Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire boot camp stories - waxing nostalgic

Brings to mind. At Tech school we had these guys called "student leaders" taking the place of TIs. They wore braded "ropes" of various colors designating their rank.

One Monday one of the green ropes didn't show up for formation. Never heard anymore about it until four months later at my permanent station when I had a visit from the FBI.
Seems when they opened the base swimming pool, they found his body in the bottom of the pool.

The 1966 "infiltration course" at Ft Polk ( ) had culverts buried vertically with charges of dynamite or the equivalent, Barbed wire to crawl under, and a fixed elevation .30 caliber gun (or two) hosing tracers above the trainees.

I mostly had FUN in Basic, loved the food, and have always loved a challenge,...this course was no exception, ...every red blooded American Kids dream come true,...playing G.I. Joe and getting PAID to do so,....

...until I crawled into that big nest of fire ants,...

Those dynamite charges had em' RILED, too.

Some of the lads were really spooked by crawling that course, IIRC.

GTC

Loved the food? You should have been at Dix. They were training cooks at Dix and we ended up with the most unbelievable crap. Getting to the point where you were allowed to buy a burger at the PX was major, ambrosia compared to the dining facility. All the live fire and explosions were gone by the time I got there, kinda missed that. We had simulators, trip flares and all kinds of CS but not the same. Safety you know, injure a trainee and massive crap rolled downhill.

What a great scam. Reminds me of some the scams guys tried to steal a T-28 in flight school.

It seems I was to keep "my" rifle to myself.

Here's one that may get a few chuckles. As a young lieutenant that could speak a bit of Spanish I was ordered to assist a basic training company composed of Puerto-Rican kids drafted into the Army. Any resemblance between kids that wanted to be soldier's & this group of street urchins was purely coincidental. One evening a training sergeant checking after lights out caught a kid taking care of himself in his rack. The next morning the training sergeants gave a stern lecture on masturbation being against Army rules & if recruits were caught could possibly lead to a dishonorable discharge. I interpreted as best I could while laughing to myself. The next night 60 recruits were whacking off in the barracks.

Our food in basic was actually pretty good. It was a company level chow hall and the head cook would know exactly when were coming in from training so the food would be ready just as we got there.

Of course, you couldn't enjoy it. If both hands weren't going full time shoving food down your throat as fast as possible, you were "finished eating" and had to leave.

That old E6 cook was the meanest old son of a bitch on the cadre. The Drill Sergeants were tough but you knew that was their job, he seemed to have a personal hatred of everyone that had the misfortune to get within 50 yards of him - which was all of us at chow time. I went to sleep many nights with fantasies of shoving an M-16 into his mouth and emptying it on full auto.

The day I finally had KP he got me to scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees trying to remove stains that had been on that linoleum since WWII. When he saw that I just got to it without complaining and did my best (for the next four hours), he let up on me for the rest of my time there.

Ah, KP. I found out quick the way to not be bothered was to grab a clean mop and bucket, find a clean spot and mop away. Nobody bothered you if you were "working".

Eatin duck!

Only had KP once during Basic.

During AIT we had detail day once per week - the usual stuff, unloading trucks, cleaning the company area, whatever. But any solder who performed the best at close order drill or what not at formation that day was assigned "Colonel's Orderly", which was basically a holiday since you could go to the movies, the PX or just fart around all day. Well, I learned the Manual of Arms for the M-16 backwards and forwards and snapped out the moves pretty as you please so I got to be the "CO". This pissed off our appointed squad leader who figured he should have been Colonel's Orderly that day, so the petty little m-f'ing SOB assigned me to KP every week after that. You had to get up about 04:30 to report for that so there was no chance that I could ever be Colonel's orderly again.

That was one of my first lessons in the Army about the vast gulf that could exist between "leaders" and actual leadership.

Sixteen weeks of keep your mouth shut, do what you were told, stay in step, stand in line, gas house, smoke house, gradate, then get on with life.

It was A school that changed my life. I was not interested in high school and graduated near the bottom. Never took a book home and seldom did any homework. First day of A school in south Philly we learned we were to eat our lunches at the brig as it was the closest chow hall. It was one of the last red line brigs, not a pleasant place.

Anyway they assigned us about a hundred pages of reading the first night. I thought it was like high school where I could listen in class and pass all the tests. The second morning first thing was a test covering what we were supposed to read the night before. Needless to say I failed. The they told us that if we failed three tests it was two weeks in the brig and start over. Suddenly I found the motivation to study. I graduated first in my class. I kept on studying and made E-5 in under two years. I have never had a problem studying since nor have I ever failed any test since.

Just thought I'd let you know that coffee burns when it comes out of your nose! Funniest thing I've read in a while!!

had KP a few times in basic. one job you didn't want in KP was to be manning "The Clipper". that was the hole in the wall where the recruits threw their trays on the way out and you had to sort the dirty dishes for the dishwasher. the clipper dude was the one person in basic who was lower on the totem pole than the average recruit and it seemed acceptable to try and throw your tray at him in such a way that it would splash him with stuff. guess who had the clipper? there was a reason why the clipper guy wore a large rubber apron.

I never worked Pots and Pans while on KP but after seeing the hands of the guys who did, I made sure I didn't. Never worked the clipper either.

After four hours of pots and pans their hands were red and skin splitting from all the scalding hot water.

I can't remember it all, but the day we did the pugil sticks on the little bridge over water in USMC boot camp started out well for me. I had a martial arts background and destroyed the first guy they paired me with.

The second guy was big and just went down harder with a bigger splash.

The DIs had a little talk, and, from what I am told, they had to drag my ass out of the water so I wouldn't drown after the third guy and I tangled.

Apparently the little dude they sent across third was some kind of freaking ninja or something. He knocked me senseless despite the football helmet they made you wear.

Was just thinking about trying to sleep in the open bays...

azzholes would come in, middle of every night, metal taps on their boots clomping like a damn Clydesdale, shining a flashlight in your face as you lay in the bunk. I learned real quick how to play possum, no eye opening, controlled breathing - because if you gave any indication of waking up, you were in for an inquisition. Fun times

ah yes the taps. i forgot about those. click click click, here comes the .....

Northern Dave has the best story. I was laughing until tears were running down my face. PT till you puke with birthday hats and horns sounds like fun, fun, fun.

Perry

Think goodness I didn't have to watch the clean up detail.

Okay, so statute of limitations has to be up by now, so here goes....

During Basic Training at Ft jackson, SC, home of the Drill Instructors School, the year is 1982.

Had a jackazz in our platoon that thought he was exceptional.....and after he was selected to be a Squad Leader it became even worse. Azzwipe didn't understand the concept of teamwork and constantly rode one of the trainee's. This only made things worse and we spent more time Pushing until SSG Taylor got tired than anyone else did.

Fast forward to the last week of training...we graduate in two days with all of our family present. By this time I had been promoted to Squad Leader and then Platoon leader, and even selected as Trainee Leader of the cycle. So, this gave me a little extra freedom....

Time for payback....two nights before graduation, I gave one of my guys the night off of Fire Watch and pulled his duty for him. Around 0200 hrs I located the shampoo bottle from numbnutz locker and replaced half the contents with the bottle of Nair I had purchased earlier that day on a PX run.

By the time our Graduation ceremony rolled around, this bald azz monkey was in tears that his hair was gone in patches off his noggin.....and he had to face his family like that.......

I still break into a smile when I think of that episode...