Hi lads, what are your memories of Basic Training. Well for me it was 16 weeks of emotion, sweat, and having muscles that I didn't know I had.
When I enlisted I was into Punk Rock in a big way and arrived at the Depot with spikey hair, tartan bondage trousers and Doc Martin Boots. The sergeant took on look at me and had a fit. I was doubled to the barbers and got all my hair shaved off.
Other joys was going out onto the Welsh Mountains in January on training exercises, and freezing my ass off in a tent. Oh the joys of training, being bawled out by the Sergeant major, the bastings, bulling up the floors with boot polish.
What are your memories of Basic Training.
Scott

I still have nighmares, and wake up screaming.
Oh the inhuman treatment I suffered.

OH wait....... that was marriage.

It was an interesting experience for me, a lot of heatache and fun. I went to basic training between my first and second year in college. I went to college in a wrestling scholarship so the physical aspect of basic was nothing new. In fact, the drill sergeants would drop me for push ups and see how many I could do before I needed to take a pause (normally in the 60-70 range).

At 43 years old, I still do more push ups than anyone else when taking the PT test. I normally stop at 80.

I was the “push up king” my company commander had me drop for 50 every time he saw me. Except for the lack of sleep it was not so bad, “sailor’s have more fun” you know.
I am surprised the PC police haven’t jumped on boot camp as a hazing ritual.

Both Basic and Advanced Infantry were pure pain in the Sri Lanka Army. Combat was actually a relief at first.

I remember standing in formation (still in civvie kit) at the regemental depot while the RSM (6'2", 220lbs, handlebar moustache) assigned us our battalions by calling our names out from fifty metres away. Funnily, Sri Lankans have no problem pronouncing names like Dharmasinghelage Ariyawithanage, but have trouble saying David Blacker. The RSM finally gave up on the pronounciation and threw his pace stick at me.

I mostly remember the long runs at dawn in full combat kit, the assault course, the firing range, and the two deaths my platoon suffered in training. One guy committed suicide by shooting himself with his rifle, and the other drowned when he fell into a mud-filled trench we had to swing (Tarzan-style) across at night. He fell in with full battle order and no one saw him til it was too late. The other battalions had a lot of desertions (two or three per platoon) during basic, but mine hadn't a single. Though the other training platoon in my battalion had a guy go nuts and have to be discharged.

We hadn't been in for more than a week, when they dragged us out on week long march in the Swedish mountains. Carried everything with us tents, you name it. For some that couldn't really carry their big backpack a fellow took over and carried two, that was until they could carry their own weight again. Doing this during summer months is alright, but not when its winter and below -30. Build tents with all the hassle, when it comes to dig in the deep snow, get tent poles in the frozen ground it was alot of and wishing your officers a hasty . Not to mention the guard duty out freezing cold darkness where you couldn't see longer than your own nose, if even that far. Can't remember all the times that we had to act as an enemy in different manouvers, best one was in the city center though. Unfortunately we had one death by accident and one suicide as well...

When I showed up, like Scott exept I was a metal head, I had real long hair, dad said I didn't have to cut it when I joined which was in November but I went to boot camp in July. The best part was I got there on July 3, July 4 was a holliday and the 5th and 6th was the weekend so I got to walk around, in ranks of course, with this long hair untill Monday. The real bad part was you only had the clothes that you came with wairing. LOL

I bet the Drill Sergeant had some fun with you after the holiday. Unfortunately in the British Army, you would have lasted 30 seconds with that long hair before it was shaved off.
Scott

He didn't show up until that Monday. The US Navy did things a little different, we had to wait in a holding company until there enough recruits to make a regular company and the people in "charge" of us were recruits in there 7th week. But you are right he kept calling me the girl, until I got it shaved and I just kept my mouth shut. Fun times.

I got to Orlando for USN basic training late at night and actually had about 3 hours of sleep before we were woken by the typical trash can wake up.

Overall I felt things were fairly easy. Sure there were the times we all got yelled at and had to do thousands of push ups, but it had its point. I never knew you could fix chicken so many ways. We had chicken about 5 times a week. Then the other two times we had mystery meat. Our company started out with 84 people and we ended up with 86. Along the way we lost a few to injury and stupididty on thier part, but we picked up a few others.

Possibly the strangest thing was one fo our Company Commanders had the same last name as I do.

We had one bloke in our section at Bassingbourne who had a hygiene problems. I couldn't smell him as I was full of cold but he always looked a bit grubby and we were utterly fed up of getting extras due to him. Needless to say he got a barrack room bath off the section. We dragged him off to the abolutions, stripped him (skidmarks on the inside and outside of his boxer shorts...bleuch) and bunged him in a bath full of washing powder, bit of scouring powder and a yard brush and a floor scrubbing brush to help him get clean. I actually felt a bit sorry for the bloke as he was red raw but his personal hygiene was impeccable after that.
I hated basic training to be honest as it was a nightmare. No sleep, beasted to the limit. I was crap on my drills on the GPMG and my instructor told me if I made one more mistake I was getting kicked in the head. Sure enough I got kicked in the head...LOL. I didn't make anymore mistakes after that. The irony of it was when I reached my battalion they made me a machine gunner!

Has anyone got any idea what that mystery fish was in the cobs in the horror bags on range days? Its always worried me as to what it was I was eating. Was it actually fish or some sort of weird MOD experiment into artificial food . And what was screech made of? I only used it once in basic and it made me thirstier than a man in the desert after eating a pound of sand.Needless to say I binned it after that. Didn't taste like any squash I'd ever drunk before!

I did my Basic at Ft. Dix I remember that the gas chamber was right across the road from the Mid State Correctional facility, sort of wondered if the tear gas would reach the inmates there (hope it did). I also remember that there was a big mud hole right out side the gas chamber (funny I don't remember it raining before we went there). I must have seen fifteen or twenty guys from my company run out of there eyes running nose running and not see the mud hole and end up on their backside. AH the good old days.

For Marines there are so many but I'll spare you! Just one though, When we arrived at San Diego airport and a drill instructor rounded us up to get on the bus. (you were always taken aboard at night to disorient you so as to reduce the risk of recruits escaping) The bus pulled up and a small five-foot-nothing female corporal was driving. She opened the door and through what must have been nearly a full can of Copenhagen tobacco in her lip told us to get on the bus with the widest array of profanities I'd ever heard to that point in my 18 year-old life. That was the very first time in boot that I thought "Maybe I've made the wrong choice?"

Something else I'm reminded of each morning when I brush my teeth is stripping and reassembling a T56 (Chinese AK) blindfolded. My section would be on its belly in a row, and we had I think a minute for the whole process. When the minute was up our weapons screw would walk up the row and kick anyone who wasn't finished in the head. I lost a tooth in my upper jaw and a couple of others got broken noses.

Me and the guy behind me got in a fight as to him always stepping on my boots out of step he was.
DI made us do Imaginary chairs and push ups out the A-hole and made us become Best Buddies after that.

Go figure.
But I did like smoke-em if you got them

-Being sacked by the DI while doing push ups lmfao
-Smoking my friend in the back with my C7 while running lmfao
-Getting caught in the S**tter during an artillary simulation (that was hilarious, I came out with my C9 and opened full fire rambo style, yes i got in [auto-censored], but it was hella funny, to see a man burst out of a porta potty with his pants half way down, yelling and shooting

Hmm... not good. The shots given in the second week of BT werent kind to me. I had an allergic reaction to one, spent a week and a half in the hospital and was promply given a medical discharge.

Why do I have this bloody dog as my avatar??????

The main thing I remender from BT is shoveling in the food becouse there was no time to chew. and the yelling

Fred

I went to basic training in July 66 at Lackland AFB in Texas. It was during an airline strike and we went from Providence, RI to San Antonio by train. We had two DIs an E-5 and an E-7. When I look back at it, basic was easy. My neighbor, Albert Barker, who served in the RAF during WWII advised me to never finish too high or too low and if your DI doesn't know your name.
I remember one of the senior DIs once read us an order about DI's foul language. While he was reading it one of the trainees fell asleep and the DI took his swagger stick and pummeled the sleepy one on his helmet liner. All the while letting out expletives, some of which many of us had heard for the first time.
About two years after basic while serving as a sergeant in Vietnam we got a replacement E-3 for our section. It was the E-5 DI from basic. I could now take my revenge, but alas, I felt sorry for him.

I remember in Cornwallis, the day before we got our shots, the Warrent said to the platoon" Tomorrow you get your shots, Females are to wear a T-shirt under their combat shirt, as everyone will be told to strip to the waist, I repeat females are to wear T-shirts under their combat shirts!" well the next day came and one girl did not put on a T-shirt. The order came "strip to the waist," we did and she didn't even have a Bra on...nothing just bare breasted, And they were big, no kidding 38 DD. well it looked like a boy scout jamboree with all the "tents" that went up! The Warrent made her walk around for the rest of the morning like that. She was a bit stunned anyway but she sure did get a lot of attention from some of the guys after that. I also remember we had a gay guy in the platoon, it was illigal to be gay in the Canadian Forces at that time(1980's). My bunkmate and I made friends with this guy, and all the guys would make fun of us. He was a nice fella but the reason for us "hanging around" was all the females would hang around him. So why all the other fellas were in the block with each other(afraid of the gay guy) we were outside in the smoking pit, lining up a date for when we got leave.

I enlisted on the 12th of June 2002, 1 mth after completing school. On the morning of my enlistment day, i was down with a very bad gastric. Puke my breakfast and basically not able to eat anything at all. Had my final meal with my parents and did my Oath taking, right after that said goodbye to my parents as they cross the ferry terminal back to the world. (basic training here is done on an island offshore)
The In Processing start right away, kitting, forms to fill up, hair to cut and shouting to get use too..
In the evening when the rush died down, i decided to requested to get a visit to the MO for my gastric. Well that was the wrong choice of the day....
I ended up sitting at the medical centre for 3hrs. Got a shelling from the MO who insisted that i should have reported in early, medics who were occupied with the world cup and an orderly who decided to queue me number 6 after 5 other female recruits from the navy came an hour later after me.
That was my first day....cos after that day it was nothing but PT PT, PT, shouting shouting shouting and finally 6 weeks later received my rifle to begin another 10wks of real army stuff training. That was the beginning of the end of my 26mths of army life.

Me reaching the end of my tour of duty as a platoon sergeant

Harmony Church, 1982. If you were ever there, you don't need to ask what it was. Even then, you could still get a boot up your @$$ for being less than enthusiastic about training.
On the first day, we were told to empty our duffels. Several less than astute recruits began gingerly puling items out and laying them on the red clay so that they would not get dirty. Those of us who could sense the brewing storm simply dumped our bags out onto the ground. The aforementioned recruits earned us a rousing session of PT in the June sun for about half an hour. Then were told to outstretch our arms and just hold them there. I remember looking at my hands. They were shaking. I thought to myself, "Hell, no matter how much they yell, or no matter what they make us do, they can't just kill us." From that day forward I never worried about anything at basic training again.
Fast forward nineteen years. Similar situation. The trainees get off the bus at Fort Sill in the 6000 area, literally "across the tracks" from where they had been for the past few days or weeks. There they had been playing video games, or shooting pool, or just relaxing. The Drill Sergeants were only there to escort them to chow and keep track of them. They never even raised their voices. I kind of like the way the trainees were being set up for the fall.
So after running off the bus, they had one simple task: to align their belongings as shown in the example. Rucksack, duffel, personal bag. Everything facing the same way and on line. Of course it was all scripted. They would not get it right the first two times even if it had been laid out with a laser. We would kick it around and yell. Then they would receive some remedial training and try again. They third time, they would get it right even if we thought it could use some tweaking.
Anyway I digress. One poor kid was shaking so badly, I couldn't help remembering myself nineteen years prior. I walked up to him and said, very quielty, "Relax. We're not allowed to kill you."
It had the opposite effect. The poor kid nearly broke down in hysterics. I think he WANTED to die that day. It took a good five minutes to calm him down. The funny thing is, no one else ever knew what I said to him, and the rest were scared spitless of me for quite a while.
And so was the view from the other side of the fence.



Graduation Day, Drill Sergeant School. The bald guy. Age 37.

May, June and July at Ft,Sill and the 50lbs I lost.