` Philip Combs
Jed Wyman WR121
05 May 2011 A Controlled Mayhem By: Philip Combs

The idea of boot camp is dreaded by most everyone that has to face the reality of replacing their nice, warm, loving, and familiar home environment with military barracks, filled with drill sergeants who are now your over bearing parents, and hundreds of other people of the same sex who are now your wretchedly unhappy brothers or sisters. The amiable bedroom where you lay your head to rest so often is gone, but don’t worry, you’ll now have a new bedroom to sleep in, the carpet is replaced with concrete floors, your bed has grown legs stretching upward to support the second mattress laying above you, and your privacy is now shared with 10 other stinky human beings, all as homesick and miserable as you. The closet where you had all of your dirty laundry thrown in a ragged pile in the corner has transformed into a wall locker that includes a cabinet with three pull out drawers, and exactly 18 hangers, no more, no less. Don’t worry though, in this essay I’m going to provide you with enough information to help you prepare for your 9 weeks of controlled mayhem, and help you get a glimpse of what to expect, allowing you to make an educated decision, hopefully before you have signed the dotted line.
I’m going to start by explaining how to prepare for BCT (basic combat training). After enlisting and taking your oath of allegiance you will be given your ship date. This is the date you will be required to report to your area’s MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station). Immediately upon enlistment you’ll begin regular physical training. The best types of exercise to prepare your body for the rigorous physical regiment you’ll be experiencing at BCT, is push-ups, sit-ups, and lots of running. For push-ups, start by timing yourself for one minute allowing you to see how many push-ups you can perform in the time allowed. This will give you something to build off of. Set a goal, something to work towards. If you can do 75 push-ups in a two minute period you are headed to BCT way ahead of the curve. Make sure when you’re performing these push-ups that you use proper form. Your back must be straight, try keeping your head up with your eyes looking straight forward to help keep this form. To do a proper Army push-up, your whole upper body must go down as one unit far enough for your elbows to break the plane of your back at your lowest point during the exercise. Your hands must not be further than 24 inches apart, and your feet must be within 12 inches of each other. Practicing good form now will save you the heart break you may feel when you take your first APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test). To gain more stamina with push-ups, start with doing 50 consecutive push-ups, wait one minute and perform 40 more push-ups, wait another minute and reduce by 10 repetitions repeating the process until only 10 push-ups are performed. You will also want to practice multiple types of push-up variations with wide-arm push-ups, allowing you to build your chest, as well as diamond push-ups, building your triceps. You’ll learn very quickly after arriving to BCT, that just doing push-ups is not going to make your life a breeze. The days of the drill sergeants saying “drop and give me 50,” are over. The drill sergeants will most likely have you get into the push up position, and leave you in it for minutes at a time without performing a single push-up, then have you lower your body half way down holding this position for an extended period, and finally dropping you to the down position, keeping your chest between one and three inches from the ground. This is something you will want to practice as often as the other variations of push-ups to help prepare your upper body for the excruciating demands of the drill sergeants.
Sit-ups are not something you will be performing often outside of your daily physical training, but are also very important to practice. With your fingers locked behind your head, secure your feet under a couch, door frame, have a friend hold them, or find any other apparatus worthy of holding your feet to the ground. Start in the up position and perform as many sit-ups as you can within a two minute period. Practice this multiple times a day as well as flutter kicks, leg lifts, crunches, and v-ups.
Along with push-ups and sit-ups, you will want to run regularly. Start by running one mile a day until you gradually work your way up to a minimum of 3 miles without stopping. You will need to be able to run two miles within 16 minutes to graduate from BCT. One way to build stamina for distance running is by performing an exercise known as 60/120s. To do this, sprint as hard as you can for one minute, and walk for two minutes, repeating as many times as you can handle, and build from there. This exercise helps with breathing habits and allows your heart rate to gain stability during long durations of exercise.
When you arrive at the big day you’ve been waiting for, you’ll report to your area MEPS. They will put you up in a hotel that you are required to stay in for the night. Shippers, as they call them, are not allowed to have friends or family stay with them in this hotel, and are often times roomed with another shipper of the same sex. You will be allowed to go out for dinner with your family that night, but are required to be back in your hotel by 2100 hours.
The following morning you will be given a wakeup call at 0500, provided with a hot breakfast in the hotel lobby, and be on a bus at 0545 to arrive at MEPS for your pre-ship physical, drug screening, and shipper’s briefing. This will last all day, so be sure to take advantage of the breakfast offered. While at MEPS be sure to be on your best behavior. At this point you are bound by contract, and the staff will not accept any childish behavior or horseplay. MEPS staff will provide you with your flight itinerary and food vouchers for your travel the following day.
After arriving at your destination, there will be a bus you will take to the base where you’ll be completing your training. Upon arrival, you’ll be given a short briefing of military conduct, and how to address a drill sergeant, an officer, and regular ranks E1 through E4. The best piece of advice to remember from the beginning is a drill sergeant is addressed as “drill sergeant.” A sergeant is addressed as “sergeant.” An officer is addressed as “sir,” or “ma’am.” If you want to avoid doing extra push-ups, this is a good thing to remember. Do not call a drill sergeant sir, unless you want to hear a long drawn out explanation of how he works for a living and will be addressed as drill sergeant. This will not be a friendly conversation and will most likely take place with his face less than an inch from yours, being sure to scream loud enough that you can’t understand what he’s saying and allowing you to get a good idea what they had for dinner the night before while their saliva and roasting breath spread across your face.
The first four to ten days you spend at your new home will be spent at the reception battalion. Immediately after your initial briefing you’ll be given one, two quart canteen, one battle book, and your PT (physical training) uniform to change into. You will do this in a large room with 50 other soldiers. At this moment you will be ordered to take all personal belongings including anything in your personal bag and everything in your civilian clothes pockets and lay it out on the floor in front of you. Cadre will come by and inspect your belongings to make sure you have nothing menacing, threatening, or harmful to yourself or any other soldiers in your barracks. After the inspection you will place all personal items back in the bag you carried with you, tag it, and hand it over to the cadre. Yes, that’s right, the magazines, tobacco, body wash, cell phone, and nice Nikes you brought are gone. After turning in your personal items you will take yourself dressed in your new PT uniform to receive your bedding. You will be taken to the in-processing barracks and given a diagram explaining how to properly make your bunk. This is something you will want to master early, although no matter your level of expertise, you will learn it is never good enough. This is day one of in processing and if you think it sounds like a 60 minute process think again. Nothing in BCT is short and easy. The end of this day will come at the dark hours of the night. For me this was 0200, followed by a wakeup call of 0445.
Day two of in-processing is one that many new recruits are looking forward to. In this day you will be issued your first ACUs (Army Combat Uniform). You’ll be given four sets of ACUs, two more sets of PTs along with your winter PTs, your wet weather gear, cold weather gortex ACU jacket, and all of your underwear and socks for each specific uniform. You will have a goliath sized duffle bag to carry back with you, accompanied by a rucksack and laundry bag filled with gear. At the end of this assembly line, you’ll be required to dump everything out, and inventory the items to insure you have everything you are required to have.
On day three, you’ll wake up at the same dreaded hours of the morning, 0445. You will again be given breakfast, the first of three square meals for the day, and again continue in-processing. This is the last day for processing, and by far the least pleasant. You will be taken to the medical staging area where you and hundreds of other recruits will sit on aluminum benches and wait in silence. Think it sounds like no big deal? You won’t be there for an hour; you’ll be there for three hours, or more. You won’t be sitting in the traditional butt on the bench with both feet out in front. This will be your first experience with what they call, “nuts to butts,” seating. You will straddle the bench, with your chest pressed snuggly against the recruit in front on you, with another recruit right behind you in the same position. By the end of this day, you’ll be so familiar with the stench of the recruit in front of you; you’ll be able to sniff them out on a cow farm. When it comes time for your bench to be herded inside the medical facility, you will again sit on a bench inside and wait in the nuts to butts position. When it is again your benches turn to get up, you will play follow the leader through an assembly line known as the shot clinic. At the end of the line, you will see a gang of nurses waiting to take a poke at you. Five shots within 30 seconds and you will be done, at least for an hour while you wait to have your blood drawn. After you’re finally finished with the shot clinic, you’ll be taken inside where you’ll be given an interview for payment and medical information. This is the final day of in-processing.
The rest of your time spent at the reception battalion will go by as slow as molasses. Take advantage of these days by studying your battle book and memorizing the “Soldiers Creed,” and the “Three General Orders.” You will be tested on these during all three phases of BCT. You will want to continue to work out while in the barracks as well. During your stay at the reception battalion you will not be doing PT. In fact the drill sergeants are restricted from giving you any type of physical punishment while you’re there to prevent from injuries before training begins, so it is up to you to stay in shape. It will be in your best interest to ignore any rumors you may hear through-out your in-processing and BCT stay. You will constantly be faced with information from unreliable sources that seem to think they are a subject matter expert. 99% of the time, these are rumors and have no support to back them.
“Shipping,” is a term you will hear again, as it is used to reference your departure from the reception battalion, and arrival into BCT. The night before you ship, make sure you have all of your issued gear packed and ready to go, you won’t be given time in the morning. You will have breakfast, and sit in the barracks parking lot anxiously for the arrival of your new irate parents, the drill sergeants. Make a strategy for carrying your bags, because you will be carrying them all, and won’t be allowed to set them down as you wait for the bus to take you to the new barracks. Upon arrival at your new home, a “shark attack,” will be waiting outside the bus doors. You will see brown, round hats scurrying around like shark fins waiting on their prey to enter the deadly waters. Exiting the bus, everything becomes real; your entrance to hell has begun. You will be lined up down the sidewalk in front of the barracks, and ordered to dump all your issued gear out. Again you will do an inventory to make sure everyone has the gear required for training. It is a good idea to keep very close track of your belongings from the time they are issued to you. You’re responsible for them, and the drill sergeants love to single out irresponsible recruits by letting them watch all 175 other soldiers in their company do push-ups for their complacency. You’ll hear constant yelling from this moment, every day for the next 6 weeks, from the time you wake up, until the time you go to sleep, and short periods of yelling in the middle of the night if somebody is caught doing anything un-warranted.
For the first three weeks, you are in what is called “red phase.” This is the most physically and emotionally challenging portion of BCT. You will be punished repeatedly for anything and everything the drill sergeant can think of, even if it didn’t really happen. During this phase you are punished as a company. This means that if somebody in a different platoon falls asleep when they were not suppose to, your platoon will be punished along with all other platoons belonging to their company. Through red phase, you’ll learn to organize your wall locker. Pay close attention to detail while looking at the standard operating procedures. If you have one item out of place, you and your whole bay will have your gear tossed from your wall locker onto the floor to be re-organized. Don’t get too down on yourself or your fellow soldiers; you will have your locker tossed regardless of it being correct during the first couple wall locker inspections.
Through the next three weeks of red phase, you’ll be sitting through hours of class time to learn military conduct, policy, structure, and discipline. You will get what they call “smoked” multiple times a day for what seems like absolutely no reason. You’ll be issued your weapon in the first week. Either a M4 Carbine, or a M16 assault rifle that is never allowed to be farther than an arm’s length away from your body for the remainder of your training cycle. The drill sergeants will do everything they can to turn you and the other new recruits against each other and give you the feeling that nothing can be done correctly. Don’t let this get to you; it’s all part of the game. You will be given 30 seconds to shower. Wetting yourself down using the sink and lathering the soap on while waiting in line is the best way around this. You will wake up to air horns and garbage cans being thrown every morning. You’ll be introduced to fire guard. This is where you and 5 other members of your platoon are given a one hour shift in the night to clean a specific part of the barracks. When your shift is over, you wake up the next shift and they clean their assigned area. Make sure you do a good job, and do not fall asleep on fire guard, the drill sergeant will check. Your time allowed for each meal is very conservative. Be careful to grab food that does not take a lot of time to prepare. Buttered toast is a good example, or an orange that requires you to peel it. Chow is going to become one of the only appreciated times you will have, next to bed time, or “lights out,” as they call it. The most painful hurdle to leap in red phase, and the last event, is the gas chamber. While in the gas chamber, don’t panic. You may feel that you are going to die, but you won’t. Use great care and concentration when you’re told to take off your gas mask to secure it to its carrying case on your hip. If you don’t secure it properly, you and the group you are with will not be relieved from the chamber until you fix it. Don’t be “that guy!”
White phase is the second three week period. It’s still very demanding, but less restricting. Your fire guard shifts become 2 man shifts, allowing you to have every other night off. You are given more time to eat chow, and the yelling has reduced, though you may not notice it. In white phase you will begin BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship). The morale will finally start improving with the imposing excitement of firing your weapons. Your M4 is known as a weapon in the Army, or rifle, do not call it a gun. Your gun is a reference to your male body part. The last two weeks of white phase will be spent with long days at the range, shooting between 40 to 100 rounds per day. Most of the day will be spent waiting for others to finish firing, with the occasional smoke session due to the social butterflies that don’t know how to stop talking. Silence is what the drill sergeants want, and if you don’t respect that, you and anyone in sight will pay for it.
Blue phase is the final three weeks of BCT. The drill sergeants will finally relax, at least in contrast to what you’ve learned to expect. In this phase, you will qualify in advanced rifle marksmanship (ARM). This includes firing with night optics devices, and firing while moving. The most enjoyable times of BCT are in these weeks. You’ll be able to feel graduation approaching and know that your loved ones will be witnessing you in one of the proudest moments of your life. Not to mention you get to play with hand grenades and C4! Yes, in the last three weeks, you will get to throw a live hand grenade, detonate C4 with two types of fuses, shoot automatic machine guns, M203 grenade launchers, and the AT4 rocket propelled grenade. Enjoy this, but don’t let it show. The drill sergeants will make sure to return you to your military bearings if you act too excited.
Graduation is the day you thought would never come. You’ll spend your final four days in the barracks, cleaning all your issued equipment. This includes your flak jacket, kevlar helmet, wet weather gear, poncho, and anything else you are not authorized to keep after graduation. You’ll receive it all again when you arrive at your unit. On graduation day, you will form up in ranks, march in front of your friends and family and one by one introduce yourself and state where you’re from. After introductions you’ll be released to see the people you’ve desired to have in your arms for the longest nine weeks of your life.
Joining the Army or any branch of military is a major life altering decision. Make sure you discuss it with the people you hold close to you. Being a soldier is one of the most rewarding careers you can choose, but it also comes at great costs. You now know what to expect when the date you’ve been anticipating approaches. Just remember, it’s only 9 weeks. Pay attention to detail and stay positive. The drill sergeants aren’t there to be your friend; they’re there to teach you respect and discipline, along with the training you will need to stay alive. If you show them that you can perform your duties in a mature, respectful, and military like manner, the respect will ultimately be returned by them. If you choose not to join the military, I’m exultant I was able to provide you with information that may be of use. If you do choose, or have chosen to enlist, I’m grateful for your selfless service, and privileged to serve next to you.