According to Robertson, one this hasn't changed. Drill sergeants are still sticklers for detail. In Army Basic, this is called “dress-right-dress.”
Power said that’s because Soldiers must “prove themselves capable of paying attention to the strictest details.”
“If you can’t do the little things well – tuck in your shoe laces every day – you’re not going to handle the big things well,” Power said. “That’s not abuse, that’s common sense training. We didn’t throw out the practices that proved successful and start basic training from the ground up.”
Take for instance, the traditional challenge new Soldiers face first day in basic; they’re given three minutes to make every bunk in the bay.
“That’s an impossible task and an impossible time limit,” Gaskin said. “But it builds teamwork. If you’re that Soldier, you feel real stress and you come together as a team with a bunch of complete strangers to accomplish the mission. We’re building smarter, better trained Soldiers, but everything is still based on teamwork.”
You won’t find “teamwork,” as such, listed in the Army values, but it’s there, Parker said. The majority of recruits “value self above everything else,” he said, but within 72 hours of basic training, the relatively new values-based training “starts to make an impact.”
“Everything they do, good or bad, we teach values,” Parker said. “They came here because they want to be a part of this. They want to fit in, and they start living those values.”
To teach values effectively, drill instructors have to model them, Power said. Gone are the days of “issuing orders from the sidelines.”
“Leaders must be role models first,” he said. “We have to lead by example. We can’t say, ‘Take a lap,’ and stand there and watch. A leader says, ‘Follow me,’ and he trains out in front of his Soldiers. He shows the younger Soldiers that fitness isn’t a basic training value – it’s an Army value, something we value for life.”
Power believes the increase in the number of Soldiers graduating basic training is a testimony to the success of his drill sergeants and the Army’s “new” way of doing business. It’s not, as some would say, the result of softer training.
Sgt. 1st Class Frank Meals believes it also. The 33-year-old combat veteran, a drill sergeant of nine months, said today’s Soldiers leave basic training better equipped to fight than he did in 1992.
“I left basic training prepared to run. I could do push-ups and sit-ups and run,” he said. “Today’s graduates can run, but they’re prepared to stand and fight.
“They know how to defend this country, how to fight and survive and make it back to fight again,” he said. “That’s the difference between then and now.”
