Three earlier threads on the topic:
That’s what I get for limiting my search to Cafe Society. :smack:
Half-way down…
We also went through a little torture routine called “Marching to Georgia”. This involved the occupants of a set of bunkbeds to stand one in front and one at the back. On command, we would have to lift the set of bunks up and run in place with it. Imagine the noise level when an entire company was doing this at the same time.
There was also the infamous duck-walk around the “centerboard”, which was a set of tables and benches that ran the length of the barracks. Very painful and tiring.
What happened if you were too unconditioned/weak/exhausted to finish the set?
Basically, they’d insult your parents and your manhood. Physical punishment other than exercise is not permitted. The Navy had what were called “marching parties”. If your Company Commander was pissed off about the performance of the company, he could punish the Recruit Petty Officer in Charge (RPOC) by sending him over for an hour or so of brutal exercise with his rifle. A perpetual offender of lesser status could also be sent on a marching party. If he was a total fuck-up, he could be “sent back” to start boot camp over, or could be sent to what was called the 4050 Company (IIRC), which was a disciplinary unit that had a person doing things like digging holes and filling them back up, or carrying buckets of sand around the base at double time. The latter punishment was just short of being court martialed or sent to Captain’s Mast. Some people were just misfits and were processed out of the Navy.
Reading this thread makes me glad I was never in the military -
but cheers to all you guys who served.
mmm
Yeah, that’s another thing . . . Ermy won’t let his recruits just say anything; they have to shout, or, as Ermy puts it, “Sound off like you got a pair!” Is that silliness true-to-life?!
I went to Coast Guard boot camp (Cape May, NJ) in the late 1970s and it was closer to “Stripes” than “Full Metal Jacket”. But then our CC (Company Commander) was an SKC with 19 years in and more concerned with finishing his 20th year so he could retire on half-pay. Yes, you called him “Sir” and saluted everyone wearing a “rope” (agulet?) on their shoulder. There was definitely no punching recruits although he offered to take on anyone in the gym with boxing gloves if they wanted. No racial epithets. And yes, you have to start and finish each sentence with “Sir”.
No sexy MPs that looked like P J Soles or Sean Young though. Although we did have one female who teaching us how to stencil on names on clothes had on the blackboard as an example "V REDGRAVE. This was shortly after the Oscars where Vanessa Redgrave thanked the academy for not bowing to pressure from “Zionist hoodlums”, as the Palestinian trotskyite whore called her opponents. Interesting name to use so being a bit of a prankster
I objected and the female E-4 apologized
Always remember at one point a BMC (Coast Guard humor has BMCs being dumber than Keith Olberman and Biill O"Reilly put together) telling us “Korea was a war. Vietnam was a conflict. And the Bay of Pigs, well, that was just Cubans against Cubans”.
When I got out I remember asking a guy at work who just got out of the Marines what he thought of the new picture “Full Metal Jacket”. He was very complimentary, saying it was the most realistic depiction of Marine boot camp he had ever seen. He would have been there in the early 1980s
When I was in Army basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in the early 1990’s, we were only to refer to our drill instructors as “Sergeant.” This caused some of some problems later on at A.I.T. where everybody understood that every drill sergeant was to be referred to as “Drill Sergeant.” Why things were (are?) different at Lost-in-the-Woods, I don’t know.
Regarding the initial question in this thread, I found that opening scene rather realistic, although it was rare for a drill instructor to insult us in racial terms or to use violence in our training. Once in the mess hall a drill instructor grabbed my uniform to pull me towards him as I was walking by. Another time a drill sergeant kicked me in the foot when I taking up a defensive position during some stupid war game in the woods. An officer had just asked me some question and I had answered him without saying “sir.” That’s about it as far as direct, obvious abuse goes. Of course, my drill sergeants tended to use us recruits against each other, and there were a few incidents of violence in the barracks late at night for one thing or another . . .
And BrainGlutton, yes, that silliness is true to life.
WHAT?!? ARE you fucking KIDDING ME? YOU are telling me that you can’t DO PUSH UPS?!?!? GET YOUR GOAT SMELLING ASS OVER HERE ON THE DOUBLE!"
Yeah, I suck at this.
Army Basic at Ft. Jackson in '87.
Re: the race issue. Our Drill Sergeants specifically pulled us aside (on a Sunday, IIRC) and basically gave us the 30 second racially-sensitive speech. He said “Do you all see Private (what’s his name) over there. He is not black. He is dark green. You are all equals. You are just different shades of green. Now get back to work.”
There was also no direct physical violence, but we had one guy who could screw up lunch. Every day there was something else wrong with him. One day, one of the Drill Sergeants taught a class in front of the barracks while the other two took Private Problem behind the barracks. They were gone about 20 minutes. I don’t know what they did, but Private Problem shifted gears and became Private Perfect after that. Nobody ever said what happened, but I wouldn’t doubt there was some physical coertion involved.
By coincidence, there was another Drill Sergeant from the platoon next door who was the biggest blackest most gruff looking mountain of a man I had ever seen in my life. I was glad I wasn’t in his platoon until I heard him speaking to some individuals. He would get right in your face and ask questions like “are you doing okay?” or “hang in there, this will be over soon” and other words of encouragement. I thought this sort of showed “the man behind the curtain” and that the whole thing was an act. I sorta knew this already, because before I left a friend’s father (who was a DI and Vietnam Vet) told me it was all an act.
Yeah, lots of good memories about basic. Met some interesting people. And funny stories.
A guy in my platoon shat himself that first night. (1981)
Actually, from what I understand, only the US Air Force considers “Sir” or “Ma’am” (gender appropriate, of course) as an appropriate address for NCOs outside of Basic Training. We were told that once we got out of Basic, we were expected to greet NCOs from the other branches with the appropriate greetings, which varied from one branch to the next. IIRC, most Army NCOs could be called “Sergeant” except for the Senior NCOs. All Navy NCOs were “Petty Officer” until they made CPO. All Marine NCOs were to be addressed by their specific rank.
That said, the one base I was at where we saw a lot of those guys (so far, I’m only on my second base now), nobody seemed to mind if an Airman called an NCO “Sir”, as long as he could resist the evident urge to salute Petty Officers in BDUs (bird ranks on the collar…)
And Air Force Basic Military Training during 2007, the Military Training Instructors (never Drill Sergeants or Drill Instructors, as this is not the Army or the Marines) would hardly ever swear (the strongest curse word they were allowed to use was “Piss”, making for some very peculiar phrases to hear an angry man scream), they wouldn’t lay a hand on us, but they would get close enough so you could feel the heat from their skin trying to make us flinch. PT was a common motivational tool used to help us self-correct mistakes we had made (so yeah, they’d smoke us for what felt like forever, doing pushups, flutter kicks, and squat thrusts over and over again).
And we were familiar with “Up… down… up… down… halfway up… Uh-oh, Trainee Nicklenuts let his knees touch the ground. Everybody start over at one!”
BTW, doing pushups on a waxed tile floor sucks. You start sweating and it’s hard to keep your hands under you. Especially motivating PT routines in basic could include “Making the dayroom walls sweat” and either “Pushing Texas” or “Pushing Texas Straight To Hell”
In regards to “Making the dayroom walls sweat”, some guys I have met liked to use that as bragging rights for how hardcore their flight was that they did that. “Hey Rags, did your TI ever make you do that?” “Nope.” “Ahh, your flight was soft, huh?” “Nah, we just never screwed up enough to have to do that.” 
Only time an airman got called out for his race was as a compliment (!) when we were doing field training. Our Dorm Chief happened to be a black guy (rather nice dude, very smart guy. Can’t remember his name for the life of me.) One of the instructors told him to go out into the woods a bit, and to try and conceal himself behind a bush where he could still look at us. The instructor (which I must add was a good ol’ Southern boy judging by the accent) pointed out how the guy’s dark skin tone allowed him to blend in much better than any of us white guys could hope to do. Then he followed it up with “And there’s nothin’ wrong with that! I want all of you to use every weapon in your arsenal!”
And he was right, that Dorm Chief could blend in perfectly with the scrub foliage around San Antonio no problem, and I really doubt I’d be able to pull that off without the aid of face paint.
Yes. Or at least it used to be that way.
I had an instructor in Basic who was leading a female flight. He shouted that at them, then added “A pair of lungs.”
I’m sure it’s been brought up before in other similar threads, but this seems like the right time to [re]introduce the Wall to Wall Counseling Field Manual. (Links to page with scribd document.) (Assorted foul language as you scroll through the document.)
A friend of mine in a sort-of elite unit told me of a special personal exercise they were occassionally given, known as the “transformer”: helmet on head, a 10-liter jerrican on your back, a 5-liter jerrican on your chest, a MAG (M-240) machine gun in your right hand, an RPG-7 tube in your left… and start running.
It should be noted that this type of thing happens only in basic training. The ‘drop and give me twenty’ shtick is confined strictly to boot camp.
That reminds me of a scene from Crimson Tide. Early in the movie, the men are loading onto a bus and one of the officers begins screaming at an enlisted guy who stands at attention, taking the abuse and then is ordered to drop and start doing push-ups.
I’m sure anyone associated with the military knows this would never, ever happen in real life. What’s more, I’m relatively certain that if an officer started giving what for to an enlisted man, the guy would have no problem telling the officer to go fuck himself. He might get written up for doing so, but he certainly isn’t going to stand at attention and take it.
Yeah, from what I’ve experieinced, an enlisted would be pretty ballsy to tell an officer to F off, but an officer has too many other things to do than yell at someone. That’s an NCO’s job.
That thing is hilarious. A part of me thought it was for real for a moment until I saw it has 2009 as the date.