I went through Jackson for 63S AIT in 1993.
Basic was at Knox.

We had the older style 3 story barracks at both places. I believe my class was the last or near to last all male class.

I too got sick during BRM in Basic at Knox. Funny story, the Company Commander came for a visit at the hospital. I was in a bay with 4 or 5 other Basic Trainees all of whom had pneumonia (myself included). Anywho, our Company Commander, a Captain, was doing the meet and greet - "how's it going" thing. Talks to the 1st guy, he's in a holding company out processing to get out the Army. Next guy is Polish (in the Army to get Citizenship) - real depressing personality worried about BRM - complete downer. Talks to the guy in the bed next to mine. Ask him how it's going, He says "Sir, I want out the Army, I'm 30, I had a good job back home, how do I get out of here and get back home?"

Captain finally comes to me and asks "How's it going?" I say, "I love it. How many times in your life do you get paid to shoot and throw Hand Grenades?" I told him that I was a Reservist and already knew I was headed to College in January when done with training but was really tempted to go active duty. He was suprised and it made his day.

I got out of the hospital just in time to qualify with all the Bolo's that had failed at least 2 or 3x's the 1st day or 2 of Qualification. I did a quick sight in and then headed to the Qualification Range. Previously I'd seen 3 pop ups in an open field. Qualification had multiple pop-ups in a hilly wooded field.

I qualified the bare Marksman the 1st try. However, I shot Marksman with my Right Hand. I'm really left handed and shot expert in the Reserves with my Left Hand.
In Basic I figured everyone was shooting Righty and I might as well do the same since I can shoot 22 rifles with either hand / eye.


Last story from Basic at Knox - My mother was getting remarried a week or 2 before I was supposed to Graduate Basic. She called the Red Cross and eventually got of ahold of my Company Commander (same one that I chatted with in the Hospital). I learned later that she basically cried on his shoulder, telling how my Dad died when I was 12 and that she wanted me home for her wedding. CC called me into his office and said, "I talked to your Mother..." "I'm sending you home for her wedding. You leave Friday night and come back Sunday Afternoon. If I find out you smoked weed or got in trouble, I'll personally kick your ass."

"Drill Sgt. - this Private needs a haircut, we can't have his mother see him with that hair!"

I was one of the few that got to go home during Basic Training.

Graduation - I was stuck on KP.
Family Day - I was stuck on KP.

I didn't mind, I was a Reservist anyways.

We had a phantom shitter and a suicidal guy.

Our phantom shitter would steal the towels hung off the bunks, shit in it, then try to hide the shit towel.

We had a dude that would sit in his wall locker and sleep.  I'll never forget that turd's name.  

That's a better story then mine lol

da souf!

A "phantom shitter"? Please elaborate lol

LMFAO!

Very odd...lol

Keep in mind this was AF BMT so I guess nap time wasn't too far out of bounds.  

 

LMFAO!

May '81, Plt. 3020, MCRD. Pvt. Perkins. He was a big slob!!
Top rack, in the middle of the night wet his rack. Tried to hide the
Evidence, didn't work, firewatch caught him. He was banished
to a single rack, every hour when firewatch changed, we were
ordered to wake Perkins up to go to the head!!
Field week, the fucker runs through a patch of poison ivy,
after that he has to shower last in the last corner shower and wipe
down the area afterwards with clorox to kill anything that might get the
rest of us infected.

Thanks for sharing the stories guys.

Looking forward to the 3rd installment to your series!

Too bad he didn't understand English better....

Thanks!

After about a week....when those of us who were not retarded proved ourselves as unlobotomized, non-bedwetters, we were identified and "reassigned" from our day one battle buddies....and got hooked up with retarded lobotomized bedwetters to carry through basic for the duration.



The suffering this arrangement inflicted upon those of us who had to carry those man-sized logs of dead driftwood over the finish line cannot be overstated.



I passionately fucking hate my battle buddy from basic to this day, two decades and change later.



Basic Training for me was a primary training exercise in self restraint.  I wanted to throat chop that fucker every second of the day for 16 weeks.
I hope he begat flipper babies who catch the cancer....



May eternal fuck be upon him....
This is why you hear veterans say that not everybody in the military is a hero.

Ft. Bliss.
1981

We had some of the stupidest people I ever met, hands down.
A few guys got Article 15s for locking their keys in their wall lockers.
I was sitting on my bunk with my wall locker open, and my lock sitting on the shelf INSIDE my wall locker.
A guy walked up and said, you are going to be up shit creek if you lock that in there.
I said, how the hell can I lock my lock inside the locker ?
He just kept repeating himself as I tried to explain that you couldn't lock the locker without the lock, whis is in the locker.....

Another time the drill sergent said, I want everybody over 6' tall over here.
A guy walked over there and the drill sergent asked what he was doing. He said, I'm six foot seven.

He said, I'll show you my drivers license, it says I'm 6'7"
The drill Sargent looked at it and it said he was 67 inches tall. But this guy honestly thought he was six foot seven.

In AIT we put a gunners quadrant on a gun at two points and they had to be within so many mills of each other.
I was the only one who had any idea how to do the math to determine this. And I am talking about something like 4 mills.
The instructor got frustrated and asked me to try to explain it.
I tried every way I could think of; take the smaller number, add four, it the answer is less than the big number you are OK...blank stare. Ok, take the big number and subtract four and if the answer is bigger than the small number, you are OK......
I have a picture of the blast shield covered with these basic arithmetic equations.
They never had any idea what I was talking about.

We got our first on base pass at the end of basic. Before I even changed my clothes to leave the area we heard a commotion outside. We looked out and the MPs were chasing a crowd of our guys and hitting them and sweeping their legs with riot batons.
This was within a half hour of us getting released.
We got called to formation and about half the company were too drunk to stand.
They had gone to the movie theatre and got in a fight. And got a beating from the MPs.
And I never even got to leave the area, go to the PX, have a beer...nothing...this would have been my first freedom since the reception center.


It was pathetic.

"Pisser" Perkins story, we were martching from the small PX,
Perkins is acting funny, Senior Drill Instructor Sgt. Turner asked
what his malfunction is, Perkins replies, "I gotta go pee"!!
We're 5 squad bays away, Sgt Turner tells him to go to Alpha Co. and
ask permission to use their head. We were outside and
the fireworks we heard from there was AWSOME!!!!
Their DI allowed him to piss, but we all payed for that one!!

Went to Basic in Ft Jackson 8/88-10/88. That was my first experience with humidity!
Two weeks in, we got our first round of  Reservist Drill Sgts. Most of them were nice, but there was one who had to chew us a new one, one day. He is ranting and raving, when all the sudden he takes of his hat and flings it across formation area, it sailed like a frisbee! We all just about lost our shit!
I still smile when I think of bayonet training, when there were 200 girls yelling KILL KILL KILL at the top of their lungs.
My favorite thing in basic was Victory Tower and rifle range days.

This is a very true statement....

Those are great stories!

There is a bitch from Boston whom I still hate and despise to this very day, 26 years later....

Lol

Let me tell you all about the dumbass in my platoon.


Oh wait, that was me.

Oh well, at least I was a loyal, hard-working dumbass!

Yeah Victory Tower was fun

LMFAO!

I got one for you.  It was the summer of 1997.  I was in B Co. 2-10 Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  We had a total fuckup in our platoon named Logsdon.  This guy never could do anything right.  He was a true Gomer Pyle.  We were minutes away from our big 1SG barracks inspection and we were all standing at parade rest in front of our wall lockers.  Everything seemed fine.  We were going to rock this inspection.   We were ready.  That is what we thought anyway.  After standing there for a few minutes I realized that there was a puddle of water standing at the base of Logsdon's wall locker.  I looked at him and asked what the fuck is that water?  He said that he didn't have time to dry his clothes that were in the washer in time for the inspection and would you believe this fucker had setup his locker for inspection with soaking fucking wet clothes?  I mean fucking dripping wet canoe rolled socks and everything!  We knew we were fucked and we were giggling like little school girls from the very moment the 1SG stepped into our room.  We went through that inspection in the lean and rest while the 1SG went apeshit over the situation.   Fun times!  Logsdon was sent home sometime after.  He just wasn't Army material.

That reminds me of another one. Again, Ft. Bliss 1981

We were having a barracks inspection. We knew that most of these guys would just fuck it up so we had about 10 guys do almost everything and told the rest to stand outside.

We spit shined every inch from ceiling to floor and everything in between. Waxed floors, Brasso.......boots off, socks only.....

The whole time we had a running argument to keep everyone else outside.

We get done and fall into formation.

One idiot says he has to shit. He can't wait.  
We tell him, ok but don't touch a fucking thing. Don't wash your hands, straight in, straight out.

He went in, shit, and didn't flush the toilet.

PT for all in the sand pit for the rest of the day.

One day one of my DS's, big guy by the name of DS Hall, told me that he'd rather have a hundred dedicated guys like me, rather than any PT stud in the platoon.

Of course, that was after him yelling. "GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT, FUCKING SOSA! HOW THE FUCK DID I KNOW IT WAS YOU WHO FUCKED THAT UP?"

Ft Knox'89

Had a guy try to kill himself.
Tied Buffer Cord around his neck and threw it out the third story window.
The cord was to long.  I have never seen a Drill Sgt that pissed.

When I was in Basic at Ft Ord (1976) they gave us an overnight pass the weekend before graduation. I mentioned to my GF in a letter that I was looking forward to the pass and my first trip off base since I'd got there.

We were having a "GI party" in the barracks the afternoon before our pass was to start when my Drill Sergeant comes in, yells my name and tells me to report to the CO's office ASAP. I'd never been to the orderly room or spoken to the CO before and was sure I was in some sort of trouble.

I haul ass down to the headquarters building and nervously report to the First Sergeant. He seemed strangely amused to see me and sent me in to see the Captain. I do the whole "Private Mellish reporting as ordered" with a slight tremble in my voice. He proceeds to look me up and down for a long moment then says "I'm sure you are aware that trainees are forbidden to have visitors, are you not?"

Totally confused, I answer that yes, I am aware of that policy. He then points out the window and says "How do you explain that?" I look out the window and there's my GF standing outside, looking lovely. My jaw hit the floor and he must have seen how surprised I was because he said "You've got five minutes to report to me in a squared away Class A uniform or you'll spend your pass on KP and I'll send her home. Dismissed!"

I did a quick salute and "Yes sir" and ran back to the barracks where I jumped into my dress uniform, got inspected by my Drill Sergeant, ran back to the orderly room where I got inpected by the First Sergeant, then reported to the Captain. By now I could tell that they were all doing their best to look stern when thay really wanted to laugh out loud.

CO gave me a once over and said "I guess that will have to do, be back by 0800" I gave him my best salute and a "Yes Sir, thank you Sir!" As I went back through the orderly room everybody is grinning and telling me "give her one for me" and shit like that.

Without any coaching from me, my GF had flown to SF and found her way to my company HQ. I can only imagine the reaction when she walked in and asked for me.

My battle buddy would fall asleep standing up in formation. I swear this fucker had to have  been narcoleptic.

He was the same MOS as me so we did basic and AIT together.  To top it all off,  we report to Ft. Hood the same day. One of those days after we get done with reception,  we're walking to our cars and a Major is walking straight towards us.  This fucker was carrying something in his right hand so he salutes the Major with his left hand.  The Major blew a head gasket and rips us both a new one.  Yells at me because "I let him do that".

Ah the basic training battle buddy after you get to your first duty station....the gift that keeps on giving.
 

Fort Knox 1986.

We were cleaning the barracks when I hear my DS screaming my name. I run down the hall and he tells me to call my father. I'm worried. He tells me to hurry up, there must be an emergency. We'd only been there 5 weeks so hadn't been allowed to use the phones yet, and the only way family could reach us (other than writing letters) was through the Red Cross. If the Red Cross was involved it was bad news,

I run up the hill to the pay phones. I call Dad. I'm anxious. I ask what's wrong, and he says, "Oh nothing, I just wanted to see how you're doing". What? I ask him if he went through the Red Cross, he says "No". I ask how he got through to the Army. He says, "I called the base operator and she gave me the phone number to your barracks". He called and asked for me. CQ assumed it was an emergency.

I explain to him that the only way family is supposed to reach us is is through the Red Cross. He says, "Well....I was in a plane crash. Does that count?" Yeah Dad, that counts. I thought he was joking but he was dead serious.

My father never remembered calling me. He was out of it for a couple of weeks and doesn't remember any of it. Head, back, and neck injury with lots of pain killers.

I later learned:
His coworker owned a stunt plane. They flew down to the Cape to visit my grandparents. They were heading home and crashed on takeoff with my poor grandmother watching. The plane was upside down up in a tree, the canopy had been ripped off. My father was unconscious, the pilot thought he was dead and undid his seatbelt. He fell 20 ft and landed on his head, damaging his spine. The pilot released his own seatbelt and broke his neck when he hit the ground. The pilot went back to work 6 months later, but my father couldn't work for about 3 years. He never regained full ROM in his neck so was put on permanent light duty (he was a police officer).

Same guy tried that at Benning, too, in '91.  Dumb guy didn't learn the second time either.....

I never went. I scored so hi on my ASFAB that I didn't have to go.

We had this one fuckwit in our platoon, Stamper. God I hated that fucking twat.

There are many, many things I hated about him, mostly because he was a shitbird who tried to do everything to quit, including faking a medical condition and deliberately failing the rifle quals. Drill Sergeants hated that guy, too.

One day, during land nav training, this fucker had the balls (or stupidity) to go up to one of 3rd PLT's Drill Sergeants, DS Kirkland, WITH HIS FUCKING COVER ON BACKWARDS, not go to parade rest, and say. "Yo, what up, Kirk-dawg?"

When we all got to ordering our PLT T-shirts near the end of OSUT ( about 2 weeks before graduation) our Drill Sergeants reminded us ( without saying) Stamper's name doesn't go on the list.

There should've been a few in my BTC that went home as well.

LMFAO!

Fort Dix, September '75.

While at the Reception Station my barracks we were able to see into McGuire Air Force Base.  One time somebody was practicing Touch and Go Landings with (I think) an F-105.

Drill Sergeant DeMuele is a name I will always remember. That and about the first time he explained the Gig Line a recruit, said Recruit pointed out that The Drill Sergeants Gig Line was a bit off.

I only had KP once.  ...Sneaking and eating scrap pieces of roast beef that were otherwise thrown out.  It was COLD that day, too.  Packed the mermat cases of food for those Elsewhere.  Elsewhere being defined as being on the Shooting line.  All of us that were on KP were given classes on how to shoot.  I shot Sharpshooter.  Just waiting my turn I just sat there snapping my fingers, all keel and all that.

Strep Throat after the first practice PT test.  Hospital for a couple of days.  Got to see The Deadly Tower while there.  Normally Lights Out and the TV off before 2300.  But we were allowed to see the finish for a change.  Upon discharge from the Hospital I was given some penicillin tablets to take every so often.  When classes got to be a Real bore I had a valid reason to keep sneaking peeks at my watch.  It just might be time for another pill!  A couple of times it was, too.

Learning there was another salad dressing I could stand that wasn't oil & vinegar.

The first time we bivouacked.  Seeing All those No POV Parking signs bordering the area.  And the one private who didn't bother to look after his rifle.  The Drill Sergeants put the privates weapon in a tree and made the poor schmuck yell repeatedly, "Here Weapon!  Here Weapon!  Here Weapon!  ..."  He almost started crying.  Me: I had Field KP: I got to dish out the greens for the salad.  I never did get the proportions even: Some got plenty, some got short. Sorry guys.

The big, heavy muscular Drill Sergeant dragging a Huge and thick club-like tree branch through the bivouac.  The cries of "Make Way", as he wandered around, making his point very clear.

Fire Watch. 'Nuff Said for both the Barracks and bivouac.

Learning you have to put a polish base On Your Boot before you can use any one of the many Super-Duper market shines available.

Signing up For but Never getting my  Basic Training Yearbook.  At least I wasn't billed for it.

And many other singular memories

LMFAO!

Somehow, I scored pretty high on the ASVAB - 90 something. I was a C / D student in High School. I wanted to be an MP but that job was filled the day I went to MEPS. I didn't know I could've gone back the next day and gotten the MP MOS. The MEPS clerk basically gave the me the Army MOS manual and said I could choose any MOS except for MP. Medic, Infantry, Patriot Missil Systems operator or mechanic, cook, etc. On a whim I choose Heavy Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic (63s) - figuring I didn't know anything about Mechanics, I might as well learn from the Army.

Anywho, my Recruiter said that being from the Burbs of Chicago with some of the best public schools (high property taxes) in the nation, I should score at least in the 70's or 80's on the ASVAB.

If I scored in the 60's I was Dumb as a Rock.
If I scored in the 50's I was Dumb as a Rock with Lips.

Sitting in class at Jackson, ASVAB scores came up - yep you needed a score in the 50's (IIRC) to go to 63S school and the majority of my platoon had scores at that level.
I still had fun. Those guys knew more about mechanics than I did then & now.

Hindsight being 20/20, I think I would've enjoyed breaking the trucks more than fixing them. Do it over again, I'd go Infantry.

Well at least that kid was lucky lol

Now that is the best one I've heard yet!

LMFAO!

I wonderful gift indeed....lol

Greg, is that you?

Twenty six years ago (1988) I met my knew roommate in Germany. He was from Colorado but talked about Utah all the time...he spent his summers at Lake Powell.

The last time I saw or talked to him was 1990. He reached out to me not too long ago on LinkedIn, taking his family to Boston for vacation (we moved to CA two weeks later). We got our families together at a Red Sox game. After a few beers he admits, "You know, when we first met you irritated the shit out of me. I was this laid back guy from Colorado and along comes this loud mouth kid from Boston..."

Fort Benning Echo 2/58 INF

There were 2 suicide attempts at 30th AG

I believe we started with 55 and graduated 43 in my platoon.

One Drill Sergeant , while calling cadence during a company run, yells out " The CO and 1st Sarn't are pissed because I wasn't here Saturday. Well they can both suck a fat baby's dick!"  We were the lead platoon in the run and no sooner had we gotten our nasty asses back up to the bay than the 1st Sarn't comes over the intercom asking where the fuck Drill Sargeant XXXXX is. We didn't see him again until family day and then only for about five minutes.

I remember this same Drill Sergeant did a knifehand strike on the neck of a guy we called Princess because the guy had mouthed some crap. I didn't hear what it was but I remember seeing the Drill sergeant's hand come up and the guy going down like a 140lb sack of shit. That same douche bag Princess ended up getting buttstroked in the shoulder blade with an M16A4 by another guy a few days later for doing something else dumb....Oh yeah, he decided he wanted to air dry his BDUs by hanging them out the fucking window and got the shit smoked out of us.


Our first inspection didn't go well. The Sergrant Major comes in and we get mind fucked and half of us forgot everything the moment we really needed to remember it. We got smoked for I don't know how long. We had to put on promasks and weave over and under bunks, we did every kind of sadistic exercise ever known in the Army.All the while D.S. H is sitting in the kill zone, ashing his marlboro reds on the nicely waxed floor and calling the most foul, creative, and generally jacked up cadences I ever heard in the Army. There were no breaks, no water, nothing but pain that night. I think he genuinely wanted to hurt us that night as the smoke session only stopped after two other Drill Sergeants from other platoons came up and took him into his office for 10 minutes. When they emerged he told us to recover....I don't really remember anything after that and even the next day I only vaguely remembered the whole event.

Damn bud...glad he was ok