Light Hearted Look At Basic Training

[Zofo]

For those of us who've served in the Forces and for those of you who haven't there may be some misconceptions, half truths and full truths about how we start our military careers.
I'd like to start the ball rolling if I may with the idea of spud bashing!!
Who in all honesty did NOT peel a single potato during training?
After I passed off in Catterick, I was assigned to C.T. Troop (Continuous Training). We were to have learnt further skills in infanteering and such like - however, the troop was used for all sorts of nasty details - area cleaning, stagging on guard and mess waitering. For my sins, I ended up in the cookhouse with a mate for a whole month at 11 Signal Regt. where it was my pleasure to sit at the back of the preperation area from 0930 - 1500 every day (apart from weekends) and peel bags of spuds. It was horrendous, soul destroying stuff, absolutely not what I joined the army to do. The only good thing about that detail were the lovely civvie girls who worked in the cookhouse and took pity on us in more than one way!
What other chestnuts, cliches and the like do our esteemed members remember doing? If you haven't served and you've got a question that needs answering, why not write in and the panel will put things right!
Webmasters & Moderators, chip in with your horror stories too!

[Drone_pilot]

as a boy soldier we were marched every where, and i mean everywhere.
so one night after lights out (about 1am) i needed to visit the WC.
Being a little bit of a joker, i marched myself to the toilet, you know the Drill, came to attention, quick march a few left turns, right turns, and one about turn, i finally was stood in front of the toilet. Now i invented some drill movements of my own (undo Pyjamas cord UNDO. Assume the Sitting position SIT. Prepare to evacuate bowels on my Order WAIT FOR IT WAIT FOR IT) you get the idea. and all the time shouting those lovely words of encouragement the drill sgt's love to use.

After i had given myself the order to unlock toilet door. open toilet door,
you can imagine the look on my face as i left the stall to find the duty officer and duty sgt stood there trying very hard not to laugh. :oops:

the next day at first parade my troop sgt called me out and made me march the troop to breakfast, much to his amusement, the others in the troop didn't know what was going on, as it wasn't the done thing for a junior solider of only 3 months to be given such honour.

[HighlandSniper58]

PMSL :lol:

[Bill Farnie]

In basic training I peeled mountains of spuds along with washing tons of pots.
After basic, in the US Army you are sent to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) which in my case was Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk Louisiana. Much to my delight we didn't have to pull Kitchen Police but being in the swamps of Tigerland wasn't a piece of cake by any means. They had a mockup Vietnam village on the Ft. Polk military reservation and we had to pull guard duty at the village which was very realistic with hooch's, pigs and chickens. There were two men to a guard post and one night it was very spooky because of the clouds and the kind of lighting that stays up in the sky and seems to go from cloud to cloud. Don't know the meteorological name for that type of lighting but it was called "heat lighting" in rural Pennsylvania. In the middle of the night the men from another guard post came to our post claiming that they were chased from their post by a bobcat. We said yea right and told them they better get back to their post before they were charged with deserting it if the OD showed up checking the guard but shortly after they arrived we heard growling coming from a nearby tree and when the sky became lit by the lighting there was the bobcat sitting on a branch. He sat there in the tree for a while then all of a sudden he took off. We were wondering what made him take off when we heard grunting coming from the direction of the pen where the pigs were located and found out what had made him leave. It was a wild boar trying to get into the pig pen to have his way with the ladies. We left him alone hoping that after he was finished with the sows that he would be satisfied and just leave which fortunately for us he did , for although we had M-16's, the Army in its wisdom didn't give us any ammo.

[Bombardier]

When I left the artillery training depot at woolwhich, london, in 1983 I was sent to my first unit, 39 Heavy regt Royal Artillery, after a short period of leave.
i had been in Camp, Dempsey barracks sennelager, Germany for what felt like no more than 2 hours when I was immediateley double marched to the gun garages to be introduced to the guns. they were big guns, 8 inch M110's selp propelled. My gun sub as they were decided that I should be initiated and brought into the fold, so they pinned me to the floor and blind folded me. i immediateley heard the roar of the massive diesel engine start up and after a short time it got louder and I felt a large peice of what I could only describe at the time as "lump of metal" pressing against my head,as this was happening the engine of a 32 tonne M110 was revving higher and higher and as it did the weight of the metal lump began to press harder and harder, I was crapping myself because I thought they were driving a Gun over my head.

after what felt like an eternity the blind fold was removed and I saw that the gun was nowhere near my head, what they actually did was place a piece of track on my head and park the gun next to me.

Oh how they laughed, chuckle bloody chuckle. I think I actually did sh*t myself.

I was told afterwards that it was character building.
I wonder why I have got a nervous twitch now LOL

[Zofo]

Bill's story of the bobcat brings to mind more wildlife - we used to deploy onto a specific mountain in North East Germany for opeartional purposes. It was a great location, comfy and well set out. Our vehicles practically knew the way there and all our defensive positions etc were ready made. We just had to dig them up again!
At nights we'd either be working, sleeping or on guard and it was all serious stuff. However, there were families of wild boar who lived in the forests and they didn't like humans on their patch. Every now and then the brave ones would rootle around our bashas or poke their noses around our trenches. One night we were in our vehicles (6 of them all backing into a large tent) when the guard came running back shouting that we should get in the waggons and shut the doors. The shift Sgt. asked why he'd deserted his post and the guard shouted "pigs".
We heard a thundering of hooves and just as we'd shut our doors (to i tonne hard top landrovers) the pigs - about 10 of them - came hurtling through the tent gap and smashed our det. to pieces. Map boards upside down, cabling twisted and heaters turned over. We had drop panels in the middle of the doors and we watched the pigs going absolutely crazy. They couldn't find a way out of the tent so used their tusks (eventually) to rip holes to escape. This lasted for about 15 minutes and then they left.
We continued our deployment for another week with a very holy tent and a very unimpressed Quartermaster who didn't want to believe that pigs had damaged all our gear. We only ever saw the odd one or two after that - mainly we heard them rootling in the forest behind our location.

[HighlandSniper58]

Imagine the scene - RAF Officer cadets in a fairly early stage of training, the inevitable Bull night. Well there we were supposedly getting our corridor of the Cadet's Mess Block ready for a kit inspection next morning - individual rooms on a 20-room corridor, so much more work than a typical barrack room. Well, self-discipline broke down and a fair degree of mucking about broke out. At around 23:00 with much work still to be done, our Squadron RAF Regiment Drill Instructor appears on the scene, he is not best pleased and gets us to fall in outside for a kit-inspection in a fairly unorthodox uniform - Shreddies, boots, NBS hoods, respirators, steel helmets, and broom-sticks. Bearing in mind it was December, he had us standing there at attention for about 30 minutes, brooms at the shoulder.

Needless to say we didn't get much sleep that night, our corridor was the best in the block, and we never pissed about on a bull night again.

Flt. Sgt. B****w was superb, knew he could say anything he liked to us as long as the sentence started or finished with Sir. I can particularly remember him saying to me "Mr W*****r Sir, you are a total f*cking waste of space, there's a Russian spy satellite up there lauging at you right now SIR"! He was the best - no matter what strife you got into, he would pull you out of it, whilst making you suffer on the QT - but he never dropped us in it.

[drywall]

I went thru basic at Ft Leonardwood Missouri over the holiday season of '65. During one session of bayonet training the company next to us was playing Christmas carols over the PA system. The Capt. told me to go up there and tell them to turn it off. He was having a hard time motivating the troops to kill with "Silent Night, Holy Night" playing in the background. I always thought "how weird is this?"

[Axis SS]

I am looking forward to basic and battlefield school. basic is about 6 weeks and battlefield school is 16 weeks.. go in soft..come out hard.

after that??? Hati, The Congo, Bosnia, The Middle East. I will go where they send me.

[Zofo]

The worst thing about basic was the ballsache of getting up at 0500 to clean toilets (occasionally with a toothbrush!). Blancoing stuff even though we didn't need to and lastly polishing parade boots only to be made to do PT in them - usually a log run round the North York Moors (Bus stop Hill anyone?) so the hard work was ruined and we had to start all over again!
Did anyone else have any well known features in their basic training area?

[Bombardier]

I can remember a Bombardier who was training us called Pete Freak or something like that. He used to march his boots up and down the corridor if he didnt feel they were good enough, thats bulled to a high enough standard. (strange man) but funny too :mrgreen:

[Drone_pilot]

hay zofo what about moping the corridor in block 14 we used to call it the M3 (a freeway in england)

[Zofo]

That was a never ending job, like painting the Forth Bridge! As soon as it was cleaned we then had a squad of signalmen who would follow along layering polish (that stinking yellow stuff) and then the block leader or his deputy (who didn't have to clean the bogs) marched down the corridor with the world's biggest electric bumper. Anyone in trouble took the manual bumper first!