It was liberal Congressmen who ended the drumming out of the service. It was liberal congressmen who brought an end to red line brigs and stockades. It was liberal congressmen who brought an end to the hands on approach of training and preparing soldiers and Marines for war. It was liberals who introduced the concept of co-ed basic training and the founding of Camp Snoopy. The March of the Porcelain Soldiers Nothing is more basic than Basic Combat Training. Basic to the ways of war. Basic to national security. Basic to the very survival of the United States. The Victory Tower looms up like a gallows, its timbers and planks cutting off the sun. It's a huge thing, three stories high, girdled with ropes and rope bridges, and fitted out with ladders. Next to it rises an awesome rappelling wall with a sheer, 40-foot drop to a sawdust pit. A line of young recruits are lined up, ready to leap, rope in hand, out over the edge. WHUUUMP....WHUUMP....WHUMP...boots hit the wall. Three or four thumping steps followed by four dick-shriveling swings and the grunts are back on the ground. The first fewtwo or three male recruits take it as a rope-burning rite of passage that leaves their asses hot and their spirits high. A fat guy stands frozen on the ledge above. The drill sergeant has to wet nurse him for 10 minutes before he flops over the side and drops like a bag of rocks. Then I spot the first female. Up there at the rim of outer space, she peers over her shoulder, her jaw quivering, tears streaming down her cheeks. She backs off until the drill sergeants surround her, talking quietly, gently cajoling her back to the edge, and this time she's out there flying, WHUUMP...WHUUMP...WHUUMP, tear-stained but game. "I'll be damned! Well done, soldier," I mutter to myself. The next female appears. This one collapses. No amount of friendly persuasion gets her to take the leap. Sobbing, she's led from Victory Tower in total defeat. Welcome to Basic Combat Training. Welcome to Camp Snoopy, the U.S. Army's let's-play-soldiers theme park tucked in the piney hills of South Carolina. Does the idea of an obstacle course scare you? Hey, no sweat. The one they've build down here is called the Team Development Course. If you can't make it over the wall someone nice will lend you a hand. Do guns, bayonets, fists upset you? No problem. At Camp Snoopy you stick two marshmallows on a stick and duke it out with someone your own size. You say, you're no Hawkeye? Relax. If the drill sergeant can't get you through rifle training, the Chaplain can. At Camp Snoopy, they've invented a whole new meaning to "Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition."... continue -> http://www.hackworth.com/article04032002c.html
What a bunch of idiotic bullshit. The whole point of the Team Development Course is that no one can get through it on their own. It’s purpose is to develop teamwork. But I can understand how a jarhead would never be able to figure that out from the name.
I've climbed worse hills than Mt. Mutha **** where I was pulling my radioman up the hill. At times we were on all fours climbing that little mountain just to establish an OP deep in "Indian Country." It's still one thing that is still clearly in my mind today after 47 years. We had to establish an OP on top of a mountain. It would have been so easy if we were just inserted by helicopters on top of that mountain but it would have told Charley where we were and Charley had no problem sending an entire battalion to eliminate any OP. One arty FO team, one NGF spot team and one FAC team and one rifle platoon to provide security for the OP. We were inserted by CH-46's about six clicks from the mountain and had to climb that mountain that had no trails to the top. I remember the sweat pouring down my face burning my eyes from all of the salt tablets we were required to take. My sweat towel was soaking wet. The dirty looks I got from the grunts because every Marine had to carry one or two ammunition belts for the M-60's but except me because I had two spare PRC-25 batteries in my ruck sack. While extending my M-16 behind myself for my radioman to grab onto to pull him up the mountain, off to my right I see this Indian, over six feet tall, 200 pounds, I assumed he was a Mojave because he was so big carrying a PRC-47 on his back passing me up. The sweat pouring down his face would have filled a bucket by the time we reached the top. There were some parts while climbing that mountain when everyone was on all fours climbing that freaking mountain. There are some real ball busters fire breaks aboard Camp Pendleton than just Mt. Mutha **** or the Sheep Sh!t. I'm sure most grunts who served aboard Pendleton remember one ball buster that was located between Camp San Onofre (52 Area) and Camp Mateo (42 Area) It was one fire break that led to the top of a mountain where you would hook up with helicopters to take you out to amphibious ships that were off shore. Casey Springs is suppose to be another ball buster. I've climbed to the top of Casey Springs once but don't remember it being a ball buster but we took the easy way up to the mountain top, a truck trail. I wonder why the Marine Corps wont put female Marines through the SOI at Camp Pendleton but always use Camp Leujune ? I know why, there would be a 100% failure rate by the female Marines and the social engineering liberals in Congress wouldn't be happy campers. When you're stationed at Camp Pedleton you discover muscles you never knew you had. There's a reason why east coast Marines call those hills aboard Camp Pedleton mountains. This photo after the fire break being graded was taken 1/2 the way up Mt. Mutha Fu#k. Before being graded there were two sections that were so freaking steep you found yourself on all fours climbing Mt. Muth Fu#k. There is a really good reason why there is a meat wagon behind this recruit platoon climbing Mt. Mother ****er.
I'm not the one who can't figure out that the Team Development Course is used for developing teamwork.
The Marine Corps crusible aka "Team Development Course" was developed after liberals in Congress told the Marine Corps and the Army that they were no longer allowed to use the hands on approach of training and preparing Marines and soldiers for combat. So to get Marine Corps boot camp back to being a hell hole again they developed the crusible. Believe me we didn't need any team development course during boot camp to learn about team work in the "Old Corps" before PC social engineering of the military. No man is an island and the worse phrase ever coined by the U.S. Army was "Army of One."
Right, military unit cohesion and teamwork development are “PC social engineering”. Tell us all about how your great teamwork without any development won us Vietnam and how it remains a capitalist democracy today.
Pick a half dozen battles that were fought by American troops in Vietnam and I'll point them out. Oops, how did that get in there ? Charley didn't surf and neither did Obama.
And those battle resulted in victory and a modern capitalist democracy in Vietnam, right? Nope, your “manly men” lost that war.
Don't think there were that many Americans who were in Vietnam fighting for democracy in South Vietnam. We were all fighting for each other, protecting each other, trying to kill the enemy before he killed us first. You can't survive in combat by only protecting your own ass, you have to be protecting your buddies asses or you will be dead. Soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen don't start wars, politicians do. The military just fight those wars.
Might be because modern warfighting is about integrating a lot of different skills and capabilities across multiple branches working together (you could say it requires “developed teamwork”). Warfare isn’t about pumping out millions of identical conscripts to use as cannon fodder anymore.
Speaking of cannons, why don't our troops in Afghanistan have adequate artillery support ? But I digress. We already have special liaison units who are trained to to work directly with all of the multiple military units and different branches of the military. The first such unit was formed during WW ll in the Pacific, JASCO that has evolved into ANGLICO. Ever been inside a JFACC center ?
Might have something to do with artillery causing lots of “collateral damage”, which is a problem when every civilian our military kills means enemy recruiting gets a boost.
Nope, the war in Afghanistan is a low intensity war. If it were a real modern war, against a real enemy who has a real military, every infantry company, platoon and squad would be covered by at least two artillery batteries of six tubes each. If not by two batteries at least by one.
I believe the military is still trying to keep a small footprint in Afghanistan. I myself if I were have been President G.W. Bush back in 2001 I would have approached Afghanistan differently. I would have treated the war in Afghanistan as a punitive action war. "Crush and Bolt."
So if you were in charge, Al Qaeda and the Taliban would have freely been able to use Afghanistan as a base within months and Osama Bin Ladin would still be alive. Crush and Bolt doesn’t work in the modern world of international terrorism.
Crush and Bolt was America's SOP of waging war before WW ll. It worked extremely well from 1800 to 1941. No nation building, no winning hearts and minds. Go in break a lot of things, kill some people and pack up going back to the ship leaving a clear message, Don't f#ck with America or American citizens or we will be back and really kick your butts. I seriously doubt that. Knowing something about the war fighting and the infantry, I would have established a blocking force at the Pakistan border, regimental size while either using the 5th Marines or 7th Marines working their way up into Tora Bora with OBL on the run running into the blocking force. Back in 2001 many of us who been there and done that were looking at each other asking what the **** are they doing ? Who's in charge ? Why no blocking force ? It would be more than eight years later when we found out a blocking force was in place, a couple hundred special operation troops ! What was really funny, the 10th Mountain Division wasn't so mountain trained.
No blocking force because the terrain wouldn’t have blocked ****. The whole area was endemic with hidden passes and anyone can and does slip through the area even up to today. There was no way to lock it down from the Afghanistan side of the border. You’d have to invade Pakistan to block those passes. And like I said, crush and bolt doesn’t work in the world of international terrorism.