Fort Gordon, Signal OCS, Class 03-67, SIR!
We probably had it a little easier than you infantry boys but, still, it was no picnic, even after some ruling came down from Washington requiring that we be allowed to sleep unmolested for some certain number of hours per night (which helped a lot).
I remembered so fondly, seeing your post, one night when we had a pogeybait party after lights out. Somebodys wife had loaded a garbage can with hamburgers and soda and doughnuts. I was on the top bunk right beside the door of an old WWII-style barracks.
When the duty officer walked through that door, we were eyeball to eyeball, heads maybe three feet apart. I had a half a humburger left. There was no question that we were going to suffer mightily so no need to act innocent. I grabbed that half a burger and stuffed it in my mouth in one last huge defiant bite!
Needless to say, we were up all night cleaning up the nuked barracks and buffing the floor!
Why in the heck am I nostalgic about this? LOL
Why are you so nostalgic? You got me. But I know the feeling.
We had our 35th reunion a couple of years ago. Went to Benning and they treated us royally. Tours, live fire demos, briefings. The old barracks was still there but something was different...air conditioning!
The course has changed now, too. Non-branch specific, 14 weeks instead of 26, and none of the physical harassment we went through (they couldn't do it like that today, they'd be brought up on charges), but they seemingly put a lot more mental pressure on the candidates. Benning spit and polish is gone too. We were scratching our heads as to how this would turn out a better Infantry officer. We decided it's because of the volunteer nature of the Army...a 2LT doesn't have to push a bunch of draftees who'd brought their anti-war/military sentiments with them from civilian life up a hill or otherwise make them do things they'd rather not be doing.
Pogey parties...our platoon was on the ground floor. With just the right kind of timing, when the TAC officer was upstairs harassing naother platoon...why did we think we were smarter than those guys. Our all nighter only ended when our TAC, who'd been a running back at ASU, whimsically proposed that it would end for us if anyone in the platoon could beat him in 40 yards. One of our guys (Mike, if you're reading this give me an email and identify yourself)did and we got to leave the lowcrawl pit under the 250' jump towers at about 0230. Of course, his ego damaged, Rocky made us pay for the next several weeks.
Those were the days.