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A Vet's Eye And Gut Says Army Basic Training Sucks
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c....1763367733762
01-07-2005 A Vet's Eye And Gut Says Army Basic Training Sucks Colonel Hackworth: In December 2004, my wife and I attended my son's graduation at Fort Sill from Basic Training. As a Marine during Vietnam many of the things I saw and was told at Fort Sill concerned me. We also have the experience of attending my daughters graduation from Basic Training at Fort Jackson the prior December 2003. Somewhat naively, I thought that many of the questionable anecdotes she had related to us were unique to the troubled program at Fort Jackson. It seems now that there are fundamental problems with how Army Basic Training is run. (Incidentally, many of things my son saw were corraborated by a friend of his that went through Fort Sill a couple of months before my son went through basic). These things are anecdotal and although they are things I don't think should be condoned my perspective is that of an E4 grunt not any great military expert. I thought however I might relate them to you: - PT scores routinely "administratively" adjusted to ensure the maximum pass rate. - Markmanship "every one qualifies" philosophy including some trainees given up to twice the number of rounds to meet the minimum. - Weapons training and exercises where only a fraction of the trainees actually got to fire weapons (SAW, M2, and Grenade Launcher. - "Immediate Action" routinely performed not by the trainee but by drill sergeants - We witnessed evidence of this at Family Day demonstrations where stoppages seemed to result in the trainee fumbling with the weapon unable to clear and continue demonstration. - Meritorious promotions for trainees that seemed to have demonstrated no obvious achievement (high marksman, grades, PT, etc.) - Disagreements between NCO's, Drill Sergeants and even officers being aired in front of trainees (this seemed to be common to my son, daughter, and my son's friend.) Whatever the objective reality of these stories, I find the existence of these stories almost as troubling as the substance of the stories. I remember when I returned from boot camp and when my brother returned from Basic (he was in the Army in Vietnam), both of use thought the DI's, DS, officers, instructors etc. walked on water and that the Corps and the Army respectively were the best. To see my son, daughter, and my son's friend come back with a degree of disillusionment is pretty alarming. I hope that both you and the SFTT can continue looking into the state of Army Basic and Advanced training because something certainly seems wrong. Thanks, Steve Siemper Fi!
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Last edited by 82Rigger; 07-14-2008 at 01:04 AM. |
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