Live fire exercises

It does seem like Basic Training is easier to recall in reverse chronological order.

What I suppose was "the" highlight, at least for some of us, was the live fire exercise, which came in the final few days of basic. The essence of it was that in this one people would actually be shooting at you. Or at least shooting at where you would be if you happened to stop crawling and suddenly stand up.

During the days that preceded it, there was much discussion among the basic trainees about just how close to a standing position you would have to get in order to acquire a machine gun round in the butt or head. Many theories were postulated. Some felt that the bullets would be coming over us at about 18 inches above the ground, and that as long as one stayed under the barbed wire we were crawling under, one would be fine. Others felt the bullets were about 3 feet up, so that if someone panicked and decided to get out on hands and knees, barbed wire notwithstanding, they would be safe. Another school of thought was that the bullets would be about six feet up, so that if someone panicked and decided to try to run out, they would be okay if the ran in a slight crouch.

One thing we all knew was that the live fire exercise was intended to come as close to what one might have found on a World War II battlefield at night (maybe a World War I battlefield, in no man's land, really) as was possible without destroying too much government property (meaning too many recruits).

Actually, by the time we had gotten to the live fire exercise we had already taken a certain amount of physical risk in the live grenade exercise, but I'll talk about that later.

As with many of the components of basic training -- and a good reason why no politician who has not been through it should EVER be permitted to vote on a resolution about war -- the live fire exercise was intended to be both instructive and psychologically supportive, while at the same time putting combat into some kind of perspective.

My recollection of the actual exercise was this:

First, it was night, and it was definitely dark out. They marched us a few miles, in the dark, of course (my father had an amusing anecdote from World War I about one National Guard division in France that carried flashlights while marching at night, and how they acquired the derisive nickname of the "flashlight division" from that episode). Of course this was not our first night march, and they have a beneficial quality all their own.

We arrived in an area of Fort Gordon where none of us could remember having been before -- and we had walked all over (or what seemed to constitute all over) that post in the preceding weeks (I can honestly say that the only times we rode anywhere in basic training was when we were going on or off post). Being in new territory at night, knowing there is going to be something really scary happening soon, has a certain effect on one.

Then, we waited. "Hurry up and wait" is a critical part of the basic training experience, and the way people deal with having to wait is frequently a good indication of whether they have been through basic or not. I attribute some of the decline in civility in America to the huge reduction in the number of American males who have been subjected to the patience-building process of basic training. But let it suffice to say that when you hurry up and wait for something genuinely scary to happen, the overall effect is magnified.

Then, out of the night, what seemed like 50 feet from us, with no warning at all, there was an explosion (actually, probably a 105 simulator, and most likely in a pit surrounded by sandbags for safety reasons). Then, some machine guns opened up with a few bursts, but not in our direction.

Finally, we were directed single-file into a trench -- a fairly deep one, probably reminiscent of a World War I trench. From where we were, we could see machine guns above us, firing tracers ahead of where we were pretty clearly going.

Then, we were told to get moving, to stay down under the wire, and good luck.

I seem to remember being in roughly the second wave that crawled out of the trench and into the field, under the machine gun tracers. That would make sense, since my name was Brown, which put me alphabetically in the third squad of the first platoon of the basic training company.

I was barely out of the trench when a 105 simulator went off considerably closer than the preceding one. It was a good reminder to keep my head down.

There are really two ways to crawl under barbed wire: on your belly (like a snake, as the sergeants used to point out), and on your back. When you low-crawl on your belly, you cradle your rifle in your elbows. When you crawl on your back, you lay your rifle on top of you with the muzzle somewhere near the top of your head. You can crawl much faster on your belly (in fact, the 40 yard low crawl was a timed portion of the Army PT test) than on your back, but you are a bit closer to the ground when you crawl on your back, because you aren't tempted to stick your head or your butt in the air.

I honestly cannot remember which way I crawled the hundred or so yards that the live fire exercise required. Probably a little of both. I do remember that the wire was probably as low to the ground as any we had encountered in basic, and I do remember bumping into a sandbagged area just as a 105 simulator went off in it, and reflexively rolling away from it, while feeling sand kicked up the the explosion falling on me.

I know that as I was reaching the end of the course, I did crawl for a while on my back because I remember watching the tracer rounds going over. My conclusion at that point was that they were about eight feet up -- in other words, the Army was not going to lose any recruits who might panic and stand up.

Finally, we got to another trench, crawled down into it, were told we could stand up now, and went over to the side, tracer rounds continuing to go overhead the whole time, and 105 simulators continuing to explode in the area behind us.

It would have been interesting to see the live fire course in daylight, but I'm sure that the psychological effectiveness of the exercise would have been greatly diminished had we done so.

Interestingly, there was virtually no conversation among us recruits either while marching back to the company area or after we arrived. Even the compulsive talkers had nothing to say.

Maybe I'll talk about gas or grenades next time.