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Where did you take Basic training or Boot Camp?

March 1981 Ft Jackson SC for processing, stayed there a week longer than normal due to President Reagan being shot on the 30th.
Then Ft Benning for Basic and AIT at Harmony Church, D-5-1, roster number was 458.
My Senior Drill Sgt was SFC Bobby Jordan from Kentucky- he had served 2 tours in Vietnam in the Marine Corps, got out for a year then enlisted in the Army and did another tour. He would come into the barracks in the middle of the night drunk and knock over lockers to wake everyone up...good times.

May 1987 NRTC Great Lakes IL for boot camp, Basic Electricity & Electronics school then Fire Control A school.
My DI's were both Filipino, one Spanish & the other Chinese and had heavy accents. I scored pretty high on my ASVAAB so was made company Yeoman (company clerk for you other service vets) and somehow seemed to know what they were going to say before they said it. Between that and being headed to radar school the name 'Radar' was unavoidable.
I was there almost an entire year and I learned quickly why there was a bar on every corner in Waukegan Wisconsin- you have to drink, a lot, to live near lake-effect snow.
 
How was it, when you went in? I'll start by saying it wasn't fun by any means. In my case it was Ft Jackson in Nov-Jan 57-58 and it was nineteen degrees. We had 0 week and then the eight weeks training. We spent eight weeks in Tent City. They hadn't finished renovating the wooden barracks, so we got to live in a part wood bottom and frame top with a tent thrown over it. A screen door at each end. Eight men were doubled bunked in each one. It had concrete floors and one pot bellied stove fueled by coal.
The latrines were wide open. No stalls and the flush was boiling water. The showers were one big room with a bunch of spigotsView attachment 1550542 overhead.
This is a picture of some of the guys that just got issued their uniforms and they were assigning us to our sleeping quarters. No haircuts yet.
We did not have DIs. They were called Cadre. Every one of them were Combat vets from WW2 and Korea. I still have the book from Basic.
After I finished there, I was sent to Ft Dix NJ for Infantry training.
harmony Church 66
 
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