baton during an exercise than the chokes and punched in FMJ. Now that isn’t to say some recruits weren’t abused but that was done in a different manner; setting some recruit that had earned the DIs ire against the better recruits in exercises like pugil sticks or the like. There was always that mythical DI somewhere who ----- but when it moved to reality said DI usually vanished damn fast. In his words “its a damn lot more accurate than that Jack Webb movie (The DI) but it isn’t history”.
Now in his experience, advanced training (Infantry School, Special Warfare, SF, Rangers) was a whole other story. There the instructors did sometimes strike/hit students and throw in some pretty physically brutal punishments but there someone was already a “proven soldier” and trying to become something soldiers themselves considered elite; they almost expected it and some of the training almost required it (in movie terms, think GI Jane). But basic boot was a different story.