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08/20/2004 Archived Entry: "BCT, Part I"

Posted by steve @ 04:08 PM EST [Link]

IT'S NOT THE SAME: ESR chum Porphyrogenitus is back with another post. Yesterday he wrote a lengthy entry about his experiences in Basic Combat Training today compared to when he first underwent it back in 1987. The comparison isn't a good one.

The good: This time around, most of our Drill Sergeants had combat experience, something that was not the case in ’87. The aforementioned Sgt. Schwanke, for example, had been in Panama, Desert Storm I, and in Somalia. He was on the scene in a helicopter during the “Blackhawk Down” incident, and knew MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randal Shughart, America’s most recent Medal of Honor recipients. The experience they had gave them some greater authority when they taught us what we needed to know that could save our lives on the battlefield some day.

That’s the best I can say about Basic Training today, and it is a Big Thing. However, whatever you may have read about Basic Combat Training deteriorating is pretty much true. Almost all of this is the result of directives from on high and restrictions placed on the Drill Sergeants, rather than a fault of the Drill Sergeants themselves. However, I do think that, however much they emphasized the contrary, Drill Sergeants today, like so many authority figures in our society these days, would rather be liked than feared. A lot of them let us get away with too much indiscipline, and were too solicitous of the malcontents. But, again, it’s hard to tell how much of that was them, and how much came from above their pay-grade, as several times the Captain intervened to prevent a soldier from being punished, giving not only second, but third and fourth chances to people when it wasn’t warranted. Indeed, there was a directive from the TRADOC Commander that no soldier be released from Basic Training till after five weeks, which meant that we carried on our roster one particular soldier who obviously wasn’t going to pass for that time, and beyond (because they didn’t even start out-processing till after then). This (non-)soldier pretty much spent that entire period on and off profile, not training, but eating with, hanging out with, sleeping in the bay with, and more or less disrupting the unit. There was also another soldier that had a similar impact, but that started later.

Read on.