Basic: Surviving Boot Camp and Basic Training

by Jack Jacobs, David Fisher

Overview

The award-winning author and Medal of Honor recipient shares an insider's history of bootcamp that's "authentic, entertaining, and often funny as hell" (Corporal Brian Dennehy, Ret.).
Every American fighting man and woman share one thing in common: they have all survived basic military training. Basic tells the story of that training.Col. Jack Jacobs and co-author David Fisher recount the funny, sad, dramatic, poignant, and sometimes crazy history of how America has trained its military, told through the personal accounts of those who remember the experiences as if they happened yesterday.
If you've been through bootcamp, these memories of drill instructors, marching chants, combat training, hospital corners, and the shared feeling of triumph are guaranteed to make you smile. And those who haven't done it will understand and appreciate this life-changing experience that turns a civilian into a soldier—and in just eight weeks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466802445
Publisher:	Thomas Dunne Books
Publication date:	09/04/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	321
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

In addition to his Medal of Honor, Colonel Jack Jacobs (Ret.) is the recipient of three Bronze Stars and two Silver Stars. He is the Vice Chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, holds the McDermott Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and is an on-air analyst for NBC News. Colonel Jacobs is also the author of the Colby Award–winning memoir If Not Now, When? He lives in New Jersey.
David Fisher is the author of more than fifty books, including many New York Times bestsellers. He lives in New York.

David Fisher has been making soap for nearly 15 years and making candles since he was a child. He is the owner of Bath Rabbit Soap Company and a member of the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Read an Excerpt

If It Moves, Salute It: Welcome to Initial Military Training

 

You’re in the army now, you’re not behind a plow;

You’ll never get rich, by digging a ditch

You’re in the army now.

—traditional army marching chant

Congress judging it of the greatest importance to prescribe some invariable rules for the order and discipline of the troops, especially for the purpose of introducing an uniformity in their formation and maneuvers, and in the service of the camp: ORDERED, That the following regulations be observed by all the troops of the United States, and that all general and other officers cause the same to be executed with all possible exactness.

—In Congress, 29 March 1779, By Order, John Jay, President (the beginning of basic military training)

“I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will only speak when being spoken to. The first and last words out of your sewers will be, sir! Do you maggots understand that?”

“Sir, yes Sir!”

“Bullshit. Sign off like you got a pair.”

“Sir! Yes Sir!”

“If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pubes. You are the lowest forms of life on earth. You’re not even human fucking beings. You’re nothing but unorganized grab ass of amphibian shit. Because I am hard you will not like me but the more you hate me the more you will learn.”

—from the movie Full Metal Jacket

THERE IS NOTHING AT all that compares to basic training. It’s a period of several weeks during which civilians are transformed into soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen. There is no way to prepare for it. Those men and women who have been through basic will never forget it, and those people who haven’t experienced it can’t imagine it.

It’s serious business, as Joseph Salerno learned on his first day at Camp Wheeler in 1943. “Right from the start they told us the theme was simple, ‘You either learn to kill or you’re going to be killed.’” Former Marine commandant David M. Shoup once accurately summed up the job of training depots, which, he said, were supposed to “receive, degrade, sanitise, immunise, clothe, equip, train, pain, scold, mould, sand, and polish.”

As Brian Dennehy (Marines, Parris Island, 1969) explains, “Boot camp provides basic military training, but the real point is to indoctrinate you into a new way of looking at the world. The Marine Corps has a tradition of a very tough boot camp process. They are exposing you for the first time to the basic military philosophy—what otherwise might be presumed to be very risky activities. During this time officers and NCOs will tell you to do things to which your normal reaction would be, Hell no, I am not doing that.

“The basic objective of military training is to teach you how to operate as a unit, to become primarily concerned with unit cohesiveness and protection and to respond automatically to a situation that will achieve some goal. Boot camp is an assault on your individuality.

“The first few days at Parris Island is a deliberate assault on your citizen sensibility. You don’t get to change your clothes, you don’t get to stay clean, you don’t get to shower. Any obvious signs of individuality are immediately stepped on. It’s noisy, it’s loud, and there is always someone in your face with some type of verbal assault. Everything you do is wrong and has to be punished, you’re in a state of confusion and you’re always tired. All of this forces you to respond as quickly as possible to these chaotic commands without thinking. This is a way of finding those people who are going to have trouble getting with the program. ‘Getting with the program’ is an important phrase, but once you get into this system of noise and confusion it all begins to make sense. And after three or four days of this the real training begins.

“I remember telling a lot of kids when we were in the barracks at night, ‘Hundreds of thousands of guys have gone through this. There’s no reason why you wouldn’t make it.’ Most of them did, too. The one thing everybody learns in boot camp is how much you can take. For most people, that usually turns out to be a lot more than they believed.”

*   *   *

The history of basic military training is incomplete and erratic. Generally though, the introduction of organized military training is credited to Chinese general Sun Tze, the author of The Art of War, at about 500 B.C. According to legend, King Helu of Wu hired Sun Tze to teach the approximately 180 women living in his palace close order drill and the proper use of the dagger-axe. Sun Tze appointed unit leaders, and when the troops failed to follow his orders those unit leaders were beheaded—thereby setting the standard for drill instructors that any recruit can easily identify with.

The concept of drilling soldiers, teaching them how to march and maneuver in formation, dates back to the Roman Empire, when Roman generals discovered that the infantry moved more efficiently when everyone was in step. The object of training was to teach soldiers how to maneuver in step. The Romans even defined the length of one step and marched to the beat of a drum.

Basic training began unofficially in the United States in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in February 1778 when General George Washington brought in Prussian officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben to instill discipline in his unorganized, rag-tag Continental Army. Von Steuben trained a company of 120 men in basic military conduct and drilling. Because he spoke no English, he recruited an aide to curse at the troops for him. Troops were instructed to march at a seventy-six-step per minute cadence, rather than the current 120 steps. In battle at that time, troops maneuvered as a single unit, and the army best able to coordinate its moves gained a significant advantage.

When von Steuben’s original model company was trained to his standards he dispersed them throughout the Continental Army to train other troops. He then wrote down his lessons in the “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States,” which has become known as The Soldier’s Blue Book. As he wrote in chapter five: Of the Instruction of Recruits, “The commanding officer of each company is charged with the instruction of his recruits; and as that is a service that requires not only experience, but a patience and temper not met with in every officer, he is to make choice of an officer, sergeant, and one or two corporals of his company who … are to attend particularly to that business.

“The recruits must be taken singly, and first taught to put on their accoutrements and carry themselves properly.”

 

Copyright © 2012 by Jack Jacobs and David Fisher

Editorial Reviews

Bootcamp was the toughest and most rewarding experience of my life. This book captures those moments. It is authentic, entertaining, and often funny as hell.” —Corporal Brian Dennehy (Ret.), Parris Island, 1959

“The unique transition from civilian to soldier has always generated tall tales...about the environment, the changes, and of course the ever-present drill sergeant who changes your life. While the portrayed events usually grow with exaggeration and some added humor as Soldiers grow older, Jack Jacobs and Dave Fisher have captured the ‘war stories' of basic training in a uniquely hilarious and moving way. Well done, gentlemen and patriots!” —Mark Hertling, Former Deputy Commander for Initial Military Training, U.S. Army

“Movies and television shows have taught us to think of boot camp as a grueling physical challenge-and it is that-but what we take away here is a deeper understanding of the punishing psychological component as recruits learn to box up their individuality in favor of conformity and the unfaltering following of orders.” —Booklist

“Provides a clear and sometimes mordantly amusing overview of the training experience, punctuating it with personal accounts from soldiers.” —Kirkus Reviews

“It's a privilege to call [Col. Jack Jacobs] a friend and an honor to recommend this remarkable life story.” —Tom Brokow on If Not Now, When?

“One warning: The book you are about to read, at its core, is a story about selflessness, sacrifice, and service. I will never view my friend Jack in the same way again. I just didn't think it was possible to admire him any more than I already did.” —Brian Williams on If Not Now, When?

From the Publisher

Anecdotal overview of basic training, the great social leveler of military service. Medal of Honor–winner Jacobs (If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice in America's Time of Need, 2008) argues that "[b]asic military training and boot camp are American institutions that have continued to evolve…but the experiences of trainees through the decades seem remarkably similar." This assertion forms the book's structural core, as the author ranges widely, interviewing living veterans and researching the recollections of others, tracing the universalities of this harsh and surreal yet essential experience. Of his own training ritual, he writes, "we figured we were unique, and we would invent ways of beating that system…until we realized that we had become part of that system." Jacobs establishes the systemic, unchanging nature of training by breaking it down into various categories of discussion, including the creative brutalities of drill instructors, dreaded tasks such as guard duty, and longstanding dubious legends such as the use of saltpeter in military rations to reduce sexual desires. While some of the included veterans are well-known figures, like Tom Seaver or Brian Dennehy, most are ordinary soldiers who provide wry assessments of their experiences--e.g., "when I first got to my unit they pretty much told me to forget everything that I'd learned in basic." Overall, the author provides a clear and sometimes mordantly amusing overview of the training experience, punctuating it with personal accounts from soldiers. However, Jacobs does not provide an interpretation of the changing role of the military in American life, as represented by this enduring yet prosaic ritual. Will appeal mostly to readers considering a career in the military or veterans wondering if their memories exaggerate the intense eccentricity of the experience.

Kirkus Reviews