Brutality in Basic Training

[Art]

Basic Training FT.POLK, May,1963,...... The most terrifing moments I recall was the first week being put on Pig Patrol. Tiger Land had not been used for a very long time and the wild hogs had taken the place over. There I was, walking around the baracks with a four foot broom handle, about three AM when I came face to face with one or maybe two of those displaced kridders. They grunted and I almost craped my pants. They ran off and I ran to find the OD. He was laughing his butt off. To this day I believe the DI's had herded the pigs my way. Some things a guy never forgets. BOB.

Ah those piney woods rooters, I remember them well. We were on the bivouac part of basic and I had guard duty one night when a whole herd of them came through the bivouac area around midnight. Mostly they just checked things out and left, all except one that poked his snout into the tent of an old boy named Roberson who smacked him on the snout with an intrenching tool.

I was there from June - August 1966. It was brutally hot. I was used to it having grown up spending a lot of time in the outdoors both in southeast Texas and Louisiana but it even got to me once though I never went down. Those boys from the midwest had a lot of problems. An ambulance followed every column on the march and periodically they would have to load one of those cooler climate boys in when they dropped from the heat.

By the way, you know how to tell when a piney woods rooter is ready for harvest? It's when you pick him up by the ears and his head is balanced by the rest of his body.

[Tex]

Instead of using scuz brushes to "scuz" the deck our drill instructor made us use recruit Perkins as a scuz brush because he wasn't scuzzing fast enough.

Same drill instructor tomohawked a "moon beam" into the back of our first squad leader at the rifle range early one morning.

Same drill instructor drug a recruit from the showers using the recruits belt that he had drapped around his neck because the recruit was taking too long showering. Most everyone else showered and shaved in 2 minutes or less. This recruit took 2 minutes and 20 seconds to do so. That additional 20 seconds cost him.

Same drill instructor made one recruit low-crawl under the racks in the squadbay while we were field daying. Brand new cammies + bleach water = Paris Island snow cammies. You could always tell an old "salt" by how faded his cammies were. We told the recruit that he was the saltiest MF'r on the island because his cammies were WHITE!

Same drill instructor made us drink 2 full canteens of water after evening chow. Of course, that's impossible to do on an already full stomach. Needless to say, once the first recruit threw up it was a chain reaction.

Fresh out of the rack at 0500, standing on line, recruit Ridgeway had to piss so bad that he was shaking like a dog $hitting a peach seed so the drill instructor left him at the POS until he pissed all over himself. To make matters worse,nhe made him swab his own piss with his cammies. That smelled good after a day in the Paris Island heat.

Foot locker trays dumped out the "porthole", M-16's tomohawked down the center of the squadbay with handguards flying everywhere (same rifles we qualified with by the way!) Man, the memories one makes in boot camp!

[Guamsst]

I just remember the patented Air Force IQ test. They made you carry your locker key around your neck and you could not take it off for any reason. They would wait for you to lean over and unlock your locker. At this point the key cannot be removed from the lock. They would then jump all over you and demand you come to attention. Lots of folks ended up with odd bruises around their necks from the chain as they tried to snap to attention while chained to their locker. If you did not have your head entirely up your butt, you simply locked the lock, removed the key and came to attention. My TI preferred to make us suffer through our own actions. My cousin went through basic a year or so before I did and his TI preferred to just well, pick on them is what I would call it. He had a guy who liked to sing so he stuffed him in a wall locker and kept putting quarters through the vent and making the guy sing...LOL

We had a guy recycled to our flight from a different squadron. He recounted the horrors of having to clean the latrines with a toothbrush for reading a comic book on door guard duty. We laughed and said he had it easy. In our squadron they did everything by the book with no petty nonsense. Any violations on door guard meant an automatic recycle of two weeks. So, get caught with that comic book and go from week 4 of basic, to week 2. He almost pooped himself. I would take the latrine cleaning over an extra two weeks of basic any day. I guess to most people, anything they don't enjoy is brutality.

[BOB LOUGHLIN]

Art, If I remember right, we were alowed to hit the beer garden in our third week. Had a over night pass around the sixth week. Not to bad at all. When I got to FT.Gorden I thought I had died and gone to heaven. No Inspections, no KP, and no guard doty. Just class and could get a pass from the First Shirt any week-end. The only thing that kept me from being a lifer was my new bride. I came back from Korea and met the gal. Got married 30 days before I E.T.S. out. 46 years to the same gal and it gets better every day. Bob.

[comm pogue]

I don't think this is brutality, don't think they could get by with it today. i still laugh when i think about it. we where at Edson range in july 68 and we still had PT after snapping in, went on runs in the hills close by. the senior DI would yell "snake guards out" and all the black recruits had to drop out and run in the sagebrush along side of the platoon. i will never forget the eyes of some of those guys the fisrt time we did it. never did see a snake in bootcamp, did see them later in ITR at San Onofre......Semper Fi

[Former Cav]

1965 at Ft. Knox, the DI brought a B.C.T. guy into his room and we heard some bouncing around. The trainee came out with a "new attitude".
I never had any problems. Our D.I. would take us for a morning run and he'd run BACKWARDS the whole way, he'd even run around our platoon while we were running and scream at us and blow smoke in our faces! One KEWL D.I. Name was Carrol Davis at C-9-3 FT. Knox from Jun through Aug 65.

[RCK]

1962 at Fort Knox, July to Sept. in A-12-3. My buddy's platoon DI was E5, Sgt Roy. His favorite harassment was done after everything was squared away about nine o'clock, then he played "over and under". Each platoon member took his loaded foot locker and hoisted up over the top bunk, followed it, then pushed it under the next lower bunk and followed it till the whole platoon had made it over and under around the whole bay. I remember looking up some nights at his barracks after lights out and they were still at it. Roy was busted to PFC a few months later.

[P. Greaney]

Learning how to eat a proper diet and exercising is not by any stretch of the imagination, brutality.

[Guamsst]

Learning how to eat a proper diet and exercising is not by any stretch of the imagination, brutality.

It is nowadays.

[martinp]

I remember close order drill with loaded foot lockers, at Parris Island in 1974, ahhh memories