Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Fort Leonard Wood. Missouri?

In 1963 I was on my way by rail to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood. What an undesirable hole that was then.

Any others have the misfortune of serving at the fort?

Nope, but I can tell you've never been to Amarillo, Tx.

Oh, you mean Hell. Yeah, I got to spend some time there...............

I remember it being the coldest place on the planet. I was never warm there.

My first cousin, who in 1970 was in his 3rd week of basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, contracted meningitis and died a week later along with 14 other of our servicemen. Seeing as he was from Amarillo, I'm sure he would have chosen his home town over that particular army post. But, as a teenager, my mother would check the mileage of my car after a late Saturday night and accuse me of " sneaking over to Amarillo." She thought the town was the den of iniquity full of young women with loose morals waiting to entrap her baby boy.

Fort Lost in theWoods. Summer of 1970. Crunch bugs, skeeters, copperheads, corals and water Mocs. Hot, humid and just generally nasty place. Then I got sent to APG Maryland and wished I was back at lost in the woods as the East coast was more fugged up than there. 😀

The OD green melting pot.

Never thought I would get tired of fishing, hunting, and golf. But as a single CPT at a TRADOC post in the middle of nowhere where 90 percent of the females were trainees and off limits, that is about all I did.

Yea I did both basic and AIT there in 83. Got there in May, and having grown up in Canada it was the hottest place I had ever experienced. The DIs loved to make us do pushups on the pavement. It was so hot our hands blistered. Anyone who has been there might remember a little wide spot in the road just south of the Fort called Buckyrus. There was a little gas station/ liquor store right beside the road. My wife parents owned and ran it for years.

Boot camp and AIT there in 1991.

It was not a great deal of fun.

Dave

In 1972 I had my choice of going to Fort Leonard Wood or Fort Knox Kentucky, I chose the latter.

Basic and AIT in 1973. Blistering hot in the summer. Heat lighting every night!

I used to deer hunt near there and you are right.

I went there in 1985 for basic and AIT. I went back again, for the first time since, in August of 2017 for an anti-terrorism school. It is much nicer than it was 30+ years ago and, is a completely different experience than that I experienced as a basic trainee. It's a nice fort.

Spent my last two years of HS there. Joined the Reserves while still in HS (split option) and was assigned to the 25th MASH unit and worked at the hospital on weekends.

Dad was training knuckleheads in the "Million dollar hole".

Oct-Feb 70-71. Damn cold..

g

Well remember TA-214 known better as the Million dollar hole. Hell I dug part of it!

g

I see so many not tough enough to handle MO.

I did AIT at Leonard Wood in '68. Not the worst place the Army sent me...

My Dad joined the Army and went through basic there in 1941. Bad timing.