My reply? “Duh, fucker.”
Check this news article out.
In addition to getting rid of bayonet training, the Army has decided to replace long distance formation runs in basic training with sprint training instead. In other words, train the soldiers for combat.
Well, far as this Army veteran is concerned, this change is about twenty-one years overdue. I remember asking, repeatedly, over my four years of active why we went on long distance runs. None of us were planning on reenacting the Battle of Marathon near as I could tell. The only instance I knew of from recent US History where running for distance was required pertained to Task Force Smith in the early dark days of the Korean War. In fact you could argue that US Forces Korea and the 2nd Infantry Division still have institutional PTSD as a result of Task Force Smith since running was the Big Thing when I was in Korea and probably still is.
To me, it just seemed fucking stupid. It seemed even more stupid once you consider how you are supposed to shoot, move and communicate on the battlefield. Worse, running, for some screwball institutional reason, seemed to be the primary measure of a decent soldier. A soldier could be a complete and total fuck up in every other regard and yet if he or she could run a ten minute two mile then they were golden. Conversely, you could be tactically and technically proficient, know your shit backwards and forwards but if you had trouble with running, then you were a dirt bag in the eyes of many.
On a personal level it was not only stupid but painful. I have chronic shin splints which seem to defy any remedy known to medical or sports science. Stretch ‘em, ice ‘em, heat ‘em, etc, etc, it didn’t seem to matter. After about a hundred yards of running, it always felt as if some asshole were driving an ice pick into my shins with each passing step.
The other aspect of this article is that the soldiers interviewed pointed out that the soldiers needed improved core body strength in order to carry the body armor and gear. Again, duh. I lost track of how many soldiers I heard whining and crying, the ones who could do that ten minute two mile run, bitching about how heavy all their gear was.
“My ruck is hurting my back,” they’d cry. “My body armor is too heavy. Oh, hold my hand, wipe my ass and help me breathe.”
Funny thing. I had no problem humping my load. Never had any back pain. Never had any problem shootin’ and scootin’ from one bit of cover to the next under a full load. In fact, here is a scary thought.
Though I may have been slower than my peers without a combat load, I was actually FASTER than many of them WITH a full combat load. When I went to Infantry School I heard it over and over again, “Wow, that Murphy guy is fast.”
Really grinds my gears that it took ten years of warfare for the United States Army to finally wake up to the clue bat which has been cracking them in the institutional melon for quite some time now.
On the other hand, I’m glad things are changing, in this case, for the better.
Hell, if they had made this change in 1993, I’d probably still be on active duty. Jesus, I hated this Jimmy Fixx running bullshit.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
13 comments
March 17, 2010 at 3:46 am
chazfh
Trouble is murph that many troops arrive at BFT so unfit that running is one of the best ways of getting them reasonable fit and able. hvy duty endurance with good times (ie forced marches) come later.
Running is not so ingrained in HM Armed Forces but pack drill with marches is (or I should say was).
March 17, 2010 at 7:01 am
bangarrr
I can see how running is useful for fitness, but bayonette training when they’re no longer in service? Talk about institutional inertia.
March 17, 2010 at 12:49 pm
sfmurphy1971
Chaz, I don’t think running works as a way to get troops fit. If they are overweight then running them only increases injuries. There are more effective ways to get them in shape, namely using core training, interval training and the like. Besides, it is easier to load a heavy pack on someone who is overweight and work them for longer than it is to run them in a formation.
I really don’t see the use of formation running. Never have. I think it causes as many problems as it solves.
Bayonet training on the other hand has some uses. I think it is smart to train the soldier how to fight with their rifle. That said, I don’t see getting buttstroked with an M-4.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
March 18, 2010 at 12:57 am
chazfh
Bayonet training has lots of uses especially nowadays as it is all about applied violence, trouble is many modern assualt rifles (mainly bullpups) are not that effective using a bayonet. whereas the M16 varients or the G series rifles are much better.
Murph I agree that running can cause more problems is a recruit is overweigt, unfortunately PT instructors only have so much time and it is still seen as being an effective training method (don’t know why).
Perosnally I see an gradual increase on pack size on marches which can also be mini drills a much better trianing/fitness regime.
March 18, 2010 at 12:58 am
chazfh
Bangor: bayonets still issued to most european armies. have to say though don’t know about the ADF
March 18, 2010 at 1:17 am
sfmurphy1971
The instructors have plenty of time, Chaz. In Basic they have all the time in the world when we are not in a classroom. There is time while waiting to drop us pushups, situps, crunches, side straddle hops, etc. Thus there is time for sprints, squat thrusts and the like.
Once you get to your unit you get an hour for PT in the morning, formation PT usually. Again, there is no reason why one should go on a formation run. There are plenty of other things one could be doing with the time.
They go running for one reason. It takes planning to do anything else.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
March 18, 2010 at 2:50 am
Birmo
I’m pretty sure bayonet training is still a core discipline for the ADF, Chaz. British heritage and all that.
“They don’t like it up ‘em.”
March 18, 2010 at 9:14 am
bangarrr
I don’t doubt the effectiveness of the bayonette on the right weapon, and being able to use a rifle as weapon other than a bullet thrower is a given. Just the thought of “here troop is how to use a weapon we will not/can’t provide” rubs me wrong.
March 18, 2010 at 12:54 pm
sfmurphy1971
I think Birmo has it spot on.
It all gets back to weight, Bangar.
Remember in the movie Black Hawk Down the Rangers were grousing about weight. They dropped interceptor plates and left a lot of other stuff behind. At the end of the day, a soldier is only going to carry so much weight (especially the pussies who can run but can’t carry hardly any weight at all).
So this lead to the shorter, lighter weapons like the M-4. Easier to use in an urban environment. Then we slapped all sorts of crap on the weapon, namely taclights (which I still do not understand as the last thing I want is a big light in in my center mass that the enemy can fire at) which, as a result, leaves little room for a bayonet lug.
Me personally? I thought bayonet training was useful. We not only learned to use the bayonet but the rest of the weapon as well. If the Army keeps pugil stick training, which is an interim step to bayonets, then I won’t have any real objections to losing the bayonet.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
March 22, 2010 at 4:13 am
Brad R. Torgersen
I think the main reason the Army has kept formation runs for so long, is that whole Esprit de Corp thing. Ergo, formation runs with the unit help team-build, though only for those able to keep up. Too many commanders are jackrabbits and run the formation at that pace, and when half your company is falling out all over the gottdamned place… Well, so much for the “team” concept.
I’d like to see the Army swap over to training similar to what they do at Gym Jones — the guys who trained the cast and crew of the movie 300. Functional, range-of-motion and weight-bearing training. As noted elsewhere in this thread, what’s the use of running like the wind if you can’t carry a load along the way?
Running — especially on hard pavement — is murder on the lower body. I’d like to know how many permanent profiles have resulted from this “team building” exercise over the years. Not to mention soldiers being put out because they were awesome on the functional aspects of the APFT — sit-ups and push-ups — but couldn’t pass a timed run. Is the APFT going to be overhauled too? I sure gottdamned hope so.
Granted, aerobic fitness is a key element. But there are 101 ways to get a squad or platoon of trainees up to max heart rate and breathing heavily, other than slamming them out onto the roadway at 6 AM for formation runs.
One more thought. Like so much else in the Army, I think the formation run has its roots in WWII and the training they developed for Airborne Infantry. Virtually everything the Army does is still gauged by the “Airborne” standard, as stupid as that gets sometimes. If I have to look at one more senior NCO with jump wings (and other scare badges) on his chest — even though you know it’s been a decade or more since he fell out of a C-130 — I am going to puke.
–Brad, writing from WOBC, Ft. Jackson, S.C.
March 22, 2010 at 5:31 pm
sfmurphy1971
I had a superbitch of a time with the two mile run, Brad. I hated it. I always hated it. I spent four years arguing with my chain of command about the terminal stupidity of it. I also spent four years going to Medical over and over again with shin splints that flared up only to be told that the cure was to rest thirty days, then run a whole lot.
I don’t care for gauging everything on the Airborne Ranger standard either, which seems to have gotten more pronounced in the time since I left the service. For one, not everyone is an Airborne Ranger and they are NEVER going to be.
I get pretty sick of the jump wings too. And you’ve got to wonder about the utility of pure airborne soldiers. How often do we actually use vertical envelopment to deploy a brigade or a division of troops? Almost never, the risks to the unit are too high, the unit is incapable of dealing with armored threats, vulnerable to air and anti-air threat, short logistics train, not enough organic transport or fire support.
Had it my way, the 82nd would become a heliborne division like the 101st and we’d do away with this fiction of dumping large bodies of soldiers out the back of a plane. It was a stupid idea in World War II and it is a stupid idea now.
As for esprit de corps, load packs on their backs, give’em a full combat load with body armor and make them do a twelve mile forced march in July at Fort Riley, Kansas. That’ll build your esprit de corps.
Hope things are well at Fort Jackson, Brad. Jesus, it was twenty years ago that I went to basic there. I don’t miss it. Not in the least.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
March 23, 2010 at 12:14 am
Sub-Odeon
Word, on the 12-miler. Load ‘em down, move ‘em out. Call fucking cadence on the way, if you like. Everyone arrives at the objective, or nobody arrives. Leave no man or woman behind. Sure beats hell out of a stupid road run.
As for Jackson, I swore to myself when last I left this place, I would not set foot on it again until I had some gottdamned rank.
Mighty nice having a silver bar with a black square. I get respect up and down the chain. But man, it was weird the first couple of days. I kept being paranoid that some DS was donna jump out of a bush and shake me down for not having my pistol belt and canteen, or being in an unauthorized area without explicit permission from the Senior DS to be there, etc, etc. And then of course, there was going up to 120th Reception at 5 AM for some overdue shots.
Poor bastards had all their duffels out on the cement for pickup day. All of us who’d been here within the last 25 years just went whooooaaaaaaa, bad memories. Bad! I felt for the Privates up there, as they had no idea what was coming to them. No idea at all. I wanted to yell, “You’re in for it today!” But I didn’t. You could tell they were nervous enough, without some new Chief making it worse.
So I just watched. And waited for the incompetent civilians running the shot clinic to figure out we weren’t on the schedule, so we’d all gotten up at the butt crack for nothing. Fucking Big Army. Fuck. But hey, the DS’s steered away from us Warrants like we were made of plutonium. Niiiiiiice.
March 23, 2010 at 2:23 am
sfmurphy1971
Funny how folks who hate running have no problem going on long road marches. Those have more utility in places like Afghanistan than the Jimmy Fixx 1970s running mania the Army is stuck on.
I think I’d have the same problem if I were to visit Fort Jackson again. Flashbacks of Drill Sergeants. Boy, I don’t miss those assholes. They are not part of my Army nostalgia.
As for the Drills avoiding you guys, well, they have to know that once upon a time most of you were privates. They probably didn’t want to tangle with you.
Basic. I do not have positive memories of that experience. About the only positive experience I can point to is qualification day. That was the first day that I felt like a soldier. Everything before and after that until I reached permanent party reminded me of High School all over again.
Glad to be free of positive control. It kills me when my students bitch about how I run the classroom.
“You run it like the Army,” they say.
And I reply, “You couldn’t handle the Army.”
I can’t cuss anymore and even if I could, this would be extremely politically incorrect but I often think this.
“You (expletives) couldn’t handle the Army.”
I’ll leave it to you to decipher the expletive. Teaching has a disadvantage or two and I don’t need to be fired over a blog entry.
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches