Well I hope they are interesting anyway!

I thought with the popularity of military video games and interest in ongoing military operations I would open a topic allowing soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines the opportunity to share some short shots of what military life is like with civilians.

I think emphasis on military training situations and military discipline would be very eye opening to those never being exposed to the American military society operating outside of the US Constitution.

Here’s my first, and I have a thousand of em! And I beg other soldiers or vets to chime in with more followups!

Airborne Training

Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane training to do the same in hostilities with a weapon, equipment necessary of sustaining yourself for combat behind enemy lines.
Check out these sites for some of today’s requirements. The second site has a great picture of a Mass TAC jump. http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190..._051004,00.html http://www.tamucc.edu/~rotc/summer_activities/abn.htm

I attended the three-week training in the spring of 68 and was one of a class in excess of 600 male soldier airborne want a bees. The first formation was held with toes to a steel pot with a 4-numbers stenciled on it for trainee ID. Rules were clear and barked out a machine gun rate. While here if you take one step you jump and two steps you run and if you are outside of the barracks you will have the headgear on! We secured our duffel bags and ran to our assigned barracks, a two-story wood frame WWII era building housing 30 soldiers on each floor. Latrine, bathroom facilities, consisted of an open room on the first floor with 20 sinks, 10 commodes, 10 showers, 10 urinals and all without partitions just in an open room.

The first week consisted of every kind of suspended torture a parachute harness, weapon pouch and gear bag could put you in along with hours of practice parachute landing falls for decent in all possible directions.

The second week was tower week, first simulating jumping out of a 32 foot tower tethered to a steel cable simulating decent in a jump and then the 250 foot tower, a tower similar to high tension power lines with pulleys that raised 3 deployed parachutes and troopers to the top and released the parachute to free fall to the ground.

The third week was jump week where you finally jumped from an airplane. In our case we jumped from vintage USAF C-119’s, flying boxcars carrying 30 troopers a flight.

The one step you jump and two steps you run rule and physical training required to graduate boggles the mind that I made it through to graduation. Twenty-one days to sort out the serious troopers, one failure and you are out of training, and at the time with very good odds with orders to Vietnam. The three meals a day were mandatory for all 21 days and the dining facility was 1 ¼ miles away from the formation area, the physical training area was 1 ¼ miles from the formation area. In the physical training area an inspection took place where most troopers did at least 20 pushups for infractions. Then in the sawdust pit for pushups and sit ups and warm up exercises after being soaked with water hoses because of the heat index. Coming out of the warm up pit we were looking like candied apples with sawdust on our uniforms. Then we did the 4-mile run followed by cool down exercises. Then off to the training area, you guessed it another 1 ¼ mile run. On tower week no trooper did less than 140 pushups in the day and most exceeded 225 or ran less than ten miles in increments.

On graduation the black hats pinned on the cherished silver wings. But through tradition the pinning on of silver airborne wings was done by a slap without the pin covers on the nails holding them, they were pinned to your chest above your heart about a ¼ inch deep earning the name “blood wings.”

To not give credit to the Navy Seals would be unforgivable, they ran in circles around the trooper’s formation on all 4-mile runs in exercise period.