To Keep Recruits,Boot Camp Gets A Gentle Revamp

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 2/15/06 | Greg Jaffe

[jjm2111]

New recruits used to be welcomed to boot camp here with the "shark attack." For decades, drill sergeants in wide-brim hats would swarm around the fresh-off-the-bus privates, shouting orders. Some rattled recruits would make mistakes. A few would cry.

Today, the Army is opting for a quieter approach. "I told my drill sergeants to stop the nonsense," says Col. Edward Daly, whose basic-training brigade graduates about 11,000 soldiers a year. Last fall, Col. Daly began meeting with all new recruits shortly after they arrive at boot camp to thank them. "We sincerely appreciate the fact that you swore an oath and got on a bus and did it in a time of war," he recently told an incoming class. "That's a big, big deal." He usually is accompanied by two male and two female soldiers, who can answer questions the recruits may have.

"The idea is to get rid of the anxiety and worry," Col. Daly says.

The new welcome is a window on the big changes sweeping boot camp, the Army's nine-week basic training. For most of its existence, boot camp was a place where drill sergeants would weed out the weak and turn psychologically soft civilians into hardened soldiers. But the Army, fighting through one of its biggest recruiting droughts, now is shifting tactics. Boot camp -- that iconic American experience -- may never be the same.

Once-feared drill sergeants have been ordered to yell less and mentor more. "Before, our drill sergeants' attitude was 'you better meet my standard or else.' Now it's 'I am going to do all I can to assist you in meeting the Army standard,' " says Command Sgt. Maj. William McDaniel, the senior enlisted soldier here.

[Terabitten]

He was always a twerp, a geek, and picked on by "cool" people --- even though he was physically large. Now he gets his rocks off pulling people over in fancy cars or people who pissed him off and otherwise throwing his weight around.

We had another drill sergeant in my company who fit that bill perfectly. He was physically large and intimidating, however, he didn't understand how to train or motivate troops. He'd come in at 0400 and smoke his platoon for no reason, other than that he could. His trainees rapidly learned that there were no real rewards for success and that they were going to get smoked regardless of success or failure. As a result, his platoon was invariably the worst in the company in terms of discipline, APFT scores, rifle qualification scores, etc.

Robert Heinlein said it best in his classic "Starship Troopers:"

It was too scheduled, too intellectual, too efficiently and impersonally organized to be cruelty for the sick pleasure of cruelty; it was planned like surgery for purposes as unimpassioned as those of a surgeon. Oh, I admit that some of the instructors may have enjoyed it but I don't know that they did -- and I do know (now) that the psych officers tried to weed out any bullies in selecting instructors. They looked for skilled and dedicated craftsmen to follow the art of making things as tough as possible for a recruit; a bully is too stupid, himself too emotionally involved, and too likely to grow tired of his fun and slack off, to be efficient.

[Terabitten]

When it comes to military training, there IS a strong tendency towards "I had it rougher than you"-ism. I've been told that everyone who went to USNA before me had a "tougher" plebe year than I did, and I know I had it way tougher than anyone who came after me. That's just plain' ol' fact!

There's a joke in the infantry: Everybody went through Basic the last year it was really tough, everybody went through Airborne school right before it got easy, and everybody graduated from the last hard Ranger class.

[robowombat]

It always has amazed me how many of both tinhorns and slobs populate the CS and CSS realms of the Army. Not that there aren't a number of tin horn phonies that are in the combat arms but the chances of being found out there are higher. On top of the sort of blase lardiness you describe there are plenty of individual cases in which the system as interpreted by the leaders is merciless in only the mindless way bureaucracy can be. Some years ago we had an SFC at Aberdeen with 181/2 years service who was something like 15 pounds over the rather arbitrary height weight profiles (I can remember one officer, a major, remarking that according to the profiles he could not have gain a pound from his 18th birthday to the present moment without being out of profile. He was a short, muscular compactly built man who was an excellent athlete as well as being generally the most fit man in his battalion. The battalion CO had common sense and the weight profile problem did not rear it's head for the major.) The sergeant was not obviously overweight. He was a big boned tall man who had an Ordnance MOS but had had several semi-sedentary years in Germany. To make a long story short, try as he might he could not diet the weight off. He existed on a diet that ensured he had continual hunger pangs and was required to conduct a daily exercise regimen that was strenuous to the point of absurdity. He had not dropped enough weight in some number of weigh ins to take himself of the 'will be administratively separated list' and was coming up on his last chance weigh in. Now this is a married guy with a couple of children who are in high school/middle school facing being put out of the army about a year shy of getting retirement and being able to do all the job placement drills that NCO's go through in their last year in the Army.

The stress he was under led to him developing asthma which was severe enough that he had to constantly use an inhaler. People used to remark on the guy pushing himself to run/jog around the track using an inhaler as he gasped his way along. The position of the Ordnance School and his unit 'Sorry about that, nothing we can do, rules are rules, everyone is treated the same .'(This when you could see obviously blubbery fat female nco's waddling about on any day. There was some loophole for woman and height weight requirements that enabled that to happen and no one wanted to be smeared as a 'misogynist' for trying to get the lardbutt females into the weight profile program.)So one fine day the asthmatic sergeant takes himself to the track for another weight reduction torture session and as he is plowing along has a hear attack and falls dead. The fall out was the usual 'we did nothing wrong' stance bureaucracy always adopts when it can hide behind the letter of a rule to excuse ethically corrupt conduct.

Seeing crap as I have just described more times than once definitely reduces one's regard for the institution that tolerates a culture that is so obtuse and frankly immoral in its behavior towards those who have done little or nothing to merit the hell they stuck in.

[R. Scott]

A far cry from 1965.

[fr_freak]

To which I respond, I don't think, in a volunteer Army during a time of war (with likely more war --- we're kidding ourselves if we don't think Syria and Iran are next) there are a lot of.

That's a good point, and I salute those who have the huevos to join up knowing they'll go to a combat zone. There is still value in maximizing the stress level during Basic as part of the conditoning, though. Plus, something I forgot to mention: there is no shortage of a**holes in the army and many of them are in charge to some degree, so if you're trained to put up with them in Basic, you'll be better prepared for your Army career, ehehe.

[MeanWestTexan]

"there is no shortage of a**holes in the army and many of them are in charge to some degree"

Very true.

I was always a pilot candidate/ROTc so I had a somewhat different experience -- we were treated pretty good by everyone, with the exception of small arms/side arm instructor who told us that (this is an almost direct quote) "If we were using a pistol, we had f@@@ up, crashed and were going to die anyway, so he didn't know why he was wasting his time. . . ." etc.

He did teach us: (1) where to tape a single extra round so that it would not fall off, but we could get to it and (2) to put the pistol under the chin, not in our mouths.

[jospehm20]

I agree with you, I do not see this as lowering any standard. I also had the honor of serving under Col. Daly twice in my career, he is one of the best officers I have ever known. If he believes that it was counter prodcutive than I believe it too. I don't think that the short period of verbal anuse I endured at the beginning of training helped me in any way in my military career, ever. I do not see how eliminating this opportunity for mindless harassment makes basic training any less than it was before.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Well, they chose to switch to this new stuff, so that must be ok with you too.

[HiTech RedNeck]

This makes the army look more like boy scouts. Maybe that's good, considering most of them will be policing rather than mounting ground assaults.

[Eagle Eye]

The screaming B.S. just annoyed me, it didn't make me a better soldier or teach me to deal with stress. I just bit my tongue and tried to learn. The recruits now are largely people who are volunteering for combat or at least a strong possibility of the same. They are pretty motivated already.

Well said.

Those who think that harrassment is training are idiots.

However there is still one service reserved for those that need help with self image and motivation by means of screaming and yelling at recruits like they are idiots.

[jdhighness]

I was fortunate enough to attend USMC Boot Camp at MCRD San Diego. I believe the Marine Corps has the perfect system for Boot Camp--save the huge emphasis on close order drill as opposed to combat drills.

My platoon had 5 Drill Instructors, each with there own complementarily foci.

SDI: Taught us morals and ways around evil temptations (ex what to do when you fail)

J Belt: Mean as heck but so successful (DI awards, 2 ranks in 3 years) that we just tried to mimic him.

DI 2: a grunt who was by far the scariest but treated us how we treated him (as a platoon, so if one recruit didn't put out, then the platoon mistreated him). He was also mimicked

DI 3: our "kill" hat. A great example because he was injured at the beginning but most recruits couldn't even tell. He only enjoyed smoking a few recruits, and when you were selected as a "friend" of those few you could tell he didn't enjoy it.

DI 4: An extra DI who was to be Series Gunny next cycle and this was a refamiliarization. He was the chief game player. Everytime he was our DI for the night, we knew games would persist. His favorite was "you know what I want": two sheets, a blanket, a pillow, and our mattresses, online, deep MOVE!

Yelling was a constant at boot camp. The DIs always yelling and demanding we yell was for practical purposes that I have seen in the rest of my active duty training (I am a Reservist MP). In most areas, it is hard to hear commands, so the ability to yell is crucial.

About the "games"--they actually have a purpose. Even as a Reservist we have played games do to a lack of foresight. For instance, this last drill we must have moved our field gear 10 times for no apparent reason. Also, the enlisted life can be pretty boring--manning a post, weapon system, or just plain waiting around. The games you play at Boot Camp are far more frustrating than the games we play now, so it is not so bad.

Also, Black Friday is essential in establishing the dominance of the DIs over the recruits. It is really quite phenomenal how much obedience they get. Then again, if the DIs are power-trippy, then the recruit is likely to forget a lot of their teachings and the example they set and resent elements of the training. I have seen the products of both motivational (mean but for a purpose) DIs and power-trippy DIs, and the former are much more motivated on average.

[Potowmack]

Well, they chose to switch to this new stuff, so that must be ok with you too.

Like I said, I'll defer to the experts in the military when it comes to the best way to train soldiers.

[HiTech RedNeck]

What are "the experts" -- you can bet "the experts" there are non-unanimous

[jospehm20]

That remark is not reality based. I remeber Army units taking Baghdad a couple of years ago, what do you call that? The mission here in Iraq and in Afghanistan is policing now, even Marines do it. I do not see them being any more or less successful than the Army is at it. Marines are good, but they are a limited in what they can do because they are a relatively small organization. The Army does big ground assaults when they are ordered to, the Marines do smaller ones. Remember Destert Storm? The Marines were the decoys to keep the Iraqis guessing while the Army actually did the assault. It is called team work.

[Eagle Eye]

Treating recruits like human beings works well for those motivated volunteers with decent AFQT scores.

Treating recruits like dirt works well with those that need help, aren't all that smart and are responding to television ads portraying fantasy warrior images.

[leadpenny]

I agree with all of your comments on this thread.

[91B]

What you say is absolutely true and the incredible part of it is that when soldiers are needed to go to the combat zone, noone cares about body fat content. We had a troop in Iraq who weighed well over 350 pounds and stood maybe 6'1". If he wasn't 40% body fat I am not writing this, but he could stand watch in a tower, allowing another soldier to go on patrol and he filled a shortage so our command was glad to have him. The height weight standards are garbage anyway, pass the PT test and you are fit-period.

[jospehm20]

I work with all branches of our armed forces here and have nothing but respect for all of them. They are all diferent. They all have different missions, requirements and different ways of training their folks to meet those reuirements. They all seem to work from what I have seen.

[MeanWestTexan]

"Treating recruits like human beings works well for those motivated volunteers with decent AFQT scores. Treating recruits like dirt works well with those that need help, aren't all that smart and are responding to television ads portraying fantasy warrior images."

Bingo.

[Americanexpat]

I joined the Army in 1965, so I guess I am one of those losers your talking about. I did not join because I couldn't´t get a civilian job I joined because I wanted a career in the Army.

There is nothing my Drill sgts called me I didnt hear before I joined the Army. After I got to Vietnam I was glad the drill Sgt were meaner than constipated rattlesnakes.

We do not need two sets of standards for combat arms and for tech types. We need everybody in the Army on the same sheet of music.

I would rather have someone wash out of the Army in basic training than getting him in my unit and find out he is a chickenshit little turd under fire because he cant take it.

Back in 85 before I retired a colonel told me,¨Top, look at all those fine young soldiers running by they are physically fit for combat. I said, &Yes sir, they can run, the question is are they mentally fit for combat?¨