"GOLLY!"
When I joined this was the SOP: 
Posted on 09/12/2014 6:52:58 AM PDT by pabianice
“You’re not even good targets for soldiers”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsDT6e-QzYQ
“You don’t want to spend so much energy on the screw-ups that you don’t spend enough time with the ones who want to learn,”
Ah, yes. That works.
The issue here is that a unit is only as strong as their weakest guy/gal/hermaphrodite.
As such, graduating the screw-up, without UNSCREWING THEM FIRST, means they will get into the field and kill entire units, not just themselves.
Some of the ‘screw-ups’, by the way, make the best, most courageous soldiers.
Ah well, there’s always glee club to get back to, and the little wifey at home.
“In ther rear with the gear” has a whole new meaning as does “REMF”.
Good Lord.
I’d like to think this article was satire.
My son was in the first group of Drill Seargents to empliment the new standards at Ft. Benning. He wasn’t impressed. When he was a recruit, he went through under the old standards and survived. He also survived 2 tours in Iraq.
I don’t have any military experience, but the enemy these recruits are likely to face routinely cuts off people’s heads with a knife, brutalizes women and children, and kills non-combatents en masse because they happen to have different religious beliefs.
Maybe that should be more of a factor during this training.
I enlisted in '65 and I've not heard ONE familiar thing since I Started reading FR back in ... the dark ages
This skinny, nerdy kid grew a pair because real men treated me rough and I HAD to become a man.
I got 'pinned in a corner' so to speak by a DI and he dared me to hit him ... go 'head ... no one's lookin' ... you KNOW you want to ...
So I did.
I don't think I'd ever been more scared in my life, but I was pushed.
He hit me back and stopped our encounter.
Felt good, didn't it?
Yeah
Remember that ... and he walked away.
Where did my Army go?
5.56mm
we left it ... never realizing we were the saviors.
"GOLLY!"
When I joined this was the SOP:
When my soldier went through BCT, he had a drill sergeant who was absolutely no-nonsense and would light up a recruit in the old way. They learned just fine.
And from their cadences, all the men sure seemed to like girls. Thank God.
Drill sergeants are supposed to drill recruits in following orders, maintaining self-discipline, and holding command under battle conditions. The yelling and screaming generates a flood of adrenaline in the subject, the fuel for a mindless "fight or flight" response, the same feelings that they would experience in an actual battle. It's called "simulating conditions". With practice (drilling), successful recruits learn to stay clear-headed in the heat of battle, i.e. when sergeant is screaming at them.
It was in basic training, Leadership School and OCS back in the early fifties that I learned I could exceed beyond my own limits. About to collapse, I could do 10 more pushups - about to drop while running a great distance with heavy backpack, I could make the distance, and on and on. Without tough, mean, SOB’s for drill instructors I would never had become the person I became. A fighting force is no place for pansies.
My granddaughter’s boyfriend went through Marine training last year and it wasn’t “kind and gentle”.
Some of the things they did to him were just so crappy but you can really see why they do it. Get tough or die and this is physical and mental.
I live about 10 minutes from Jackson and on a clear day hear the large scale drill stuff.
Her home area is probably not too far from me either.
The new military is a disaster in slow motion.
Meals on wheels replaced kill people and break things.
5.56mm
It sure as hell isn’t the Army I was in. (Funny last night I had a dream where I was talking to Ike and Bradly about General Courtney Hodges, pretty good since I was only 6 when the WWII ended.) As soon as the draft ended back in the early 70’s I started seeing the changes taking effect. I’m sorry folks, I still prefer a strong disciplined fighting force made up of a cross section of the population, over a social experiment, that our PC Government has been shoving down our throats. Maybe it’s my Viking/Hun background that made me that way? As a child I had toy guns, and soldiers. I drew fighter planes and tank doodles in my notebooks in school, if I was picked on by a bully I fought back and didn’t cry home to mommy. I was one of the tail enders of the Greatest Generation who stayed with the military for 30 + years. If you want a gentler kinder PC, restricted ROE Army to fight wars, best to send the Peace Corps. Looking back to my Basic training, I had WW II and Korean war NCOs, they fit the Hollywood profile to a T, but in IMO they were the best of the best. Now I’ll go back to eating my SOS. :)
Makes me want to hurl.
A young friend of my family joined the Army about 2 years ago. I found his comments on the yellow "stress card" interesting.
1) As a recruit, the stress card is part of your uniform. It goes in the left back pocket, and the DIs inspect for it. Don't have it? You're in trouble.
2) Yes ... if a recruit feels 'stressed out', he may haul out his stress card ... and the DIs must back off.
3) While the DIs must back off, the 'stressed' recruit's fellow recruits face no such obligation ... The other recruits were not shy about expressing their displeasure with the 'stressed' recruit's ancestry, intelligence, courage, esprit-de-corps, etc. Wave that yellow card, and you're immediately branded as a non-hacker by your fellow recruits.
4) During his time in Basic, 4 recruits flashed the stress card. ALL FOUR were gone within 48 hours.
FWIW.
It is kinda gross, but had we continued to have a decent Commander in Chief, we would have overwhelmingly won in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even with the “soft” military, we are lucky enough to have a strong overall military. We just need new leadership.
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