Military manpower/boot camp

Factual Questions
1

A couple questions.

  1. The first is perhaps a stupid question, but I’m curious.

According to a book I am reading, “How to make War” by James F. Dunnigan, for each combat position there are 10 support positions. That sounds about right, considering it was something like 1:6 in WW2 and the military has only gotten more technological since then.

Anyway, Infantry is generally considered the crappiest/most dangerous job out there so most people avoid it, but I’m sure there is some segment of people who join the military and want to shoot things.

Now, considering that often people don’t get assigned to what they want(or were verbally promised by the recruiter), would there be a good possibility of someone who wanted to be in the infantry yet got assigned to being a clerk somewhere? Or are the numbers of people who want particulary types of jobs such that it’s the other extreme that’s the problem(people who maybe wanting a support position and get shipped off to the infantry)?

  1. Is it true that boot camp has become, according to Mr. Dunnigan, a “Low Stress” Zone because a lot of recruits parents complained too much? Or is Mr. Dunnigan suffering from the “40 miles barefoot in the snow” syndrome on this particular issue?
2

Since I’m sure this old canard will come up, I’ll provide the Snopes link now. The thing about “stress cards” has the tiniest grain of truth, but is mostly false.

http://www.snopes.com/military/stress.htm

3

Mostly the recruiter doesn’t promise anything. I always wondered why people in basic training always wanted to kill their recruiters – I don’t think there was ever any real merit to the desire, but more of a way to burn off stress.

The following applies (applied in 1989 anyway) to the Army; I imagine all of the services are similar:

You recruiter qualifies you initially, and does some initial paperwork, and takes you to MEPS – the military entrance processing station. There you take a test called ASVAB – the armed services vocational aptitude battery. At this point you’re mixed in with potential recruits from all of the services. Then you talk with a career counselor of your chosen branch, based on your test results. This is where you’re told that you’re eligible for certain jobs x, y, or z. Of course if you’re aptitude is stronger in one job or the other, they’ll try to steer you that way. Additionally if there is a strong demand for certain jobs, they’ll try to steer you that way. Remember, at this point you’re not under any real obligation to anyone for anything. For some jobs, you take an additional test – like I took an artificial language test (and passed really well, but ended up not wanting to be a linguist). So you pick your job, and they add that to your “contract.” Take the physical (you’re mixed with the other services again, although some branches have different tests for the physicals). Once you’re completely qualified, you go over your contract, which includes things like initial insurance, GI Bill contributions, guaranteed duty station if applicable (I picked Germany), and of course, what your job is.

Of course if you flunk out of your advanced training, you usually have the option to get discharged – honorably at that. Or you can accept another, simpler (i.e., less brainy but possibly much more demanding) job for the convenience of the army. You know – become a cook or an infantryman (yes, there are a lot of good people that pick these from the offset).

Finally you get to be permanent party somewhere. At this point, despite your training, you can go anywhere and do any job that you might be assigned to. Generally, though, this doesn’t happen. The army’s paid a lot of good money to train you for one thing, and it’s better that you do that one thing. However, I’m told (and this isn’t something I “know” to be true) that it’s common for 6-foot-plus people to be sent off to become MP’s when they get to Korea (they scare the little Koreans) – I’m sure I’ve seen this mentioned here; try doing a search.

I do know of one instance where someone in my rare field (there were 90 of us in the whole army) was sent off to another unit against her will. But it was so rare that it kind of astounded everyone.

4

My Army basic training is over ten years old now. At the time I thought it was pretty hard, but people who were “old timers” to me then said my experience at Fort Leonard Wood was a cake walk. Drill sergeants didn’t beat us up is one example (although how often that ever really happened to anybody, I don’t know); a better example, perhaps, is that we weren’t supposed to run very far in combat boots. Although we were cussed out daily, this wasn’t supposed to happen, either. Supposedly over the years punishments for various infractions have become lighter. I do feel, from talking to soldiers who went through basic training at various times before and after my experience with basic training that it does seem to be getting “easier.” Of course, things were always much harder back in the day–as you put it, the “40 miles barefoot in the snow” syndrome. "

As to your other question, the vast majority of people I served with were in the jobs they wanted. Or at least the jobs they thought they wanted when they signed up. When you join the Army, you sign a contract, and on that contract is the job you will have. I find in doubtful that very many people get promised a shot at a certain kind of training or assignment and then somehow get forced into something else. The only cases I know of where people ended up in different jobs than those promised them are people who for one reason or another were unable to complete their training in their chosen fields. But even in these cases, their contracts spelled out what would happen. For example, I joined up to be a medic. I completed that training. However, had I “flunked out” for some reason, I would have been sent to a different school. That school was on the contract I signed, so my new destination wouldn’t have been a surprise to me. Anyway, I seriously doubt that “often people don’t get assigned to what they want,” at least since the early 1990s, which is when I joined up. Of course, the military is a huge place and weird things happen, so I’m sure somewhere out there people occasionally sign up to become infantrymen and somehow become clerks by mistake, but things like that have to be pretty rare.

And I see now on preview that Balthisar has made much of my post redundant. He also explained things better than I. However, it’s late for me, I took a surprisingly long time to type out this post, and therefore I shall hit Submit Reply anyway. :slight_smile:

5

I just wanted to pull this out of your op HPL. I can only really speak for the Army (1990), but you sign a contract when you pass your physical at MEPS and then you take your first oath. For some MOS, such as infantry, your contract will be for a career field. For example, if you join as an infantryman (such as I did) your contract will read CMF 11, or Career Management Field 11. This means that depending on the Army’s personnel needs you may become an 11B (light infantry), 11C (mortar), 11D (TOW Gunner), or 11M (mech infantry).

With another MOS your contract may read for a specific job, such as if you get into military intelligence, for example, your contract read 96B (tactical intelligence analyst) or 97D (counter-intelligence agent).

I would point out that sometimes you may not have much to choose from. A great deal of MOS slots are held for people just out of high school. I waited a year after HS to join and although I had high test scores, the only MI slots offered to me at the MEP station was for translator. Thus I went infantry…ironic that later I would work in the MI field.

I’m not really sure how the other armed forces do their contracts. IIRC, in the Air Force you select 3 fields in your preferred order and the AF goes from there depending on their manning requirements. (I had a good friend that had…not so good test scores…and was told he could become a physical therapist by his AF recruiter if he signed up for certain fields…he ended up a bomb tech. To be honest, I really don’t know how that happened, he wouldn’t talk about it, but he still hates his recruiter 15 years after the fact.)

In the contemporary US Army I’ve never heard of someone signing a contract for MOS training, for example, as an infantryman and instead being MOS trained as a mechanic (instead of going to Benning you get sent to Leonardwood).

Having said that, there is a couple of exceptions.

  1. You wash out of what ever MOS you sign up for and the army offers you a different MOS (I saw a couple of guys in Benning that signed contracts for infantry but failed the eye-test in reception. They were offered MOS training as MPs instead)
  2. After basic and AIT you get to your permanent unit and get assigned to a different job, as per the need of the army. I spent 2 years as an infantryman (11M) in Germany but when I was stationed in Ft. Hood I was placed in a S-2 shop working as an intelligence analyst (96B) slot for a year. My last year I spent as an armorer and mail clerk for a brigade HHC (Yeah, I became a REMF–sham city!).

Now, do some recruiters lie? Sure. I was lucky with mine, he told me exactly what it was going to be like. I would point out that in 4 years of active duty I never heard any outrageous stories like you see in some movies. A lot of the lies were more along the lines of not telling the whole story. ie, yeah, you can get an option for Rangers or SF after basic. Truth is anyone can apply to the Rangers or SF and be accepted if they meet the requirements. And you won’t meet those requirements until after basic…or that the army pays attention to your top 3 choices for duty station…well, it’s in your 201 so I’m sure someone looked at them (at sometime) but in reality you’re going where the army needs you, regardless if it was in your top 3 choices or not.

On preview I see that I need to type faster. Damnit, Mephisto & Balthisar I didn’t type all of this out to be denied my shining chance of glory.

6

I remember an interview with a recruiter I saw on The Discovery Channel. He said some people come in with an idea of what they want to do, but quite a few come in and say, “I wanna blow stuff up.” Marine recruiter, I think.

7

My good friend, Mike and I were at TBS (The Basic School) in Quantico as Marine 2ndLts. Most officers do not have a contract for a specific field (lawyers and pilots being the exception). In 1988, they used a “Quality Spread” in assigning MOS’s. They broke the class of about 200 into three groups, top third, middle third, bottom third, based on class standing at that time (2/3 the way through the 6 month course). The first guy in the top third got his first choice, then the first guy in the middle third, then the first guy in the bottom third, then the second guy in the top third… you get the idea. Mike was the LAST guy in the top third, which translates to him being the 198th guy to pick out of 200. He listed all of the POSSIBLE jobs that were open to our class, I think there were 28, in HIS order of preference. Infantry was first, Ground Supply was dead last. He got Ground Supply.