Wow, looking up the link I saw a few Cabells, and:
William Henry Cabell, a 16 year old, enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute in January, 1862. Once when he was on sick leave he sneaked away from home, and fought with his older brother, who was a Confederate officer, in a battle near Richmond. He even participated in a bloody charge that won the battle. After the battle he was forced to return to VMI by his parents. He was eighteen when the VMI corps were called to aid the Confereracy, and he fought side by side with his younger brother. After all the carnage that occurred he found his brother’s body along with two others, killed by a single cannon shell.
This appears to be misleading, since it was William who died at New Market, and his brother Cadet Robert Gamble Cabell who found his body.
Google Books result of a book on VMI Cadets who fought in New Market: The Corps Forward
And had Robert died, there wouldn’t have been one of the greatest of American authors, since he was his father…
Strange question. If you are at war with someone, why *wouldn’t *you attack a training base? If you can actually reach the enemy training camp and attack it effectively, there are few more effective targets.
Reasons:
its easier to fight untrained, possibly unarmed, trainees than fully trained, armed veterans.
any trainees you kill or injure won’t be around to fight you later.
kill the trainers, destroy training equipment, make it hard to train any more people.
make the next lot of kids scared to enlist at all.
The VMI cadets weren’t even themselves directly attacked–they mobilized to go to the battle. They marched 80 miles in four rainy days and went directly into the fight, playing a critical role in the Confederate victory. VMI commemorates their bravery to this day.
In garrison and larger FOBs it’s the job of the MPs and the Force Protection. It’s not to say that we didn’t walk around with rifles and full magazines, but I think the brass was more worried about Blue on Blue. On deployment to smaller FOBs we’d all chip in. We’d all man the berm if the alarm sounded.
It makes sense, in that you guys tend to have much bigger camps then we did. There are only a handful of bases in all of the IDF ground forces with more than a few hundred troops; even my basic training unit was battalion-sized.
When I was in USAF pilot training a question came up about what we would do if the US was attacked. We were in Oklahoma very near the center of the country. We had 100-ish entirely unarmed aircraft, a hundred or so fully qualified pilot instructors and a couple hundred partly trained pilots ranging from rank beginners to he-will-graduate-tomorrow. Plus the usual assortment of non-flying uspport folks: cops, mechanics, truckers cooks, etc.
The USAF had a plan for us to do something useful. There’s always a plan. Regardless of whether any particular trainee or recruit knows what it is.
Now I’m also sure that if a battlion of Soviet mechanized infantry magically materialized outside the main gate the base defense effort would have been useless against that much combat power. And so we’d never have had time to put our post-attack plans into effect.
But that was not considered a credible threat.
Some goons with guns & an explosive-laden truck would have been able to make a mess, but not enough to prevent us from ending their adventure with extreme prejudice & going back to business as usual that afternoon minus a few percent losses.
The civilian world tends to stop in a whimper & wail of CNN-hand-wringing when it takes a hit. The military mostly shrugs & keeps going.
At the very first few moments after arrival a new recruit swears to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.” and to follow the orders of those duly appointed to lead him.
You bet your ass if the actual domestic military base where training is done were under attack, those soldiers would be given weapons and ammunition, and integrated into the immediate defense of the base. Not key position, not leadership positions, but real soldier jobs.
Training centers are in places actually on the soil of the country. A terrorist attack is generally a squad sized or smaller event. Against a military base like Ft. Benning, or Camp Lejune it’s pretty much a police matter. If it is a significant military force, like battalion or division sized (where the heck did they come from?) engaging in an actual attack, there are a lot of very experienced combat leaders here. And probably more ammunition per soldier than any other type of base. They are gonna fall out, and counter-attack, as soon as possible. (Not to mention calling in air support, and re-inforcement from everywhere.)
This is a hijack and apologies to the OP about it but have you before or would you be willing now to start a thread about your experiences in the IDF? From what little I know about them they seem unique in a number of ways.
Second hijack did you see Waltz With Bashir and what did you think of it?
No. They would only get in the way. They would be locked down after 100% accountability of each Soldier. Their action in the defense of the base (if any) would be self-defense only. Someone would have to actually invade the barracks or immediate area of the recruits for them to be fighting anyone.
This isn’t so much due to their trainee status, as it is their “not here to defend the base” status. All the other units on the base (combat or otherwise) would follow similar procedures.
It’s not like Soldiers are running around CONUS military bases with weapons and ammunition. If FT Benning was attacked, I would be able to drive home and return with my personal firearms and ammunition faster than I could arm myself on the base.
I won’t touch on base defense in a war zone, but if you are picturing everyone on the base grabbing their weapon to defend it and fight off the attack, you couldn’t be further from the reality.
From my experience in the regular Army, the Army Reserves, and the regular Navy, I’d have to say that there’s no way someone not trained in the use of the weapons would be issued said weapons. In other words, fresh recruits would certainly not be involved in actively defending the place as armed personnel.
Alessan- I can’t speak for the other services, but Marine recruits are given their rifles extremely early in training. I can’t pin down an exact day, since the first week is essentially one giant blur in my memory, but it was no later than the second or third day.
Bear_Nenno Right. In fact ammo and weapons are deliberately kept far away from each other.