So I’ve finished the brutalities of Basic Combat Training in the US Army during wartime and I am ready for a nice trip with the family down to San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, for my Advanced Individual Training to become a 68W or better known as a Combat Medic.
Should be easy right? Like, Basic Training has to be the toughest part of Army life right? Wrong.
I remember rolling up to my first Drill Pad asking the Drill Sergeant where I was supposed to be, and amidst the chaos of soldiers getting screamed at and a cacophony of military protocol, he turned around to me and screamed out, “Why are you NOT AT EASE PRIVATE!?!?!”
My ex-Army older sister later informed me that the Drill Sergeant looked at her after I had scampered off like a dog with my tail between my legs,…he looked at her and smiled as if to say he had control and this was just training.
That was the last time I saw my family until after AIT. We had said goodbyes and that question to that Drill Sergeant would be the last they would see me as a non-qualified medic in the US Army.
AIT was everything Basic Training was but worse. You had constant physical training, running, pushups, getting ‘smoked’, and a litany of other physical demands with the added pressure of having mental and collegiate demands such as learning everything a Combat Medic would need to know during wartime.
We had our time with Drill Sergeant’s, learning the more emergency part of medicine, and school time with Civilian teachers that would include testing and studying. I remember taking a lot of no-doz and consuming ungodly amounts of caffeine in order to keep up with everything.
AIT consisted of 3 or 4 phases in which you would get more and more freedom imparted upon you.
In the earlier phases you aren't allowed off base on weekends or holidays but as the phases ramp up, you get to explore the city of San Antonio which I must say is beautiful.
I remember specific parts of AIT through the phases such as learning IV, IM, and sub-cutaneous pricks, war preparedness rooms where strobe lights and sirens would go off as you practiced your emergency medicine, and other things like the chow halls and The Hacienda, which was a hall for the training soldiers to come watch a movie, rent a guitar or have a drink if you were of age.
I remember eating a lot of Pecan pie during this phase of my Army career and also lots of fights. Almost more than in Basic Training.
Again, you are confining 100's of young testosterone filled men, to a tiny barrack, where alcohol, getting freedom back, and lack of sleep attribute to lots of physical confrontations.
I had the most personal fighting with other soldiers in AIT.
I remember after getting into it with one soldier, our drill sergeants took us to the drill pad, not to smoke us or have us do pushups until we were exhausted, but to tell us that if were were going to fight with other soldiers to fight soldiers from the other companies and not ours.
I thought this was funny, not to not fight, but to simply fight soldiers in the other companies.
I came close to attempting to kill another soldier in one fight and in another I almost choked out the opponent then he almost choked me out. Scary times.
I was Echo company, Tusker Medics go!
Back to needle sticks and practicing them. Obviously the Intravenous or IV sticks were the hardest to handle for most training medics. To say it shortly, they got to that part in training and pretty much gave us needles and let us just practice on each other and ourselves until people were passing out or there was blood everywhere.
This part of IV sticks would be easy compared to training further on with the Special Forces Drill Sergeant who would have us carrying a stretcher with a soldier on it, up a steep incline and across fields and streams, yelling every 1-2 minutes, “MORTAR!” then point at a random Soldier in the troop and scream, “YOU'RE DOWN” and in that time we would have to simulate a mortar attack and get an IV into the randomly selected soldier by the time he counted backwards from 10.
I loved this part of my Army training, it was like college for the military and besides Airborne school was the best part of my time in.
I remember on the day we learned about stabilizing broken bones and joints, at the end of training we took all the gauze and boards and wrapped one soldier up like a mummy! It was so funny.
The days were spent between physical exercise with the drill sergeants, training to become an EMT-B in a few months with the civilian teachers, and getting out eventually on weekends to Sam Antonio and seeing the local culture.
San Antonio is again, beautiful, and the Riverwalk there, if you've never been, is quite the place to see with your own eyes.
Pan flute bands, floating parties and weddings, and tons of restaurants and bars litter the banks of the Riverwalk. Word was, some places would serve you alcohol even if you were underage!
Alcohol was common for certain trainees at that time, they would smuggle it back to the barracks and drink to excess. One soldier got so drunk and in so many fights his face was beaten so badly he looked like he got stung by 1,000 bumblebees and was not allowed to walk at graduation.
One thing you do before graduating is STX, Situation Training Exercises. This is where you're shipped off to the middle of nowhere, away from the Barracks, and you sleep in tents and endure the heat, and intense real life training drills. I still remember the smell of bug spray and the heat.
Through the fighting, the IV sticks, the constant pressure of having to study for my EMT-B, eventually passing my EMT-B, keeping up with rifle qualifications, lots of pecan pie, STX, and touring the Riverwalk, I eventually graduated and became a full fledged 68W.
Before I graduated, I decided with another soldier to try out for Airborne School and RIP, Ranger Indoctrination Program, after AIT.
Some were selected for Airborne School but I believe I was the only one in the Company to get selected for RIP.
Stay tuned for Part 5 where I will talk about Airborne School, getting kicked out of Airborne school and heading to my home Station at Fort Polk, Louisiana for 3 weeks before deploying to Iraq.
Peace!
