Bullshit, Drill Sergeant!

[gridlore]

Army Tones Down Drill Sergeants

Hollywood may have to tone down its portrayal of the military's screaming, in-your-face boot camp drill sergeant. In today's Army, shouting is out and a calmer approach to molding young minds is in, says the head of Pentagon personnel. The Army says it has reduced by nearly 7 percent the number of recruits who wash out in the first six to 12 months of military life.

"Part of it is changing the nature of how it treats people in basic training," David S. Chu, undersecretary for personnel and readiness, said Tuesday.

That means "less shouting at everyone, in essence, which some of you may remember from an earlier generation as being the modus operandi," he said.

The changes started about a year ago, as defense officials looked for ways to make drillmasters more effective, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, head of Army National Guard recruiting.

He said the old way was to "talk loud, talk often, get their attention" — shock treatment to teach discipline and mold the newly recruited civilian into a soldier.

But trainers found today's generation responded better to instructors who took "a more counseling" type role, Jones said, using strong tactics when needed but keeping them the exception instead of the rule.

Absolute, complete rubbish. I went through Infantry OSUT (One Station Unit Training - Basic and Infantry School rolled into one) 13 weeks of exposure to Drill Sergeants Redding, Colom, and Rearden (not to mention Senior Drill Sergeant Rodney Swanson.) They were strict, got in our face daily, and came down on any error like a ton of sadistic bricks. They were demons in Smokey-the-Bear hats. The pushed us to our limits and then refused to stop until we found out that limits were entirely mental. I had dreams about finding their twisted bodies in car wrecks and pissing on their corpses.

So, when the time came to name the official models of battledress in GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces I naturally named them after my Drills. Because everything they did made me a better soldier and person. That's what initial training has to do - burn away the civilian attitudes and perceptions and replace them with the attitude of a soldier (or sailor, Marine, or even airman) Stress is a vital part of the process. An example:

One night at Alpha-7-1, we of 2nd platoon were told that we were going to be marched to the small PX where we would be allowed to purchase one (1) soda and/or food item to be consumed at the PX. We were then told that we would do this in PT gear (Physical Training. For us it was a maroon sweatshirt and gray sweatpants.) We had exactly five minutes to get upstairs, change, and be back in formation. An important note is that we were forbidden to wear boots inside the barracks.

So, we haul ass upstairs, and about half the guys decide that they can shave a minute off their time by not stopping on the landing and changing out of their boots. Others (mostly those who job it was to mop and wax the floors every morning) loudly objected. In the rush to get back downstairs, some troops failed to properly place their uniforms in their lockers.

All of us make it back down in time. We wait while DS Colom goes upstairs for a minute. He comes back down, and proceeds to smoke us for 45 minutes. Our crimes?

1. Wearing boots in the barracks.

2. Not listening to our platoon guides (trainee leaders) when ordered to remove the boots.

3. Failure to properly take care of issued equipment (our uniforms), and worst of all..

4. Doing all this, immediately losing all semblance of military discipline, because of the promise, of junk food.

The lesson was not lost. We got our priorities in gear.

There are places where a light touch and understanding are called for. Initial entry training is not it.

Comments

[todkaninchen.livejournal.com]

We caught hell for not wearing boots indoors with BDU's.

Floors were floors and would be maintained as needed. but it was more important to be in the proper uniform than keep the floors "artificially" shiny.

Then again, these were the same Drill Sergeants who broat out a chamber brush on a drill for the Command inspection.

Maybe it was a generation thing?

(Alumni of B Co. 4-10 Inf, Fort Leonard Wood, MO 1990.)

[aurictech.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was a generation thing?

In my experience it seems to be more of an institutional policy than a generational thing. I did BCT at Fort Leonard Wood in 1984 and we wore our combat boots in the barracks while in BDUs. Meanwhile, combat boots were verboten in the barracks when I went through the Basic Airborne Course at Fort Benning in 1989.

[todkaninchen.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's simply a question of priorities?

Appearance (boots of) or Reality (boots on)

I mean, honestly, unless it was some cheese dick inspection from a Colonel or above, the entire time I was on active duty, we never took our boots off to walk on the floor.

You walked on it and those responsible for maintaining it did so. Most people tried to take it easy on the floors that were shined...

There were people out there, NCO's and officers, that raised hell over appearance...

We had one Sergeant Major that screamed at us over how the floors in our Battalion Aid Station weren't particularly shiny and we had a GI party...

...he liked it.

Then we had to clean the floors with bleach/water mix and it ate up the wax. He came in the next day and screamed again, had us GI it.

After the second day, our PA, a former Sergeant First Class said "This is Bullshit." and went two places: Division Surgeon's Office who wrote the directives on disinfecting Aid Station floors and then to talk to the Battalion Commander.

Essentially,the Division Surgeon said that either we disinfect the floors or the Battalion hires a contractor to do it but as long as we were treating patients we would have to. He also essentially said that if this was such a problem that we were spending an additional 2+ hours a night moving/stripping/buffing etc., he would simply assign our PA to the Troop Medical Clinic, increase the required number of medics from the Battalion in the TMC rotation, and just deny the Battalion the priviledge of runing our own BAS.

I think he actually started getting into the unit's "lane" and overstepped himself, but the Battalion Commander sort of agreed with him on the bullshit level once he found out about it. The Battalion Commander was more interested in the field and training ends of the business than the appearance end.

In the end, we got an "out" on the floors except for major inspections when we'd shift medical care to the TMC by sending the PA and an extra pair of medics to help with the patiant load and our records.

Instead, we only had to mop, buff the raw tiles, and change them out when they started pulling away from the floor.

We hated that Command Sergeant Major and, when it came time for him to move on, someone (not me) had failed to sign in his records when he last returned them and lost them. All I know is they weren't there when he came for them and the signature book only had his name as the last person taking charge of them.

Then again, the records he gave us in the first place had been a "rebuilt" record after someone lost his MEDREC at another unit...