There was this big black sergeant E-5 when I was in the army, and he kept falling out of these two mile runs that we did at a slow pace. That always puzzled me, because he was obviously in good enough shape to make these runs. He was airborne qualified, so I knew he could run if he wanted to. I think the deal with him was that he didn’t want to get out of this manic high that he was always in. He was always spinning tales and making up yarns. Different people react to situations in different ways. It could be that even a little running brought him down more than he cared to be brought down.
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I never fell out of a run ever. With that said, I did run with the slowest group in OSUT.
I remember when I first got to ft Bragg I was in the transition center. All different mos and probably a lot of airborne qualified. A ton of people fell out like over 3/4 fell out of the run. I felt good knowing that I was a good runner. It was pretty embarrassing though. I’m hoping I’m wrong and none were airborne. Unlikely. It speaks to what kinda training combat mos go through vs pogues. I was one of the slower ones in my actual unit.
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What was your mos?
Maybe dude is skipping because two miles is a joke. He probably does his own pt. We ran min 6 miles at Bragg fast asf. I only remember ever running 2 during a pt test.
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I was 11B1U. I forget if the “1U” was because I drove a track or because I was the NBC specialist for an infantry company. All I remember was that one day someone came up and handed me a sheet of paper that said my mos had been changed from 11B10 to 11B1U. I didn’t like driving a track because that meant I often couldn’t go out on foot patrols. I remember one time they were going to airlift our unit in helicopters, and I couldn’t go because I had to stay with the track.
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Thank you for your service! I don’t know what a track is or a 5 character mos is.
I should have specified that a “track” was an M113 armored personel carrier. This was a long time ago, before the M2 Bradley came in. Most people thought of the mos as the three character kind, but the extra two characters were more specific.
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Ok I think I might have drove a m113. Is it a giant truck with room for personnel in the back?
I assume they call it track when they go overseas.
You’re a hero! Thank you again for your service!
This was a long time ago, in a different army. By rights, for military discipline, they should have made the guys who fell out stay after we were dismissed in the final formation and do calisthenics.
I’m no hero. When we were in the field I was pretty good, but in garrison I could get pretty flaky. The giant truck you talk about is probably a deuce and half. We rode around in those too.
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A different army? Are you implying my experience was soft? When did you serve?
As far as a guy dropping out of a run I don’t think anybody dropped out once it was started. They definitely skipped them on rare occasion.
I didn’t go overseas so In that sense my experience was definitely soft. I’ve lived a soft life.
I think anybody in their right mind would choose a soldier who is good in the field and bad in garrison vs the vice versa.
The only time I ever skipped pt was when I had a hernia.
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I was in from 1977 to 1981, and no, I’m not saying your experience was soft. There were things that were pretty hard about the military back then. One time I carried an M60 machine gun the entire distance on a twelve mile rapid march that my squad leader passed out on. I think that 12 mile march was almost a tradition in the army. It was probably a part of this great big, month long field problem we went on. As for doing better in the field than in garrison, that can be a serious problem if you’re so irregular you’re unreliable.
Oh ok I thought you were a lot younger. It probably was softer. I don’t think it’s as soft as nowadays. They don’t even have shark attacks and can’t jab you with the brim of their hat.
A great general once said to spare a soldier in training is essentially getting them killed. 
When I was in we were very afraid of Russia. We kept hearing about all the great weapons Russia had. At that point in time they had 45,000 tanks and we had 7,000. Our tanks probably weren’t better than theirs. There were also nuclear and chemical weapons to consider. When I got to Germany they were having a lot of problems with heroin. Also, everybody drank a LOT. I drank a LOT. Back then the army was like a factory that produced alcoholics. I think that in most large armies there is a lot of heavy drinking. The Russians were probably drinking more than we were. Moral was bad because discipline was lax. I think we could have gotten our act together and fought the Russians well if they attacked us, but there were things that made us doubt ourselves. For instance, back then the squad anti tank rocket we had was the LAW. They didn’t know if it would penetrate the eight inches of frontal armor on the main battle tanks of the day. That is something I would dearly like to know before I used that weapon. I don’t know. That was a long time ago, and the military is great now.
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One time we were out on a Reforger field problem with the Special Forces. We’d been going out on patrols, but things had slowed down. One night a friend of mine named Rodriguez and I snuck away from our camp to find a guesthouse to drink a few beers. We had sat there a few minutes, and the bar maid came up and pointed to a couple of grader’s caps with white bands on them hanging on a rack behind us. So Rodriguez and I turned around without saying a word, and we stole both the grader’s caps. We quickly got into the woods, and we traveled for a while, until we came on about seven or eight Cobra helicopters sitting in this field, unguarded. So we tore the Screaming Eagle decal off the nose of several of these helicopters and wrapped them around the bottle of corn schnaps we’d brought with us. Then we left those 101st Air Assault soldiers to explain the best they could what had happened to their helocopter decal’s to their commanding officers. We got back to camp just as the sun was coming up, and we showed some of the Special Forces our trophies. Their attitude was, “What in the world have you guys been up to?” But later our platoon leader found out, and he was furious.
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man @crimby that’s some impressive stuff in the service…what a guy you are !! overcoming that is enough on top of your sz.
Very good stories. Thanks for sharing!
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I was a pretty big mess when I was in the army. Every once in a while I would get motivated to play army.
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