To Keep Recruits, Boot Camp Gets A Gentle Revamp

[333MP]

Wall Street Journal
February 15, 2006
Pg. 1

To Keep Recruits, Boot Camp Gets A Gentle Revamp

Army Offers More Support, Sleep, Second Helpings

By Greg Jaffe

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. -- New recruits used to be welcomed to boot camp here with the "shark attack." For decades, drill sergeants in wide-brim hats would swarm around the fresh-off-the-bus privates, shouting orders. Some rattled recruits would make mistakes. A few would cry.

Today, the Army is opting for a quieter approach. "I told my drill sergeants to stop the nonsense," says Col. Edward Daly, whose basic-training brigade graduates about 11,000 soldiers a year. Last fall, Col. Daly began meeting with all new recruits shortly after they arrive at boot camp to thank them. "We sincerely appreciate the fact that you swore an oath and got on a bus and did it in a time of war," he recently told an incoming class. "That's a big, big deal." He usually is accompanied by two male and two female soldiers, who can answer questions the recruits may have.

"The idea is to get rid of the anxiety and worry," Col. Daly says.

The new welcome is a window on the big changes sweeping boot camp, the Army's nine-week basic training. For most of its existence, boot camp was a place where drill sergeants would weed out the weak and turn psychologically soft civilians into hardened soldiers. But the Army, fighting through one of its biggest recruiting droughts, now is shifting tactics. Boot camp -- that iconic American experience -- may never be the same.

Once-feared drill sergeants have been ordered to yell less and mentor more. "Before, our drill sergeants' attitude was 'you better meet my standard or else.' Now it's 'I am going to do all I can to assist you in meeting the Army standard,' " says Command Sgt. Maj. William McDaniel, the senior enlisted soldier here.

New privates are getting more sleep and personal time. Even the way soldiers eat has changed. Drill sergeants long ordered overweight soldiers to stay away from soda and desserts. Today, soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood fill out a survey about their boot-camp experience that asks, among other questions, if they liked the food, whether they were "allowed to eat everything on the menu, including dessert," and whether there was enough for seconds.

Recruits still must meet the same basic standards and pass the same tests for physical fitness and marksmanship to graduate, say Army officials. But more variable criteria that in the past might get a recruit expelled -- such as whether a drill sergeant thinks a recruit has the discipline and moral values to be a soldier -- have been jettisoned. "Now it doesn't matter what the drill sergeant thinks. We work off of the written standard," says Capt. Christopher Meng, who oversees a company of 11 drill sergeants and about 200 recruits at the base.

The new approach is helping the Army graduate more of its recruits. Last month, only 23 recruits failed to make the cut at Fort Leonard Wood's largest basic-training brigade, compared with 183 in January 2004. Army-wide, about 11% of recruits currently flunk out in their first six months of training, down from 18% last May.

Full Potential

Senior Army officials say attrition has fallen because the new techniques are helping more soldiers reach their full potential. "This generation responds to a more positive leadership approach. They want to serve and they want people to show respect for that decision," says Maj. Gen. Randal Castro, the commanding general at Fort Leonard Wood. Smarter training also is preventing injuries, Army doctors say.

Some drill sergeants worry that the "kinder and gentler approach" -- as drill sergeants have dubbed the changes -- is producing softer soldiers. "If the privates can't handle the stress of a drill sergeant yelling at them, how will they handle the stress of bullets flying over their head?" asked Staff Sgt. Clayton Nagel as he watched his recruits file past him in the Fort Leonard Wood dining hall. "War is stressful. I think we overcorrected."

The Army's decision to overhaul basic training came last spring. The service was having a hard time bringing in new recruits. It ultimately missed its 2005 recruiting goals for active-duty troops by 7,000 soldiers, or 8%, and National Guard soldiers by 13,000 or 20%.

Meanwhile, boot-camp attrition was climbing. New soldiers brought in to replace those who were tossed out weren't much better. "We realized that the further you go into the barrel, the lower the quality," says Col. Kevin Shwedo, a senior officer in the Army's Training and Doctrine Command in Virginia.

A team of 20 officers from the Army's training command was formed to figure out how the service could help more soldiers survive the first six months. They consulted sociologists and psychiatrists and even flew in MTV's senior vice president of strategy and planning, in search of fresh ideas for motivating today's youth.

The changes, put in place this fall at all five of the Army's basic-training camps, are apparent the moment recruits step off the bus at Fort Leonard Wood. On a chilly Tuesday in January, about 200 new recruits in white Army sweat suits filed into a big auditorium on the base for one of Col. Daly's welcome-to-the-Army talks. Staff Sgt. Mike Gilmore grabbed a microphone and told the recruits what was going to happen: "The brigade commander is going to talk to you. He is a colonel. He is way up here. You are way down here," Sgt. Gilmore explained.

He then coached the recruits on how to spring to attention when Col. Daly entered the room. "When I say 'attention,' you stand up. That's it. You don't say nothing. You do it quietly as possible."

"Attention!" Sgt. Gilmore ordered. The recruits rose slowly and unevenly.

"Could we all just stand up together?" Sgt. Gilmore said, sounding more let down than angry. "It would look so much nicer."

A few minutes later, Col. Daly, a Special Forces soldier who served in Afghanistan and was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in the U.S. invasion of Panama, strode into the room. He told the recruits to take a deep breath and a swig from their canteens. "There is no problem that you might have that in last 230 years the Army hasn't already heard," he said.

The recruits then got 40 minutes to fire questions at the four privates accompanying Col. Daly. One recruit asked if any of the privates had failed the Army's physical-fitness test. (Two struggled with it but eventually passed.) Others wanted to know how often they got to talk on the phone (once a week), how long they got for showers (five minutes) and how many hours of sleep they got a night (8 hours). A few asked if they had any regrets about enlisting. All four said no.

Too Easy

After the session, Pvt. Angela Holmquest, one of the privates brought in to answer questions, said she worried that basic training had become too easy. "The drill sergeants tell us we are in the low-stress Army. I'd rather be in the old Army. When we need to lock it up and work together as a team we can. But we should be more disciplined than we are," she said.

In recent months, the Army has told drill sergeants to back off the recruits in the dining halls as well. A few months ago, sergeants would hover over new recruits, rushing them through meals, quizzing them about Army regulations and chastising them for minor infractions like carrying their drinking glass with one hand instead of two.

The dining hall still is far from relaxing. But drill sergeants no longer shout at recruits. They aren't allowed to order overweight privates to skip dessert. At first, some drill sergeants refused to embrace the new directive. "There was a lot of balking on the dessert rule," says Capt. Meng, who oversees 11 drill sergeants. "I have had to say, 'Don't even mention it.' "

The Army also has cut the amount of running troops do in boot camp by more than 60% in the past three years. "A lot of these kids have never done P.E. or sports. We were injuring too many by running too much," says Col. Greg Jolissaint, an Army physician with the command that sets baseline standards for boot camp.

Instead of running, privates do more calisthenics and stretching. They also are spending more time learning the basic combat tasks they will need in Iraq or Afghanistan, such as how to spot a roadside bomb. Last month, Sgt. First Class Kevin Staddie, who spent a year in Iraq, was teaching soldiers how to move through a city under enemy fire. Suddenly he called a halt to the exercise. A private who was slithering on his belly lost his only canteen. Sgt. Staddie asked the private if he knew the temperature in Baghdad in August.

"It is 115 degrees," the sergeant said in an even voice. "Will you give me a solemn promise that you'll do a better job securing your canteen? You'll get a whole lot further."

The private nodded and rushed to continue the exercise.

Soldiers also get a few more chances to succeed, say drill sergeants. Not long after she arrived at boot camp, Pvt. Starr Mosley was accused by another soldier of writing letters home when she was supposed to be training. Her drill sergeant ordered the 18-year-old private to crawl on her belly through the barracks and chant: "I will not write letters in the war room."

Pvt. Mosley, who said she wasn't writing letters, refused. The Army offered her a fresh start in a new platoon. There she struggled to meet the service's marksmanship standards, her drill sergeant says. Sgt. Darren Baker, her new drill sergeant, spent hours coaching her. "Without him I would have quit," Pvt. Mosley says. "He was down there in the dirt helping me."

A year ago, a drill sergeant wouldn't have taken as much time working with one struggling soldier. Today it is part of the job. "We're all working more one-on-one with the privates," Sgt. Baker says.

Soldiers with certain medical conditions get more help as well. Recruits with mild asthma now are allowed to carry inhalers with them. Privates who come to the Army with a history of mild depression now can take Paxil or Zoloft. Both changes, pushed through last fall, are "contributing to the lower attrition overall," says Col. Jolissaint, the physician.

Some basic-training facilities also are setting up special units for soldiers who are hurt or out of shape. In August, Col. Daly created a "Warrior Rehab" unit for injured recruits. Before the unit's creation, soldiers hurt during training often would go home to heal. The vast majority never came back.

Soldiers in Warrior Rehab practice marksmanship, take classes on map reading and do low-impact workouts in the base's indoor pool. So far, 170 soldiers have passed through the program. Only 30 have quit basic training.

Last month, about 40 members of the unit gathered in their barracks for a class on how to ambush the enemy with an M-18 Claymore antipersonnel mine. The troops included Pvt. Matthew Brent, a 29-year-old former hotel manager, who enlisted because he "wanted a personal challenge." He came to boot camp overweight at 5-foot-10, 220 pounds and quickly went down with tendinitis in his ankle. In his five months in Warrior Rehab, Pvt. Brent has lost 57 pounds.

Next to him was Pvt. Richard Hodgson, who has been with the rehab unit since it started in August, trying to recover from stress fractures. He was having doubts about his ability to stick it out. "I've just lost my motivation. I was supposed to have graduated in September and I am still stuck here," he said. The sergeants in Warrior Rehab have been working hard to convince him to stay. "I've had a few mother-son type conversations with him," says Staff Sgt. Nicole Waters, one of the drill sergeants. "We talk about his goals in life. This job is a lot more mental than the typical drill sergeant job."

Not all Army commanders have embraced the new approach to basic training. Col. Daly says one of the 14 company commanders he oversees is a "gung-ho combat arms officer, who right now is just killing me."

Recently, one of that commander's recruits brought a round of live ammunition back from the rifle range, which isn't allowed. The bullet was found by a drill sergeant in the barracks common room. As punishment, the commander ordered the entire unit, which numbers 60 soldiers, to don their helmets when eating in the dining facility. He then threatened to send all the privates, who were just two weeks from graduation, back to the beginning of basic training.

Col. Daly bristled when he heard about the threat. "I am not going to keep 60 soldiers back because one guy made a mistake," the colonel says he told the commander.

Instead, Col. Daly ordered the commander to have his drill sergeants do a better job of searching the recruits' pockets for extra ammunition when they leave the range.

"The commander's leadership style has got to change," says Col. Daly, noting that the commander's recruits have gone absent without leave at more than twice the rate of any other unit in the past two months.

Even among those units that have embraced the new approach, there is debate about whether the changes have been too much, too fast. "It's a hot topic," says Capt. Meng, another one of Col. Daly's company commanders.

Like many of his fellow commanders, Capt. Meng spent a year in Iraq, in a tour that ended in 2004. He was second in command of a 100-soldier armor company. In the past six months, the West Point graduate has been in the forefront in reducing attrition, overseeing drill sergeants and recruits.

Last month, a few dozen of Capt. Meng's privates clambered onto olive-green trucks for one of their final boot-camp exercises. The troops, traveling in an Iraq-style convoy, were "hit" by a series of smoke-spewing roadside bombs. Enemy fighters, represented by pop-up targets, sprung from nearby prairie grass. A broad-shouldered drill sergeant ordered a counterattack.

Instead of leaping off the back of the truck, as they would in a typical exercise, or in actual combat, the privates waited about 10 seconds for someone to walk to the back of the truck and place a ladder on its rear bumper. They then climbed down the 5-foot drop, one at a time.

Falling Short

Capt. Meng conceded it wasn't realistic. He said the Army couldn't afford to have privates twist ankles and wrench knees just a few days before their final physical fitness test. "A few months ago attrition was seen as a good thing," he says. "It meant we were sending higher quality troops to the Army."

Now he says he is racking his brain for new ways to motivate more soldiers who are falling short of the Army's standards. He recently petitioned Col. Daly to let his troops have an extra half-hour of sleep on top of the 30 minutes of additional shuteye all recruits were granted last fall. Standard boot camp sleeping hours are now 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. His troops rise at 5:30 a.m.

"It has been great for morale," Capt. Meng says. "A soldier's happiness is directly proportional to the amount of sleep he gets."

The Iraq veteran says his boot-camp troops are in many ways better prepared for combat than their predecessors were. They spend far more time working with their M-16 rifles and more time in the field training on critical combat tasks like defending a base camp from insurgent attacks.

Asked if his soldiers are as disciplined and tough as their predecessors, Capt. Meng pauses. "There are some who feel we are not sending as high a quality soldier to the Army....I am not smart enough to tell you," he says.

In the near term, he has other worries. "The commanding general's No. 1 priority here is to support the war," he says. "In order to do that right now we have to graduate more privates."

[SGRock]

WHAT????

OMG! What happens when they get to Iraq or Afghanistan? are they going to be asking these soldiers to PLEASE fire back at the enemy?

[USMCRET6391]

No Comment

[Batgirl]

Instead of leaping off the back of the truck, as they would in a typical exercise, or in actual combat, the privates waited about 10 seconds for someone to walk to the back of the truck and place a ladder on its rear bumper. They then climbed down the 5-foot drop, one at a time.

If this weren't true it would be funny. How on earth do they expect these Soldiers to be conditioned for the real tests they will face on the battlefield if they're being handled with kid gloves during their training? I have no operational experience but in my view this initiative is courting real trouble. You can't introduce civilian like practices into this type of training environment without negatively impacting the overall standard. Also how much further will this "softy, softly" approach be taken? If a recruit can't handle the most basic discipline without threatening to pack it in, do you really want that person on the team? I understand the recruiting challenges faced both in the US and also in the UK but the Army isn't the place for these social experiments in mollycoddling.

Some drill sergeants worry that the "kinder and gentler approach" -- as drill sergeants have dubbed the changes -- is producing softer soldiers. "If the privates can't handle the stress of a drill sergeant yelling at them, how will they handle the stress of bullets flying over their head?" asked Staff Sgt. Clayton Nagel as he watched his recruits file past him in the Fort Leonard Wood dining hall. "War is stressful. I think we overcorrected."

The senior ranks should pay more attention to what their SNCOs are saying.

[Grimmy]

Starting to smell alot like Rome just prior to thier collaps.

Or maybe the french just prior to the germans getting frisky the second time.

This kind of institutionilzed weakness will only kill morale at the other end, and lead to lesser competence and greater casualties.

Why does the US Army degenerate into pandering to the lowest, any time there's stress in the system?

Soldiers are not weak people. Why treat em as such?

[USMC Chuter]

You have GOT to be shitting me! I am embarrassed, bordering on humiliated, that my country's Army has sunk so friggin low. Instead of setting a standard and demanding that it be met, they're adjusting to the recruit. Who joined who? Did the recruit join the Army or did the Army join the recruit?

This kind of bullshit is begging for trouble in a hurry. You don't ASK a private to do something-you tell them. Instant, willing obediance to orders is the only way to instill the discipline in peace that is required in war. Young people join the military because they want to be challenged; they expect demanding, rigorous training. Where is the pride and satisfaction of accomplishment and belonging when the organization will bend so disgustingly to the individual?

The Army has been suffering shit like this for too long as it is.. This is crossing a HUGE line toward neutering that service. The only way to prepare soldiers for combat is to be hard on them in training. That might even mean yelling at them and making them run. I'm going to go vomit now. Again.

[SGRock]

Thank God For The Marine Corps!

[USMCRET6391]

Still No comment

[cincymarsdad]

I read the book "Keeping Faith" cowritten by a Marine son and his semi-pacifist father last night. My daughter had bought it over Christmas and I finally started it last night around 10:00. I stayed up "late" finishing it. My son could have written it as well - it sounded so like everything he had told me about the Parris Island experience. I highly recommend the book, incidentally, for that reason, to anyone interested in Marine Corp Basic Training. The transition of the father - and the community - is as interesting as the transition of the young man into a Marine.

Tangentially, I wonder why it is that the Corp, which promises next to nothing except a hard road, meets and exceeds it recruiting quotas (which I realize are much smaller than the larger branches, which is a factor). [They do come up with terrific TV commercials, I must say. Sharp looking men in dress blues with swords in formation probably looks pretty attractive to a lot of 18 year olds, and 51 year olds.]

Tough as Basic is at PI, my son said it was MUCH easier than SOI - physically. He further noted that SOI was in some ways not as tough as CAX at 29 Palms later.

And, importantly, he described all of this as "a joke" compared with the Real Thing.

As a father, it was important to me that the men to his left and his right were as ready for combat as our country could make them, the tougher the better. I was of that opinion. I also had the opinion - rightly or wrongly - that his noncomms and officers, even in this reserve unit - were as ready as our country could make them.

I know that Army combat units receive a lot of training after Basic, and perhaps I would have the same opinion (since all I can have is inexperienced opinions). Perhaps the notion of a kinder and gentler basic training makes sense in such a large force with so many different MOS types and large numbers of REMFs. I don't know that an electronics technician, for example, "needs" 3 weeks of MCT, a Crucible-like experience, or being pitted and smoked and QD'd incessantly in basic.

I don't know.

I would offer a civilian opinion that those who survive PI/SD and MCT - regardless of their MOS - show strong evidence of a strong brotherhood/sisterhood that can be critical when the fecal matter hits the air moving device in the rear areas - if there are such things any more.

I have wondered why it is we have a Marine Corp today in addition to an Army with two apparently similar missions and capabilities. I am familiar with the USMC experiences in the early 20th century in "low intensity warfare" situations in Latin America. I believe they wrote the book, quite literally. Just as the Marine Corp "reinvented itself" (as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong) after WW I to emphasize amphibious operations in the Pacific, perhaps its role has reverted back to the pre-WW I era to a mobile force (probably not really amphibious in every case) trained specifically against insurgent operations.

A reason I stay around here is to learn from the literal "pros". For reasons I can't completely understand, of course, two of my children are military, so my previous academic interest in military history is now very acute and topical with respect today's headlines. I realize that on a site emphasizing "infantry" there will be a lot of grunts who believe in sweatin in training etc. etc. In thinking about the article noted, I can imagine what's going through your miinds here, no comment needed (!).

[66MP1]

I really do not believe what I just read. I cannot believe that the US Army is getting that weak. When I was in Basic, if we had not got off of a truck fast enough, some Drill Sergeant would have thrown us off. Seconds in the mess hall, what is that? We barely had enough time to eat our firsts with DI's screaming and yelling at you to hurry up. I guess they have even taken away the PT part we had to do before going into the Mess Hall. What is this country turning into?