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.
When I arrived, there were rumors of people lowcrawling down the company street in their greens, but that could have been just barracks legend.
As I mentioned, they started letting us sleep after a few weeks, although my class had already probably suffered through the worst of it. (Even when we were left to sleep in those first weeks, people would wake up and make a racket because of the cramps in their legs.)
But what really made me sick was when I, as a senior candidate, had to watch a new class of smacks being allowed to eat normally! Take a normal amount of time and not sit in front of the tape on three inches of their chair, etc.! And no one was allowed to walk up to their table and chat with them to keep them from having a chance to eat!
Those wusses had NO fun!
As to mental pressure, I'm not sure what could be worse than people being pulled out of class and panelled (kicked out) right up to the last day before graduation. I'm not proud to admit that I was on the bubble myself, and I did not enjoy hearing someone enter the back of the classroom.
We Signal guys were planning on an easy war. Getting kicked out was an immediate ticket to Nam in our AIT combat MOS. Some of us were stressing! I was lucky. The President decided that he needed at least one more 2nd lieuy even if the guy was a slacker!