Normal sleep was about 5 hours but I had to pull one hour guard duty during many nights at a preassigned time. So it might be sleep two hours then one hour guard duty then back to the bunk. This night there was a snow storm going on. We were woken up and told to get dressed and stand in formation outside. The snow storm was brutal. Standing at attention staring straight ahead I watched the snow grow on the shoulders of the guy in front of me. Just when I started to shiver uncontrollably the buck in charge told us to fall out and get back to the bunks. The Sgt. then told us you have two choices if you want to leave, quit or kill yourself. Then he proceeded to give us ways to commit suicide.
We had to practice marching in the morning. As an individual if you had to go anywhere on the grounds you had to run. Meals were short for the six months. They mainly yelled to eat and get out. Many meals were left on the plate. After lunch came a 3 mile run. It wasn't the typical slug run you see in any basic training in military boot but it was fast. Around 7 minute miles. We had 8 hours of school. Then PT. When we were told to do something like push ups it wasn't get down and give me 50. It was timed out for 10 or more minutes. Resting position was at lock out. The ten or fifteen minutes we did them we were screamed out to keep going. Body weight exercise after body weight exercise went like that. Everyone had bloody underwear from their asses rubbing doing situps. Try doing mountain climbers for 15 minutes straight. After that we had our formation 5 mile run. Again the regular military was often on the mile track and we would pass them repeatedly.
From the lack of sleep and the never ending physical stuff we looked like skeletons at the end. The failure rate was around 50% and the selection process for the 100 or so of us was in the thousands. Laugh if you will but I had the mentality that they would have to kill me because I wasn't quitting. Every month was a different added physical training feature. It was swimming, boxing, shooting various weapons, formations fighting drills, no rules submission fighting before anyone in the US ever heard of MMA or jui jitsu, and others. The boxing was only three to four fights but what was worse was the sparing. They would put us in a room and say pair up. Some Sgt. would yell only 75% boots. I don't know if you guys have ever boxed but I don't know how to throw a 75% punch when someone punches me in the face. We would be in the sparring room for an hour and every 10 minutes a whistle would blow and they said to change partners. Toward the end we couldn't keep out hands up and the punches looked like a monkey fucking a football. One guy in our class collapsed and went into a coma. His brain swelled from the repeated blows.
No body but our own Outfit knows what we went through 29 years ago. The serious oldtimers probably had it rougher back in the day. When they film stuff for public consumption of the training it's so sanitized I feel sorry for guys that think they are seeing the real deal. I was on a web site and I was reading the qualification regarding the physical for admittance and it was a joke. Again sanitized for public consumption. I still look at a photo of me at graduation. I look like skin and bones in a uniform but it's pride that no one can take away.
