I’ve been through boot camp myself, but still I’ve always wondered how long military boot camps as we know them today have been around.
Just say in the U.S. in the 19th Century, did a guy who joined the U.S. Cavalry for example have to go to a boot camp of some kind? Did he see a military recruiter in his home town first to enlist, and from there go to boot camp, or did he just report to a unit and take it from there? Did he have to know how to read and write? Did the USN or USMC of the time also go to boot camps? How about during the American Revolution (or American Rebellion depending on your perspective.) Did any of the armies or navies of that time have boot camps?
Did the men of ancient Rome have to go to a type of boot camp before being assigned to a Roman Legion?
As far as the 21st Century goes, do the military forces of other nations of the world have similar boot camp systems to the USA? Do the DI’s in other nations wear a “Smokey Bear” type of hat? Do military boot camps differ from culture to culture??
The Israeli military has boot camps, but they operate very differently than in the U.S. All IDF combat troops (and many non combat troops) receive their unit designation before they start basic training, and is sent to train with his future unit. That means that potential tankers are sent to the Armored Corps boot camp, intel types are sent to the Intelligence corps boot camp, and so forth. With infantry, every Infantry Brigade has its own Training Battalion with its own training camp. For those troops not designated before enlistment (usually draftees with low physical or mental potential) there are several “General IDF” training camps which function similar to American boot camps, and put them through a brief 3-to-8 week course before sending them off to various professional schools.
The methods of training are also different: no professional D.I.s of any sort, but rather a full company of NCOs and officers, all of whom take part in instruction. They are aided by “instructors”, NCOs - usually female - who specialize in one specific field (phys ed, weapon use, first aid, etc.), and whose job is to impart technical knowlege.
Combat units take this one step further - the same company that starts boot camp together will end up serving together in the front; the IDF philosophy is that it doesn’t train individual combat troops, it trains combat units. Remember the first episode of Band of Brothers on HBO? Something like that. An infantry unit, for instance, will form a new company from scratch, with new recruits, new NCOs fresh out of Squad Leaders Course , new lieutenants fresh out of Officers Course (most of whom had already served as NCOs in earlier training companies) and a new captain, all going through the six-month basic and advanced training course together. In effect, the company trains itself.
I’d love to find out as well as you, though I’ll pitch in what little I know.
In the movie “Gangs of New York” they showed Army recruiters on the dock during the 1860’s, offering the new immigrants instant citizenship in exchange for a tour of military service, though I have no idea how realistic that is. I haven’t heard any complaints of the realism about that though. And in the movie “Glory”, there’s a “boot camp”. Again, I don’t know the accuracy.
I read that during the civil war, training ships were used for the Navy(the confederate navy had one, but never managed to train a crew before the war ended), but I don’t know if that counts as boot camp.
Roman recruit training was handled by the individual legion or other unit. This was pretty much the norm (if there was any organized training at all) until the advent of the modern mass armies.
During the Civil War, many (but not all) troops went through a “camp of instruction” to learn the rudiments. It would not have been as structured as we now think of boot camps as being, and the duration, level and scope of training varied widely. Most states operated depots or camps to which new recruits reported, and then they would be sent out into the field. Depending upon the manpower needs of the moment, the recruits might spend anywhere from a few days to weeks or even months at a place like Camp Chase in Columbus, Ohio.
I recently saw a demonstration of “Swordplay Through the Ages” by the Higgins Armory staff (not actually at the Higgins Armory, however). It concluded with a display of Civil War cavalry swordsmanship, and the demonstrator held up an enlarged diagram from a Union Army training manual, illustrating eight basic “cuts” and their parries. The instructors of the day had soon realized that the swordsmanship training had to be simplified as much as possible, because most of their recruits had never held a sword in their lives. Some of them had never sat a horse, either.
That may be what made formal boot camp necessary: changes in civilian life that resulted in people arriving for military service with no idea of how to use weapons, no knowledge of how to camp and live outdoors, and without the physical fitness to march all day. Boot camp became a place for everyone to learn the necessary skills and get whipped into good physical shape. Nowadays, such skills as polishing shoes, ironing clothes, and saying “Sir” and “Ma’am” are also falling into disuse in civilian life, and so have to be taught in boot camp.
This is what I understand of the training process of the 18th/early-19th Century initial training process of the British sailing Navy (mostly taken from the Patrick O’Brian and Hornblower novels, among other historical fiction), which is also probably also relevant to other sailing navies:
Enlisted sailors would be dredged up from whatever damn place the navy could find them, ranging from volunteer sailors to the pressing of drunks, criminals, the insane and anyone else the press gang could round up. The new sailors would be put aboard ship and, presuming they couldn’t desert beforehand, off they would sail.
The sailors would be rated in one of three classes, Able Seaman, Ordinary Seaman or Landsman, depending on their ability in sailor’s tasks (whether they could “hand, reef and steer”). Landsmen would be given low skill tasks, which they would be encourage to complete by, among other things, being struck by knotted ropes by bosuns mates. Those with aptitude would learn seaman’s skills, and eventually earn a higher rate. The terminally stupid or incompetent would remain landsmen and be assigned tasks commensurate with their (in)ability.
This, of course, presumed a navy which required primarily a large body of men with little more than strong backs and, where high skill positions were required, they could be learned by on-the-job training.
IIRC in the old days the US Army functioned with a classic Regimental system for most branches, where you would join a Regiment and serve with it (or it successor units, if it were split, merged or disbanded) through your career, and the regiment was predetermined by the time and place of your recruitment. Your training was conducted by the regiment (remember the US Regular Army was a very small outfit in the XIXth century: the bulk of the mobilized wartime Armies were State Militia and Volunteer regiments). There’s a scene in the old movie “Fort Apache” where they show the regiment’s sergeants meeting the new recruits, still in their civilian clothes, to start their training right at the regiment’s garrison.
As ryobserver mentions, part of what made this practical in the late 1700s-1800s was that the bulk of the force was unskilled labor, but already with some practical survival skills that could be applied to the task at hand.
Now, the concept of a central training/education program already DID exist – for the Regular Army/Navy commissioned officers, who had the academies at West Point and Annapolis to gain technical knowledge, from where they’d get assigned to units as junior officers to get the practical side of their training. As the US Military (and the population) became larger and more dependent on technology, and the transportation became available to move large numbers of people, the concept was translated to enlistees with the system of centralized training complexes.