In case you didn’t know, OSUT stands for One station unit training, it is where soldiers do their basic and AIT in one location. Throughout AIT I was more recognized than I was during basic, by everyone! In basic I was trying to be the tuna, the invisible soldier, the girl that drill sergeants didn’t even know was in their platoon until graduation day. Of course you have read my previous blogs so you know that didn’t end up being the case, unfortunately.
Having been prior law enforcement, I was thoroughly looking forward to AIT to see what new things I could learn in training that was specifically tailored to being an MP. Little did I know how awful and minimal the training would be. Yes we practiced defensive tactics, did some driving (I drove a patrol car for less than 5 minutes and my training was a Go at that station). We took some tests on how to fill out the proper paperwork and writing tickets. None of that would prepare any of those poor inexperienced, young soldiers, for the jobs that they would soon have. We did training on a program where we entered soldier’s personal information for cases, that was the bulk of our training. We spent one whole day on several tasks, such as checking on detainees and searching their cells for contraband, strip searches, traffic stops, etc. This was definitely nothing I would consider to be sufficient. I spent most of my days being an actor for these situations. Once my AIT sergeants finally found out why everyone wanted to be my partner (my prior police experience that I didn’t tell anyone about), they would use me to critique soldiers while they learned the things I already knew. This also occurred during patrol week.
Patrol week was just a few days of three soldiers driving around a specific “limited” portion of post, responding to staged calls. This would teach the soldiers how to operate a patrol car, perform functional rather than staged traffic stops, go on domestic violence calls, basically respond to whatever craziness the instructors could come up with. Most of those days I sat in an air conditioned vehicle and acted. I played the drunk driver with a hidden weapon. I played a battered or angry wife, depending on how the acting situation went with my acting buddies. I was driving around with beer goggles on. Those are really a thing, if you haven’t heard of them, they make you see as if you were fully intoxicated. I couldn’t walk a straight line for the life of me and doing balance beam as a gymnast it should have been a shoe in task.
Watching these kids shake while asking for my information during a mock traffic stop and observing the mistakes they made was scary. While a lot of these kids were National Guard, it didn’t change the fact that I could tell they would not be ready to be propelled into the actual task of policing on post. That it would put many of them in danger as well as their fellow battle buddies, soldiers on post, and even civilians on post. They were ill equipped and even worse, poorly trained.
The most basic and minimum was what they taught in AIT. I was bored, pissed off, and worried for my fellow battles. I would later express this to the company xo during inspections in the days before graduation. However the lack of training isn’t even the worst of this portion of my experience. During AIT I had noticed one of my instructors, an SSG, who would always single me out and talk to me personally. He always offered to teach me things, to help me get different assignments, and just act as a friend. Not a mentor, not an AIT sergeant, not a person of authority, but more like someone who was trying to get in my pants. This was someone of authority, someone I was supposed to be learning from, someone all of us were supposed to be learning from, someone we were supposed to trust. However, rather than focusing on the soldiers who needed his help, who so desperately needed to learn how to police and their job functions, he decided to focus all of his energy on me. This AIT instructor attended our pre-graduation ceremonies as well as our graduation ceremony. It wasn’t in his job title or description but he did it anyway. He even took the time to introduce himself to my Husband who had flown in for my graduation. Little did I know this SSG would later turn his attention to me and it would turn into predatory type behavior. This will be a blog story for another time.
My issue with the end of basic training was that I knew my battle buddies were leaving unprepared for the real world. Whenever we would do scenarios I would ask questions, these questions were so that the others could learn more and understand how quickly a situation could have changed and not just ended with another after action review of what could be done better. My questions were always met with “you’re reading too far into this.” or “that would never happen.” I was constantly being told belittling things like that while I was only trying to have a person in the position of power and training, help train their soldiers for actual scenarios and things that do happen in law enforcement. This made me question my sanity on most days, was I wrong? Was I reading too far into something? Or were the instructors actually incapable of knowing that questions I asked were situations I had actually been in. That they simply lacked the experience I did because they were desk sergeants and had never worked as a regular civilian law enforcement officer a day in their life? I was really trying to help prepare my battle buddies for some of what would occur in the real world. It blew well past frustration into a blown on me giving up on trying to help altogether.
Meanwhile I hadn’t come down on orders yet, which my Husband at the time was waiting on for court to see if he would be able to keep custody of his children. My Grandmother was in poor health and I had called her on one of our pass days from the USO phone, for the 10 allotted minutes we were allowed. She told me that she didn’t think she was going to make it, but that she was proud of me. I broke down in tears, I went and sat in the computer line and I just couldn’t get myself pulled together. A couple of the guys from my platoon came over and said they wished they could give me a hug, but personal contact was not allowed. Each day grew more and more frustrating.
We took our final PT test and I scored a 300, the perfect score, back then I thought that meant something. Eventually I would get a challenge coin for PT excellence for the scoring of a 300 on the PT test, pretty lame right? I had been a first time Go on everything since the beginning of basic. We had been told that the top of the class (person who would be rewarded at graduation), would be chosen from only those who received first time Go’s. We were also told that those who were in the top 5% of the class would be able to qualify for hometown recruiting. I worked my ass off to get hometown recruiting, I did this because I knew that it would give me a couple extra weeks, or at least ten days, in my hometown to spend with my declining Grandmother.
By this point I had my orders to Ft. Hood, which I thought would be fine, it was my Brother’s last duty station before he got out of the Army. My drill sergeant laughed at me and wished me the best of luck, he clearly knew more about my future than I did.
Finally after working my ass off, getting all the first time Go’s in everything, and scoring a 300 on the PT test I was told that I could get the hometown recruiting assignment as long as the recruiting station was okay with it. I contacted the recruiting station, my Husband did so on my behalf on the days we didn’t have phone access, which was every day. I was on top of my class for scores not just physical tests, but for all of the exams we had related to our law enforcement testing in AIT. I kept pushing hometown recruiting up through my drill sergeants and nothing ever came of it. This wasn’t the first time my Cadre had let me down.
I was so infuriated with the First Sergeant, I took a battle buddy the day of our practice graduation and asked him if I could leave early with my Husband, rather than attend graduation. First sergeant came up with multiple excuses for why my hometown recruiting fell through. Then he told me that attending graduation was a condition of actually graduating from basic training. I asked him politely to show me the regulation that stated such. He could produce no such thing. My Husband’s graduation when he joined the guard decades before had been cancelled due to hurricane weather and his basic training class still graduated. Once more I was pissed off at my Cadre for lying and letting me down even more.
I was forced to attend graduation after having a three day pass due to a holiday weekend right before graduation. I spent every day with my Husband and my best battles on post or in the hotel room my Husband booked. We would just all watch movies on the TV and eat junk food. Don’t get me wrong, these days were some of the best and most memorable days of my life, but they were forced which made me hate them at the time.
They ended up picking people for the top of the class who didn’t have first time Go’s on testing, they weren’t even the top 5% of the class, well one of them did, and they definitely didn’t have as high of a PT score as I did. Where did I go wrong and why didn’t I get those accolades? Deep down I knew, it was because I spoke up when people were being wronged, to include advocating for myself. I tried to teach in opportunities when AIT sergeants were just ending training scenarios at a bare minimum. I felt as if I was being punished for being honest and trying to better my battles and I was. It was not until later that I would determine that I would never attend a promotion board and that I was no longer interested in staying in for my 20. I had lost all hope for a decent future in the military, one where I would be muted, where what I would have to say that could improve things would be muted, and where my hard work would all be swept under the rug.
Graduation day seemed to last forever, it just drug on and on. I sat there patiently, with pneumonia, trying not to cough or draw attention to myself. I did what the Army wanted which was to comply, do what they asked of us, and ask no questions. As soon as we were released everyone was introducing their families to the drill sergeants and pretending like everything was golden. I chose to not introduce my Husband to the Cadre or even look towards them in any way, instead as soon as we were able to walk out, I went in search of my stuff which took a while to find because it was unorganized and thrown in one container all as one platoon. As soon as I found all my bags my Husband helped me load it into his rental car, we went to the hotel on post, and that was the end of training. I just remember I kept saying “when I die I want my Cadre to bury me so that they can let me down just one more time.” Little did I know that once I got to my duty station, things would not get any better.
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