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I was Air Force, which you would think would have been easy, right? It wasn’t. 1/3 of my flight did not graduate with us. They were either kicked out or "recycled" (made to start over or at an earlier phase of training). They don't tell you what's going to happen to a guy when the remove him from your flight. They use it as a mind game…and it works. The last thing you want to have to go home and face you’re friends and family in disgrace. Can you imagine the comments? “You mean you couldn’t even hack the Air Force? How big of a wimp are you?”
One recruit was pulled from our flight simply for making the lead TI (Training Instructor) laugh.
Schaffer was a little guy. Must have gotten a height waiver just to get in. SSgt Vickers was like something right out of a cartoon about boot camp. Huge jaw, giant upper body, and tiny waist, and thick southern accent. About three weeks before graduation Vickers comes storming into our barracks and decides to have a spot inspection. We're all standing at at attention while he chews out one recruit after another. Then for the first time he finally sets in on Schaffer. He taps the brim of his "Smokey the Bear" hat into Schaffer’s forehead repeatedly while screaming at him at the top of lungs (pretty much the standard routine). Schaffer had not experienced it. I guess he was so little they left him alone. After all, it's not cool to picky on the littlest guy in the flight..not when there are so many other idiots you can torment. Schaffer leans back a little to avoid the tapping, VERY bad idea. Vickers just leans into him and keeps tapping away, yelling even louder. Schaffer leans back more. They cycle continues. Eventually Schaffer is leaning WAY back. It's like something out of cartoon, much like Vickers himself. So Vickers yells "Airman Schaffer, I want you to reach down into your drawers and tell me if you've got a pair!” So Schaffer follows the sergeant's order and replies, "Yes, Sir. Two big fat hairy ones, Sir". Vickers, the meanest of the mean, can't help himself. He laughs. He can't stop laughing. So much so that has to leave the room. A few minutes later Vickers returns, seriously pissed off that this little twit had caused him to break his military bearing...and yells "Schaffer, pack your sh__...you're outta here!" We never saw Schaffer again. I assume he was just recycled.
I've heard people say boot camp in the Air Force was a cake walk. That was NOT my experience. SSGT Vickers was convinced it should be as hard as the higher ups would let him make it. It was his Air Force, and if we wanted to be part of it we were gonna bust our rears to prove we deserved to be there.
Most of my "war stories" about the military happened in basic. SSGT Vickers is at the center of almost all them. He made the Drill Sergeant in Full Metal Jacket seem tame by comparison. His lines just as classic. I use them whenever possible.
When you consider some of the places I was deployed, and that I had a pretty unusual career for my short four years of active duty service, the fact that basic training still manages to out shadow the rest of it really says something.
Since somebody is bound to ask...I'll answer it here. The majority of people in the Air Force are Mechanics, Administration Staff, Medical Staff and never leave the base. I was part of a Mobile Aerial Port (actually it was a Aerial Mobility Port Flight but the term was short lived and nobody will recognize it). Our job was to setup and man temporary Air Bases for Special Operations (including our own but usually those from another service) whenever they were conducting missions in a theater were a base was needed but did not exist. As you can imagine, that's pretty much the norm these days. In such operations, the goal is to send as few people as possible, so we performed our own security (Air Base Ground Defense) and wore many, many hats. The roles that would normally be filled by Army Infantry in a full scale war, we performed ourselves. I'm not trying to say we were bad or anything...just that my experience differed from the typical Air Force career pretty drastically. My AFC (MOS) had very little to do with what I ended up doing all day long...and many people in the same AFC has much more boring careers. I spent a good part of my short career surround by special operations members of other services in the middle of nowhere. We bounced around the globe and never knew where would be from one week to the next. I loved it. I may not have been a bad mo fo, but I got to help the bad mo fos do their job...and I was proud of that. Then I was assigned to a desk job...which I hated. After being in a real world environment, a stateside assignment at a training base behind a desk just doesn't cut it. So instead of being a lifer, which i would have been if left me where I was...I decided to get out go to college instead. So there you go...my entire Air Force career in one paragraph.
Ok, back on topic...if you are joining the Air Force because you think Basic Training is going to be easy then you're not smart enough to pass the academic side of it, so try the Navy!
Seriously, Basic Training is going to be hard no matter what service you join. That is the entire point. It is supposed to be challenging. You have to prove you can cut it. You have to prove you won't panic under stress. You might get lucky and draw a kind hearted Instructor Staff, but it's highly unlikely. More often than not you will get instructors who will push your limits any way they can and play head games with you from the moment you show up until the moment you leave the base. That is their job.
All this talk about how much tougher one is over the other is mostly people's egos. Inter-service rivalry trumps reality every time. There are differences. Marines place a higher emphasis on physical fitness; they pride themselves on it, though all will challenge you physically just not to that degree. Academically, they say the Air Force is the hardest, though I found it fairly easy. Never scored below a B on test, and that was because I was so sleep deprived I could barely keep my eyes open. Two scores below 75% and you get a ticket home and the questions are worded oddly enough to confuse just about anyone. When it comes to head games...all are going to be the biggest challenge of your life. I'm told the Army instruction manuals all have cartoon pictures to help recruits understand the concepts? Is that true? I doubt it. Probably just that old inter-service rivalry again. Though ASVAB scores do have to be a little higher to get into the Air Force, so you hear a lot of jokes about how dumb the Army is...totally untrue...but we say it anyways. You will be sleep deprived, you will be hungry (the first few weeks you get only a few bites of food per meal before you are rushed out the door, you will be stressed out, you will be facing challenges you can’t possibly imagine, you will have people in your face like you've never experienced before all day long and for no good reason, and you’re going to have to keep it together. When you’re done, you will have earned the right to wear the uniform.
Is it worth it? You bet your a__!
One recruit was pulled from our flight simply for making the lead TI (Training Instructor) laugh.
Schaffer was a little guy. Must have gotten a height waiver just to get in. SSgt Vickers was like something right out of a cartoon about boot camp. Huge jaw, giant upper body, and tiny waist, and thick southern accent. About three weeks before graduation Vickers comes storming into our barracks and decides to have a spot inspection. We're all standing at at attention while he chews out one recruit after another. Then for the first time he finally sets in on Schaffer. He taps the brim of his "Smokey the Bear" hat into Schaffer’s forehead repeatedly while screaming at him at the top of lungs (pretty much the standard routine). Schaffer had not experienced it. I guess he was so little they left him alone. After all, it's not cool to picky on the littlest guy in the flight..not when there are so many other idiots you can torment. Schaffer leans back a little to avoid the tapping, VERY bad idea. Vickers just leans into him and keeps tapping away, yelling even louder. Schaffer leans back more. They cycle continues. Eventually Schaffer is leaning WAY back. It's like something out of cartoon, much like Vickers himself. So Vickers yells "Airman Schaffer, I want you to reach down into your drawers and tell me if you've got a pair!” So Schaffer follows the sergeant's order and replies, "Yes, Sir. Two big fat hairy ones, Sir". Vickers, the meanest of the mean, can't help himself. He laughs. He can't stop laughing. So much so that has to leave the room. A few minutes later Vickers returns, seriously pissed off that this little twit had caused him to break his military bearing...and yells "Schaffer, pack your sh__...you're outta here!" We never saw Schaffer again. I assume he was just recycled.
I've heard people say boot camp in the Air Force was a cake walk. That was NOT my experience. SSGT Vickers was convinced it should be as hard as the higher ups would let him make it. It was his Air Force, and if we wanted to be part of it we were gonna bust our rears to prove we deserved to be there.
Most of my "war stories" about the military happened in basic. SSGT Vickers is at the center of almost all them. He made the Drill Sergeant in Full Metal Jacket seem tame by comparison. His lines just as classic. I use them whenever possible.
When you consider some of the places I was deployed, and that I had a pretty unusual career for my short four years of active duty service, the fact that basic training still manages to out shadow the rest of it really says something.
Since somebody is bound to ask...I'll answer it here. The majority of people in the Air Force are Mechanics, Administration Staff, Medical Staff and never leave the base. I was part of a Mobile Aerial Port (actually it was a Aerial Mobility Port Flight but the term was short lived and nobody will recognize it). Our job was to setup and man temporary Air Bases for Special Operations (including our own but usually those from another service) whenever they were conducting missions in a theater were a base was needed but did not exist. As you can imagine, that's pretty much the norm these days. In such operations, the goal is to send as few people as possible, so we performed our own security (Air Base Ground Defense) and wore many, many hats. The roles that would normally be filled by Army Infantry in a full scale war, we performed ourselves. I'm not trying to say we were bad or anything...just that my experience differed from the typical Air Force career pretty drastically. My AFC (MOS) had very little to do with what I ended up doing all day long...and many people in the same AFC has much more boring careers. I spent a good part of my short career surround by special operations members of other services in the middle of nowhere. We bounced around the globe and never knew where would be from one week to the next. I loved it. I may not have been a bad mo fo, but I got to help the bad mo fos do their job...and I was proud of that. Then I was assigned to a desk job...which I hated. After being in a real world environment, a stateside assignment at a training base behind a desk just doesn't cut it. So instead of being a lifer, which i would have been if left me where I was...I decided to get out go to college instead. So there you go...my entire Air Force career in one paragraph.
Ok, back on topic...if you are joining the Air Force because you think Basic Training is going to be easy then you're not smart enough to pass the academic side of it, so try the Navy!
Seriously, Basic Training is going to be hard no matter what service you join. That is the entire point. It is supposed to be challenging. You have to prove you can cut it. You have to prove you won't panic under stress. You might get lucky and draw a kind hearted Instructor Staff, but it's highly unlikely. More often than not you will get instructors who will push your limits any way they can and play head games with you from the moment you show up until the moment you leave the base. That is their job.
All this talk about how much tougher one is over the other is mostly people's egos. Inter-service rivalry trumps reality every time. There are differences. Marines place a higher emphasis on physical fitness; they pride themselves on it, though all will challenge you physically just not to that degree. Academically, they say the Air Force is the hardest, though I found it fairly easy. Never scored below a B on test, and that was because I was so sleep deprived I could barely keep my eyes open. Two scores below 75% and you get a ticket home and the questions are worded oddly enough to confuse just about anyone. When it comes to head games...all are going to be the biggest challenge of your life. I'm told the Army instruction manuals all have cartoon pictures to help recruits understand the concepts? Is that true? I doubt it. Probably just that old inter-service rivalry again. Though ASVAB scores do have to be a little higher to get into the Air Force, so you hear a lot of jokes about how dumb the Army is...totally untrue...but we say it anyways. You will be sleep deprived, you will be hungry (the first few weeks you get only a few bites of food per meal before you are rushed out the door, you will be stressed out, you will be facing challenges you can’t possibly imagine, you will have people in your face like you've never experienced before all day long and for no good reason, and you’re going to have to keep it together. When you’re done, you will have earned the right to wear the uniform.
Is it worth it? You bet your a__!
to make it less obvious to the uninformed the discrepancy.
That is one of the many reasons.
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