David, there might be another difference between WWII training and the training of today. (For a reference point, I am 42 years old and was 22 when I went through Navy Boot Camp.)
The American society of today is centered around the individual, not the group. We are taught self-esteem from a very early age and products are marketed to us in such a way that they tell us how independent we are. The individual is king.
I can’t speak for the society of the early forties, but I think that there might have been less emphasis of this nature then.
A person who has been living on this phycological diet all of his or her life is now in basic training. A great deal of effort now must be expended to make this person function as part of a group instead of as an individual. I was not “Evil One” in boot camp, I was “Billet Number 25” when I was spoken to as an individual during an inspection. Otherwise I was simply “recruit”. Very rarely, I was addressed by my last name only, and that was to call me out of a group or to get my mail. My head was shaved and my clothes looked like everyone elses. We lived the same way, folded our bunks the same…80 people living as one person.
I think that’s the primary reason for the “breaking down”. Then the training can begin. As an aside, the feeling of camraderie under those conditions can be very strong indeed.
By the way, thanks for serving. I’ve always admired WWII veterans, even before it was fashionable.
Oh, and I almost forgot to add the quasi-mandatory anecdotal-experience info: I did Army BCT at Ft. McClellan, AL, in late summer of 1985. Lots of yelling(*) and getting face-to-face with that red Alabama dirt, but in all truth, even a true-blue pasty nerd like the 1985 me could handle it. A lot of it was “Spartan” mostly in the sense we have mentioned before: by comparison to our “ate-up” un-squared-away back-on-the-block civilian lifestyle. The services have made a big deal about how they have toughened up Basic since then, added the “culminating experience” sequences and such, but it’s probably not so much, much harder.
(*In truth, a lot of the yelling is done for the benefit of others: just so the rest of the platoon can hear Pvt. Delirious being, er, motivationally corrected on this issue so that the SDS does not have to explain it to every single man as each fucks up the same task separately)
That was handled with us by giving out “gigs.” A screw-up, when detected was cause to be publicly singled out, as in “Mister, that’s one gig.” Each gig resulted in walking a punishment tour of an hour with a rifle at shoulder arms on Saturday, right out in front of God and everybody, while everyone else was either asleep, at the PX or on a pass. Gigs were serious business. Too many and you were unfit for cadet training and shipped off to gunnery training or, horrors, some other branch of the army.
I don’t see how breaking down individualism is a prerequisite to teamwork. mean, the whole Justice league doesn’t dress like Superman, do they? Israeli society is just as individualistic as American, but we managed to learn how to work together without losing our individual and unique strengths. It was fairly simple - if one screwed up, we all suffered; if one did well, we all reaped the benefits. A march wasn’t over or and obstacle course wasn’t completed unless we all finished, even if we had to carry each other past the finish line. You can learn all that and still keep your own name.
First day of Basic, my sergeant asked me my name.
“Yehoshua, Hasamal. But most people call me ‘Josh’”
He glared at me for effect, then nodded briefly and said, “Josh. That’s good. Nice and short.”
The track record of the Israeli military speaks well for your system, Alessan. I think the major difference that you pointed out earlier is that unit cohesion is expected for a much longer time in Isreal than in American basic training. I never saw those people I spent eight weeks with again. We were indoctrinated into the Navy culture and sent on our way.
If you read accounts of combat, a phrase that keeps popping up over and over again is “everything slowed down to a crawl / my body went on auto-pilot / all I had to do was remember my training.” We train by teaching that “perfect practice makes perfect.” For enlisted men, this means learning consistency, memorizing the things that simply must be in your head at all times, and learning how to execute an order before you comprehend it, all while keeping a cool head. Airman Doors can give more insight into what that side of Lackland is like, but I have yet to encounter an airman who was unable to “switch on” that crisis mode and act in a predictable, efficient, and professional manner.
Officer training isn’t as Spartan as you think. You are torn down, you are brought together as a group, but your training in “blind obedience” lasts for about one week of the four. Then you begin to have leadership thrown at you: all of you are blindly obeying, and the next direction is “turn right at the red pole by the T in the road.” Only the T is more of a Y, and the red pole is on the left fork. Usually you get someone who says “Aw, crap. I’ve done this puzzle at Boy Scout Camp. Both forks are wrong, but we’ve got to pick one. And the faster we get told we’re wrong, the sooner we can get to the next part of the course. I say we double time it to the left.” If not, the person in command of the flight makes the call, and you carry on. We were trained to make decisions with imperfect data, and confidently execute them until it was clear we were wrong. And we learned how to react when a plan goes to hell. It was a lot like Ender’s Game, except without the cool simulations. I still carry lessons from that four-week training session with me, and I don’t think I could have finished my senior design project if I hadn’t been re-forged that summer. I had to put in a lot of hours with no tangible reward, basically trusting that my goal was worth it and that my body would recover from the sleep deprivation later. My design team followed my example (in the absence of leadership, I will usually assume it’s my job), and we got the A.
By the way, I did my Field Training (Air Force ROTC prep) at Lackland AFB during the summer of 1998. In 29 days, the coolest it ever got outside was 85 F. HUA!