I’ve heard that during the draft era people like this were frequently just ridden till they broke down. (Especially if they were black or druggies or other kinds of misfits.) Basically, if you didn’t recognize the fundamental fact that Uncle Sam owned your ass, you were human garbage and treated as such. If you were not going to make a soldier, the training cadre felt no particular responsibility towards your continued wellbeing.
During the Draft era, I could believe that happened, thankfully for many reasons, we are now far removed from the draft era. I think citing this will be tough however.
You need to spend at least 180 days on active duty and get a general or higher discharge before you’re eligible for benefits.
Robin
Still at some point the Army would’ve had to decide the recruit is a total waste of time and money and not worth keeping around (even as motivation/entertainment for other soldiers).
Conscripts actually had to swear an oath :eek: ?! That’s messed up. Isn’t an oath taked under duress completely meaningless? 
Wow… you made me have to look that up. Company C, 4th Battalion, 10th Infantry. Finally you’ve justified my holding onto all of that stuff through the years.
I know you’re looking for retirement hangouts, so I’m going to assume you weren’t going through basic training with me. Were you a DI or a DOD employee or doing something else there at the time?
If you are truly serious and not whooshing me, that sure is different, and you all sound like a bunch of pansy-ass wusses. SO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND GET OFF THE RAG, YOU PUSSIES!!! YOU’RE IN THE ARMY NOW, AND AIN"T NOBODY GONNA TUCK YOU IN AT NIGHT OR WIPE YOUR ASS, SO DROP AND GIVE ME 20 GOOD ONES!!
Sorry, thought this was the pit, and it just brought back fond memories of torturing green recruits…
Yes, everyone had to take an oath to follow the Dear Leader, or whatever he/it was called in those days. Oddly enough, the person in our particular group of 100 or so, the one draftee who scored highest on the tests, refused to take it. He was carted off to jail and I was given the group’s records to transport to the next station instead, as I was #2 in line (they must not have heard the oath I really took under my breath as I was far from a willing soldier).
Back in those days they had the draft, and that would include a certain percentage of people who didn’t really want to be there. Most could be convinced that it was in their best interests to make the best of it, become reasonably good soldiers and put up with it until discharge. Those who were determined to buck the system would be given a hard time, or lots more would be doing it if they saw how easy it was.
Really hard cases who were not amenable to discipline and were always striking NCOs etc., would probably have been got rid of eventually as they were more trouble than they were worth.
Depends.
My cousin was in the USMC. He got kicked out during Basic on grounds of “complete stupidity” but the discharge says Medical.
The complete stupidity consists of having hurt his ankle and being too macho to say anything when it was swelling. If he’d gone to the meds at that point, they would have given him other stuff to do while the rest of the recruits were jumping obstacles; if the meds thought he wouldn’t recover on time, a medical leave and “come back with the next batch” - at least, this is what he was told when they were putting him on the bus back home. Instead, the next time they were on the obstacle run he landed on that foot again and when the sarge realized his foot had been purple and swollen beforehand… well, I understand a pissed off DI is not a nice sight.
So in at least this one case, “Medical Discharge” stands for “presence of brain doubtful, not bothering do an MRI to search for it.”
OMG!!! Foul language!!! TRAINEE ABUSE!!! Turn in your Hat, and your drill sergeant badge. The orders announcing the award of both will be rescended and you are no longer authorized to wear them. Go push paper in the S shop while we outprocess you. It’s a shame… you were a decent drill, but you just went and ruined your entire military career by swearing at recruits.
Spanish soldiers, draftees or not (no more draftees right now), swear an oat at the end of any spot of training - this is the first time I see it considered “under duress”! The “duress” for draftees is for serving, not for the oath itself.
After all, if you’re not going to swear at the end of training (getting a trip to the pen that’s longer than your service period), you may as well get your ass to the pen a month before at the start of training. During the last part of the 200 years or so that Spain had the draft, before conscious objectors and civil service, the usual method for “getting out” was to “volunteer for the Red Cross”: you had to serve a bit longer, but you usually got to serve at home, didn’t have to live in barracks…
I had the unfortunate experience of getting my knee injured when I went into the Army in late 2003. Stupid unarmed combat training.
Anyways, it was a week before they sent us home for the holidays, so the physician’s assistant gave me a sheet of rehab exercises to do during the two weeks off and told me I’d be re-evaluated once I got back.
Yeah. It’s hard to do rehab exercises when you can hardly move your knee…
Anyways, I got back, and since I was physically unable to continue training, they put me in a Physical Rehabilitation and Training Program (PTRP) company (This was at Ft. Jackson, SC). Basically, we were all a bunch of people who had in one way or another gotten ourselves crippled during either Basic or AIT (we even had one kid who fell out of his bunk the first morning of reception and broke his wrist, and therefore had not even seen Basic Training yet). The NCOs there were drill sergeants, but it was a much more laid back (But still quite structured) environment than the high stress training of basic. We basically ran the reception battalion…we handed out the clothes to the recruits, we processed the paperwork folders, we did the guard duty…
But for a lot of us, it was completely unproductive to healing. In my case, I arrived at the company on crutches and with a 10 minute standing profile (meaning that I was to stand no more than 10 minutes out of every 60)…and my first night there, I was put on patrol duty for two hours, meaning I got to crutch myself around the battalion with a girl with a broken arm. I was also put on a top bunk…on the second floor of the building. Remember, bum knee, crutches, etc.
I did end up getting pretty close to well…after sitting in the unit for 4 months. However, I still couldn’t run for very long on it, and was given discharge orders for day 178 of my time on active duty. Entry-level discharge, determined I wasn’t injured enough for a medical, and shipped off two days before I got get any benefits.
I’m still burned about it to this day, because I -tried- my hardest to get back to training. Tripod pushups are not fun, but I did them to stay in shape…I busted my butt on the elliptical in the rehab gym during PT…things like that.
On top of all this…I never actually saw a real doctor for my injury the entire time I was hurt. I was diagnosed by a civilian physician’s assistant, and assigned to a very nice Captain who was a physical therapist…but never actually got an MRI from the military (when I got home, I got one, torn medial meniscus, yay!), and the only time I saw an actual doctor was when I had a migraine so bad the DS sent me to the emergency room and and a MAJ doctor gave me a shot of Imitrex and gave me a prescription for pills should I get another one. And then the discharge two days before I was to become permanent party really pissed me off.
Anyways, that was a rant. But at least on the medical issues, if it can be fixed and it’s long term, at some of the training sites (I believe just Leonard Wood and Jackson) they have PTRP units for long term recovery. They aren’t exactly run well, but they are there to give an injured trainee with a chance to recover the chance to recover and stay on.
If you removed the swearing from my DI’s vocabulary, it would have been a very quiet drill.
Silent, even. 
Guess things have really changed. You mean recruits now are people?
My drill sergeants all swore (in 2003/2004). One was personally trying to quit at the request of his wife, which made smokings all the worse if he got pissed off enough to let a swear word slip out, which usually ended up with him cussing himself out for cussing, cussing us out for driving him to cussing, and cussing at us the whole time we were pushing, doing front-back-gos, or whatever other various and other sundry exercises we were subjected to.
I mean, one drill sergeant in my platoon called one of the exercises we did “The Monkey F—er” because in his own words, when asked why he called it that…
“Well, why the f— not? You look like a g-ddamn monkey f—ing a football when you do it.”
His comments were not censored.
My son’s brother signed up a couple years ago. He didn’t complete boot camp and was discharged as “failure to acclimate” or something similar. I forget the exact wording.
Was that suppose to read brother’s son?
MOS?
ASMOED? Sheesh. I thought I had enough family members in the military to know the language. At least I know SNAFU and FUBAR 
Why does the army care whether you have testicles?
MOS is the equivilent of the Rate in the Navy. I think it is Military Occupational Specialty.
ASMO, means to be sent back a week in basic training. I cannot for the life of me, remember what the acronym parses out to.
Jim
I don’t know and I’m not sure if I want to bring the subject up to him now. It may be a sticky thing after all these years.