Feautre Story Final Draft

Journalism

“First name Drill and last name Sergeant you will address me by my full name” Drill Sergeant C had a distinctive voice due to a road side bomb that ripped through his chest on his 2nd tour in Iraq. The troop (76 soliders) sounded off with “Yes Drill Sergeant”
“I hate everyone of you individuals equally because you are not soldiers you are garbage, hot civilian garbage. You will hate me and the more you hate me the more you will learn. I assure you privates I will weed out those who I believe who will not kill down range, I will weed out those who will quit down range, I will even weed out the ones who..” The drill sergeant saw the guy next to me moving his hands while at the position of attention. He quickly got in my face and asked me
“Why the F*** are you letting your battle buddy do that?”
I quickly replied “no excuse!” with an assertive voice something that my recruiter told me to always use when talking to a drill sergeant
“NO EXCUSE? I BET YOUR SORRY TOO?”
“Yes I am sorry Drill sergeant”
The drill sergeant got within an inch of my face and told me that since I called him a sorry drill sergeant he was going to make me a sorry Private.
Situations such as this one occurred very frequently throughout basic combat training during the summer of 2009 at Fort Knox Kentucky. No matter what you said or what you did the Drill Sergeant would yell or make you do a lot of PT (physical training). Due to the fact that the Army was transforming civilians into soldiers, and preparing them for combat.
It is hard to think to think that four years of high school followed by another four years of college you can now have a dead end job making anywhere from 35 to 50 K a year but all you need is nine long weeks of BCT (basic combat training) to be mentally, physically and emotionally prepared for war. Before going to BCT you may be entering for college or to make your family proud but when you’re there the only reason why you are there is to prepare for war.
The United States has been at war for over 9 years now. Captain Forney the commander of hotel troop 1/81 armor said “All of my Drill Sergeants have a deployment under their belt. Most have two or three and that’s for soldiers in training benefit.” Captain Forney himself is an Afgan war veteran who lost his leg during his deployment. Through the experiences of his own as the commander of a basic training site and his Drill Sergeants he would be able to give the best training possible to the soldiers.
I had tough training while I was in basic but the correlation of being smoked (Army term for muscle failure work outs) and falling asleep during a class or on guard duty was very apparent. Drill Sergeants would share a story about how a scout sniper team look out fell asleep during a mission in Bagdad Iraq, and then the scout team was killed and there rifle was taken and used to kill Americans for three years. The importance of not falling asleep came from their experiences otherwise it would just be information read from a book.
I needed to know. After all the hard work and the horror stories did it pay off. Were people that went through basic training properly prepared for war. I asked Private Donald Duncan. We had gone through basic training together except I left afterwards and he went to 7 more weeks of training for cavalry scout. I had to the opportunity to speak to him on facebook chat. He is currently serving in Mosul Iraq with the 3rd infantry division. It was the first time we spoke since August 2009. He said “hey” then an explicit word just like we always talked to each other at basic. I asked how he was and what it was like over there? and he said it hotter than hell and even though things are a lot better in Iraq than ever you still have to be ready for anything to go down at any given minute.
We reminisced about basic for a while then we got down to business. Did the training prepare you for war? Instantly he replied lol. “Yeah now that I’m here it all makes sense man. From the clean weapon, to the will power to stay awake. I cant believe I ever complained about letters too”
That made sense. The way training was structured was to make things run smoothly over seas. Clean weapon, keep your head on straight under a lot of stress but did it prepare you for the horrors of war? I had to talk to someone who has experienced it.
I grew up in Apple Valley Minnesota. Across the yard lived Sean Burnett who graduated Eastview in 2004. Growing up he loved the military and always wanted to enlist. He did. In fact became part of the first designated route clearance team in Iraq as a combat engineer. The #1 dangerous job in Iraq due to the fact that one of their roles is to find roadside bombs and IED’s then properly dispose of them.
During his first tour in Iraq he encountered a lot of enemy fire. He wears the Combat Action Badge. An award given to soldiers who have been attacked by enemy fire or have returned fire. Sean got this honor for both on many occasions. In conversations with him I asked if basic training properly prepared him for what was going to be coming. His answer was “Yes and no. It gave discipline and that kind of thing that I transferred to cleaning my weapon and staying awake but when you get there nobody really cares. As for the stress of being over there away from home you just get use to it.”
Basic training prepares soldiers for war as best it can. Everyone I’ve talked to has agreed although some of the aimless yelling and getting “smoked” may see uncalled for at the time, it actually will be looked back on as good army training as your military time progresses.