During my time in the Army I observed the graduation of 3 other training companies, and there is a reason why they call it: BASIC, and I personally feel that they didn't focus on more of the crucial training elements in my company, they spent more time harassing us, and getting a power trip out of their "honorable position." Some of these drill instructors you can tell never held a real job, and they are just as immature and stupid as these 17, and 18 year olds who are fresh out of high school.
The other training companies in my Batallion, like Alpha, and Charlie, had lazy, and worthless drill sergeants who basically let their privates do their own thing during training.
Discipline is important in training, but the drill and ceramony, and relentless poking fun at the trainees even though they didn't fuck up is something that needs to be noticed.
And there are a lot of fuck ups among the ranks of our NCO's and fat worthless training commanders.
My particular company spent more time harassing us, and making our lives hell, than training us. I can't tell you how many schedules we fell behind, because we had 30 minute smoking sessions (pt) at least every hour, that we missed a lot of important training excercises and drills, because they were too busy getting a kick out of pissing us off.
Other training companies never disciplined their privates enough, they allowed them to consume contraban, they made life easy for those who probably wouldnt of been able to hack it mentally, had they been properly disciplined.
Their Drill sergeants would be on 24 hour CQ, and instructed us to wake them up, so they dont get in trouble with the commander or the company first sergeant, or even the CSM.
There is really no administration in the Army, either you join and you graduate as a fuck-up. (Like when one private left for graduation leave, and ended up with 2 sexual assault charges, and a DUI.) Or you can graduate as a soldier, or you can join the Army and get trained by a bunch of UCMJ violating assholes and end up injured. (like me) We started out in our company with 250 privates, and ended up graduating about 160 of them. Most of the others fell out due to severe injuries, and a lot went AWOL, or went on mental health profile.
After my 8 months in, observing the training, I think there is a lot of work to be done. I've personally prepared some of the training paper work for other companies, and browsed confidential military training documents, and there was a lot of shit we never did, because they were too busy getting a rise out of us.
So yes, I disagree with a lot of the training, that is focused in basic training. We had about 35 privates in our company that went on airborne hold after graduation, and only about 18 of them passed their airborne pt test, and the rest were still recovering from their initial basic training injures due to the Army's negligence behind safe training procedures.
They're supposed to strictly follow medical profiles, but in the infantry, they seldom do it, and when you're hurt they tell you to drink water, and suck it up. I sucked it up untill Ft. Benning's TMC Lead Surgeon contacted the brigade commander, and forced me into the infirmary, because I sucked it up beyond sucking it up, mostly because I didn't know my rights... I simply said... wow this sucks... Im on crutches, and I have a peice of paper that says I can't do this, this, this, and that, and these fuckers are making me do it, and if I don't do it, they are threatening me with disciplinary action.
Welcome to Basic training, that's a brief summarization of my story.
I still think the Army is cool, and have been medically discharged as a PV2. I was supposed to go in as an E-4 because of my education and certification in computer networking, but I didnt join the army for money or rank. I joined to kill people. I can come back in another MOS after 6 months.
