Basic Training

This is a place for veterans of military service to remember and reflect. War time or peace. Any service.

Moderators: DuncaninFrance, Niner Delta

Post Reply
User avatar
Niner
Site Admin
Posts: 11520
Joined: Sat Mar 15, 2003 1:00 pm
Location: Lower Alabama

Basic Training

Post by Niner » Sat Jun 13, 2020 10:19 am

There is a facebook page on Harmony Church at Ft. Benning. Apparently that part of Ft. Benning has been training troops since WWII and maybe before. Most of the people posting on facebook were trained in the 80's. Apparently, for many of them, that training was the hardest service they ever experienced....and good for them. I, recently, out of boredom, posted a few things from my souvenir cycle book from the summer of 69 on that page. One thing I posted about this morning was the "infiltration course".

The infiltration course was a sort of amusement park military exercise. It was done for affect at night after doing a dry run in the daytime. Some of the family members of the cadre even came out and sat in some bleachers set off to one side to watch the fireworks. Trainees marched into a deep trench at the end of the special infiltration course as the sun went down. When it was completely dark Machine guns on short towers would start firing and the tracers would make the real bullets evident in the night air. Then some explosions would go off from shallow craters and continue in random sequence. Then it was show time.

The trainee, with rifle in hand and helmet liner on head comes up out of the trench and begins to low crawl. He doesn't get far before he finds himself crawling under wire entanglements. All the while the machine gun bullets and the explosions going on.

Of course the machine guns were high enough up and locked into a trajectory that wouldn't likely cause them to depress and actually shoot any trainees. A trainee could have gotten up and walked through the course without getting shot in the head. But... the trainees weren't told anything about how it worked and nobody wanted to test the theory out.
Attachments
course.jpg
infiltration.jpg
three.jpg
two.jpg
User avatar
DuncaninFrance
Global Moderator Sponsor 2011-2017
Posts: 10934
Joined: Fri Oct 06, 2006 3:08 pm
Location: S.W.France
Contact:

Re: Basic Training

Post by DuncaninFrance » Sat Jun 13, 2020 3:22 pm

I think that the whole point is that the only effective soldier is a TRAINED soldier and the regimes put in place at the various training camps of any Army were only effective if they were able to produce the Standard Squaddie.
Thank goodness that they were able to do so................... :GBR: :NET: :NZ: :AUS: :CAN: :USA:
Duncan

What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? -- W.C. Fields
"Many of those who enjoy freedom know little of its price."
You can't fix Stupid, but you can occasionally head it off before it hurts something.
User avatar
Niner Delta
Global Moderator Sponsor 2011-2017
Posts: 4866
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 10:51 pm
Location: Sequim, WA

Re: Basic Training

Post by Niner Delta » Sat Jun 13, 2020 6:18 pm

I went through the Field Artillery Noncommissioned Officer Candidate Course (Shake-N-Bake school) at
Ft Sill, it was 3 months. They took it one step (or more) further, as they had a night compass course that was made
for you to be captured by enemy forces (permanent party) soldiers and taken to the VC village to be
interrogated. They had hooches and everything to make it look real. The point was to torture you until you
gave up and signed a paper, of course no one did. They literally beat us, there were several things they did.
The worse was stretch you out with your hands on a low rail like a hitching rail for a horse with your feet way out
until you were just suspended by your hands and feet. Then kick out your feet and you fell on your face, which
wasn't that bad. But while stretched out they would pull up your shirttail and slap real hard on your side, just above
your beltline, with a cupped hand. A lot and hard! Most of us were pissing pink after that. Another was making you
sit with your legs and arms around a 12" post, then push down on your knees, trust me, it hurts. Also we had to
low crawl through a mud pit while the rest were lined up on each side and were tossing a 10 foot long, 12" around
log back and forth while we crawled between the lines, hoping they didn't drop the log on you. They did other things
to us too, the worst day of training, ever. We were bruised all over. Heard later they revised the torture because they
broke a guy's leg. The course was a volunteer only thing, so I guess we asked for it...... :mrgreen:


.
:USA:

Peace is that brief, quiet moment in history.......... when everybody stands around reloading.
User avatar
Niner
Site Admin
Posts: 11520
Joined: Sat Mar 15, 2003 1:00 pm
Location: Lower Alabama

Re: Basic Training

Post by Niner » Sat Jun 13, 2020 6:37 pm

I remember a vc make believe village at Sill. It was pretty sketchy at best. But I wasn't in NCO school and wasn't tortured. The worst part of what I went through was going over a suspension bridge over a really deep ditch made out of ropes with some rotten and missing planks while they harassed you to go faster. Never got the point of that. No torture though. Something about what they did to you, Vern, had to have been against the rules.... unless it was carried out by agent trainees of one of those black sites where Bush..and probably Obama too...used to torture "terrorists" until it was no longer fashionable.
User avatar
Niner Delta
Global Moderator Sponsor 2011-2017
Posts: 4866
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2004 10:51 pm
Location: Sequim, WA

Re: Basic Training

Post by Niner Delta » Sun Jun 14, 2020 6:19 pm

The permanent party guys that captured us were called "aggressor force". I'm sure most of it
was against the rules, but that didn't stop Drill Sgts either. After graduation you spent couple of
months with a stateside battery for OJT. I stayed at Sill for mine and that's when I heard they broke a
guy's leg and had to stop most of the torture. You remember the village better than me, I just remember
the hooches and the aggressors dressed in black. Don't remember the suspension bridge at all.


.
:USA:

Peace is that brief, quiet moment in history.......... when everybody stands around reloading.
User avatar
Aughnanure
Moderator
Posts: 3131
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2005 5:59 am
Location: Glen Innes, NSW, Australia

Re: Basic Training

Post by Aughnanure » Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:41 am

download/file.php?id=15594&mode=view (No 3 above)

That picture brings back some memories of post-basic fraining, we had an obstacle course that contained such a section about 30 feet long, and once when there were half a dozen diggers in it, Lt. Rawlinson threw a hat full of young green tree snakes among them, talk about cuts, scratches and ruined uniforms :D :D :D
The snakes were non-venomous but none of those affected were much up on snakes.

I was one of the gleeful spectators.
Self Defence is not only a Right, it is an Obligation.

Eoin.
Post Reply