Quoted:
At Ft. Benning Infantry OSUT training in 1990 was
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icemanat95 ,I also did OSUT at Benning in 89/90
What unit were you with? I was Alpha 1/19
Or as we usta say when called to attention( at least till one of our Drill Sgts listned carefully) ALPO 1/19 INFANTRY, SWALLOW ME! [:D]
echo6
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D 1/50, Sand Hill
I ended up in FTU as well, though I got there on my own. Too many damn pizzas and too few push ups and sit ups in college left me too soft to go direct to training. So a week in FTU was a good thing. By the time I was sent on to a training company for real, I was ahead of the game compared to a lot of the guys who had barely passed the initial push up test (which was a surprising number of them). I could already run like a bastard (that was the one activity I had kept up in college and turned in a 13:25 on my first PT test) so I really just needed to work on upper body strength.
FTU also gives the recruit a solid dose of Drill Instructor motivation prior to going full immersion. You get a little used to it and maybe even a little immunized against it.
What was really amazing about FTU is the guys who were intentionally dragging their asses trying to get chucked out. Didn't anyone tell them that at that point they could still drop out on request and go home? I mean, I was watching guys who I know could have beaten me into the ground six ways from Sunday, making like it was an absolute struggle for them to do a lousy 10 push ups, let alone the minimum of 20 perfect push ups required to get out of FTU. I left there doing about 30 perfect push ups and maybe another 15 ragged ass push ups. I was up to 68 by test time, I didn't hit 80 until jump week of airborne school, then landed in the hospital after screwing up a landing. All that work got flushed down the toilet and I was starting from point A again (except without the good legs and lungs) when I finished physical therapy. That sucked.
Benning was an interesting place.
The 30th Replacement Company was a horror show though. Everyone was terrified except for the prior service guys and the guys heading off for reclassification training. I remember looking across the way at those guys and thinking "when will I get to looking so squared away?" It took a long while...about the same time I was getting out.