What is your wildest story from basic training?

Thanks for sharing.

Not from MY Basic Training, but from while I was Training NCO for a BCT company.

I was in charge of a detail delivering training aids. We had the training aids and three or four trainees in the back of the truck, and another trainee driving. Traveling down one of the main streets on post, we needed to turn left at the next intersection. I told the driver "Turn left at the red light."

A moment later, we proceeded straight through the intersection without turning. I asked the driver "Why didn't you turn at the light?"

His answer has stayed with me forever as a perfect example of military training...

He answered "But, Sergeant, that light was green."

Sneaking sleep.

Although not from enlisted Basic Training but during the final phase of Warrant Officer Entry Course which is the Officer version. During SERE Training and enjoying Land NAV in the beautiful swamps of the Southern US. Day 3 we got tired of MRE's and called in an order for several Pizzas, which were delivered to our grid co-ordinates! We did get busted though... the TAC Officers couldn't stop laughing and recognized our ability to "Adapt and Overcome" so we were never reprimanded!

Thanks

Sleeping on top of the covers so I wouldn't have to remake the bed each morning.

We wer practicing our marching. We were 5 weeks in and I had not had a disciplinary slip (341) pulled as of yet and really never did. However, we were doing flanking maneuvers and I heard left flank we turned, right flank and we turned but the TI's voice kept getting louder and with full expletives. the I heard I said left flank GD! as we didn't hear him as aplane was flying overhead inthepattern. When I turned his TI hat hit me square in the forehead. All I haerd after that is that if Shuttleworth can't close his hands up when he is marchin I am gonna unzip and put my D!(% in it! The I proceeded to get woodpeckered/smoked by him and two other TI's. Guess what...never had a other problem after that.

Getting out of it early! While in high school I was a Navy Sea Cadet. Back in those days we went to USNR Boot Camp at Great Lakes and the next summer I spent 2 weeks on the USS Lexington. Sometime in my senior year of high school, my whole head changed: I was bored to be a Personnelman and decided I wanted to be a Hospital Corpsman. A Navy Reserve recruiter informed me that I would skip Boot Camp and go right to Class A School and then to Fleet Marine School and then it would be a direct flight to the DMZ in Vietnam. The fact that the life expectancy of a Corpsman was about 3 months. What bothered me is that I knew that I would not be physically effective with my 6’3” frame and 128lbs body couldn’t and shouldn’t be responsible for evacuating Marines….So, I enlisted in the Air Force.

This is where I started seeing God in my life. I was in AF Basic Training and after about a week I reported to my Drill Sergeant privately and informed him of my background. He asked why I didn’t inform him of my military training, I reminded him that he never asked. When he asked why I didn’t volunteer, I gave him a knowing look that he caught right away and smiled. He said he would set me up with the Final Written Exam, PT qualifying and a day at the rifle range. I aced the written exam, barely made the PT qualifying, and had more holes in my target than rounds in my M-16. I haven’t touched a gun since that day in June of 1971.

Crazy follow up. When I arrived at my duty station at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ (Tucson) I did a records review in the CBPO and came across a Security Clearance and my AFSC was not the one I held….I called the personnel guy over and asked him what this AFSC was, and he indicated “I guess you used to be Security Police, right?” Then we figured it out that my entire flight that I started Basic Training became Security Police….WOW, I got my orders and was a medic for my 4 years in the emergency room and ambulance service. That led to 20 years of practice as a Paramedic in civilian life (I challenged the exam, as I documented my Air Force experience as at least equivalent…so they let me take the exam and oral board and I passed with great joy). Instead of going to Physician Assistant school, I accepted a teaching position at the community college where I was already teaching as an adjunct faculty. I got my degrees while I taught full-time and then things got real crazy, but that is for another day.

God bless each and every one of you who served in the military. Thanks for letting me post here on RP!

In September of 1988 while attending BMT at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, one of the women in my flight got very sick in the middle of the night. Myself and another airman took the sick woman down to the Charge of Quarters (CQ) asking for help and what we should do? The two airmen working in the CQ that night were afraid and didn't want to wake up the sleeping NCOIC. So we starting walking with the sick woman across base trying to get to Wilford Hall Hospital on our own. It was dark and we didn't really know where we were going. We walked until we came to came across 2 Marines security guards who were posting duty outside the Marine Corp detachment of the air base. We asked them for directions to the hospital. One of the guards took a big risk for us. He took pity on us leaving his guard post and carried the sick young woman on his back all the way to the hospital that night and then ran all the way back to his security post. While the young woman was being treated in the Emergency Room that night, and we fell asleep in the uncomfortable hard plastic waiting room chairs of the ER until a nurse woke us up early the next morning to go back to our dormitory. After explaining the nights events to our Technical Instructor I thought we would be in big trouble for leaving the dormitory in the middle of the night. However she was actually very kind to us and let us sleep on the dayroom floor until noon to get a little more rest. The sick young woman ended up just having case of severe dehydration, and also rejoined out flight the next day.