2,109 words
Tim Bakken
The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military
New York: Bloomsbury, 2020
I am now going to my grave with that lapse in moral courage on my back.
— General Harold K. Johnson (1912 – 1983); referring to Vietnam.
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I attended a briefing at my post’s officer’s club by a brigadier general who was assigned to the Pentagon. Many people on the general’s staff had been killed when Flight 77 was flown into the building. The general recounted the story of a major who’d been killed in the attack. That major had been a Ranger during the invasion of Grenada. The audience listened attentively. We all knew that we’d shortly be sent to avenge that major’s death along with the deaths of the others.
Then the general went into the rest of his briefing. Incredibly, it boiled down to suppressing naughty “Jody calls.” A Jody call is a song sung by a formation of running or marching soldiers in a call-and-response format. [1] The audience continued to nod attentively. I nodded along too.
Later, I came to believe this general had done everyone a disservice. He had just survived the most unique terrorist attack in the history of the United States. His army was going to deploy to one of the most difficult trouble spots in the world. Meanwhile, President Bush and his Jewish neoconservative advisors were planning an invasion of Iraq, and all this guy could talk about was the threat of naughty Jody calls.
Needless to say, this officer was part of a trend. He and others like “Mad Dog” Mattis or Stanley McChrystal just don’t measure up to the Sherman, Sheridan, Patton, or Bradley. The military hasn’t really won a decisive victory in a complex, long-running war in 75 years. The last general to truly win a war graduated from West Point in 1915. What is going on?
Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the Class of 1915.
Tim Bakken, an instructor of law at West Point, believes he has the answer. He argues that there are three big problems, beginning with Parker v. Levy (1974). In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that military members didn’t have free speech in the way that other citizens have. Second, the military inculcates a culture of loyalty to one’s superiors that allows the growth of dishonesty, groupthink, and suppression of reasonable doubts. Finally, the central intellectual pillar of the US Army — West Point — is rotten to the core.
Bakken quotes Thomas Ricks and Andrew Bacevich a great deal. Both authors are critics of US military policy. Ricks is a journalist that covered the Iraq War and Bacevich was the commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment during the Gulf War. Bacevich got the blame for an accidental ammunition fire that torched a great many vehicles at the end of the conflict, and so he retired as a colonel.
Weaknesses
Before getting too deep into Bakken’s critique, the book has some weaknesses that need to be pointed out. To start, there is a sense that Bakken is “getting back” at people at West Point with whom he had disagreements in the past. Military culture is filled with pettiness. Bakken also seems to think that wars can be waged without killing and cruelty. In fact, there is no such thing as a “good war” — killing and cruelty are the warp and weft of armed conflict. Bakken has also imbibed the anti-white narrative that has crept into the center-Left. He is even hostile to the monuments to Civil War reconciliation at West Point which doesn’t say much about his tolerance of other viewpoints. Finally, he has the standard center-Left hostility to President Trump. He believes the mainstream media’s narrative on Trump when it is obvious and well-known that the media does a great deal of lying and dishonesty in its own right and they were hostile to Trump from the get-go.
I’ll also add that Bakken believes too much in the military-industrial complex idea — the conspiracy theory that holds defense contractors push for war to fatten their profits. He doesn’t say anything about the lobbying groups from foreign countries that agitate for American support for their causes. The latter situation is far more problematic than the former.
The Rotten Institution on the Hudson
Bakken argues that the United States military at West Point is rotten. He makes a very good case. In my own experience in the service, I found that West Point produces officers that are really solid around 40% of the time. The remaining 60% are unreliable mush.
The problem starts with the quality of applicants. West Point’s reputation for selectiveness is due to dishonest statistics. In truth, approximately half the people who genuinely apply are accepted. Of those that are accepted, many got there because their parents gave campaign contributions to their Congressman. (Bakken doesn’t say it, but this legal form of bribery is why there are too many Orientals as commissioned officers.)
Many of the Cadets are not that bright. They’re mostly C+ students at best. West Point even honors “the Goat” — the worst student in the class, a strange thing to do for an institution that is supposedly committed to excellence. There are also the prep schools, where “at-risk” students are spoon-fed teaching for a year before official omission. Many prep students are athletes.
All of these Cadets are continuously flattered by high-ranking officers and politicians even before they’ve ever had a professional accomplishment. Many of the Cadets have never even had a job before shipping off to the academy. They get a sense of entitlement and arrogance that never leaves them and makes them hard for others to deal with.
According to Bakken, West Point has less-than-stellar professors. Instead of qualified teachers with tenure, a series of active-duty officers rotate through the teaching staff. The turnover is around 60%. Because of the turnover, Cadets do lessons on a blackboard and the new instructor cannot even change the color of the chalk to “keep continuity.” Walk the halls at West Point and one will see the same PowerPoint slide in every classroom.
All Cadets are subjected to pointless and endless discipline. While this discipline is ongoing, there are serious crimes occurring. Women at the service academies are far more likely to be raped than in a normal university. All of this is covered up, which is part of a trend; Cadets at West Point officially cannot lie, but they do learn how to operate in the shadows between truth and lies. It’s the little things; like buglers who cannot play but hold a trumpet with a speaker inserted that plays a digital recording of “Taps” during funerals.
Once sent to the line units, a typical West Point graduate has never had a real job, is likely less intelligent than his peers who were in ROTC or OCS, and is incredibly immature. It is even possible his major was selected for him. These guys go on to displace the ROTC and OCS officers as everyone climbs the ranks. America’s general officers end up out of touch, arrogant, and privileged, and have been so since they were teenagers. They are in over their heads and they don’t even know it.
West Point’s problems in a single image. Here General David Petraeus (’74) spins the truth about the Global War on Terror to Congress. In the background is his lover Paula Broadwell (’95). The Petraeus/Broadwell affair is West Point at its worst. Broadwell wrote an autobiography on Petraeus ironically titled All In. She probably didn’t even write the book; it was “co-authored” with Vernon Loeb.
Some Suggestions for Reform
Bakken has vague suggestions as to what to do. These suggestions are pretty politically correct; “too many white men,” et cetera. But I’ll agree with much of what Bakken says. West Point graduates are an entitled lot that need some exposure to the real world, but all young people are like that to a degree. West Point, like any institution, is what the student makes of it.
The problem actually starts at the connection between civilian political leadership and the top levels of the military. American whites, whom Wilmot Robertson called the Majority, got displaced between the World Wars. As a result, there are all sorts of misunderstandings and disconnects at the top levels of American government.
This problem manifested itself during the Korean War. West Point graduate General Douglas MacArthur’s failure to anticipate the Chinese intervention led to the hostile nation with nukes that is North Korea today. Bakken makes much of the fact that by 1950, MacArthur was an entitled megalomaniac surrounded by flatterers and toadies, disconnected from facts on the ground in Korea. This is true, but only part of the problem. The Truman administration was filled with secret Communists, pro-Communists, Jewish radicals, and anti-Anti-Communists, none of whom helped matters.
During World War I, MacArthur was a dashing commander of the 42nd Infantry Division. By 1950, he was out of touch and unable to cooperate with the Truman administration. His greatest feat, the destruction of the North Korean Army via the Inchon Landings, was followed up with the disastrous Chinese intervention.
I’ll argue here that the turning point for American military operations has more to do with the displacement of the Majority than any unearned entitlement West Point graduates might have. (And many West Point graduates don’t have this — 40% of those fellows are really, really swell.) The critical problem is also not Civil War monuments at West Point, it’s the fact that there are too few white men. Wilmot Robertson writes:
The armed forces, moreover, are not as Majority-ridden as they appear. The Carter administration had a Jewish secretary of defense, Harold Brown, and a Negro secretary of the army, Clifford Alexander. President Reagan’s secretary of defense [was] Caspar Weinberger. There are Jewish admirals in the navy, Negro generals in the air force, and Negro revolutionary cadres in the army, in whose ranks blacks and Hispanics may soon outnumber Majority members. The liberal-minority coalition, not the Pentagon, presided over the Korean stalemate. Majority, not minority, soldiers did most of the dying in Vietnam. . .” [2]
The US military is saddled with problems from Sub-Saharans, but it is officially on the lookout for “white supremacists.” This is the Big Lie at the center of the Pentagon. Due to the lack of frankness and lack of free speech, the problem cannot be addressed. Meanwhile, those that make high office are those that can cover up the truth of these problems. The same people lying about African pathology are the people lying about progress in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Those that believe in “civil rights” always misread data. That is why the military can’t come up with a viable strategy.
The top two military reforms I’d propose are the following:
- A whites-only military. (Hispanics that are white or mostly white should be counted as white, like in the past). If that is impossible, resegregate the military. Eisenhower led a segregated Army, many of whose members backed segregation.
- Get women out of the military. All of them. Even medical personnel. The problem boils down to sex. Due to porn, we know more today about sexual positions but less about the very real consequences of the act. Any woman that becomes a floozy, like Paula Broadwell, doesn’t just disgrace themselves; they disgrace their family and institution. Men that pick up a hooker don’t suffer this opprobrium. One should also consider: If women can’t keep from being raped in their own barracks room, how can they defend America? Women in the service also must delay childbearing. This isn’t to say many military women aren’t honorable, but their problems outweigh their benefits.
As long as the cult of diversity and white dispossession exists in America, the military will continue to fail. Strategy will always be half-baked, wars will go un-won, and terrorists and rogues will continue to be a danger.
The marker for successful reform should be thus: At the start of the next war, no general officer should ever center a briefing on the “threat” of naughty Jody calls.
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Notes
[1] An example of a famous naughty Jody call one might know involves speculation of the temperature of parts of a female Eskimo’s anatomy.
[2] Wilmot Robertson, The Dispossessed Majority (Cape Canaveral, Florida: Howard Allen, 1981), pp. 94-95.
22 Comments
Looking at the American military and its problems and thinking the solution is less white men is like looking at a raging house fire and thinking the solution is more gasoline.
I know someone who got in hot water over one of those “Jody calls”, which wasn’t really all that salty, after one of the babes in uniform complained about it. IIRC the penalty was 100 extra pushups. This was back in 1988! One of his drill instructions actually was named Jody.
“ Those that believe in “civil rights” always misread data. That is why the military can’t come up with a viable strategy.”
They are the sort of person who is intellectually flexible enough to lie for short term advancement, and this quality will manifest itself in multiple different contexts.
Yeah, I agree with the idea of the “military industrial complex” being a sort of red herring, probably akin to the “no war for oil meme,” and likely too the notion that the agribusiness is behind our open borders policy. The people who run out corporations are like you and me; they’re not THAT insanely greedy.
Oh, I disagree! There are many forces pushing for open borders – and hardly any pushing the other way. That said, business in general, and Big Ag in particular, are hugely responsible for this invasion. They didn’t start it, but by the 1970s they realized the advantages – for their interests, not America’s (esp not Future America’s). Count on any immigration bill featuring some farmer-jackass – a real White Middle Amurcan salt-o’-the-earth “tiller of the soil” – mouthing off about how he just “needs” (trans: “wants, at a very cheap price”) more transient (ie, immigrant, ie, Mexican, preferably illegal Mexican) labor or “crops will go rotting in the fields”.
Of course, business WANTS more workers, which means cheaper wages, which means more profits. I am all for business profits, but not at the expense of the Folk and future generations of such. Pro-immigration businessmen are parasites, destroying their nation’s/people’s future for their personal enrichment today.
My late father-in-law was a career army officer (not via West Point), and today my husband says his father’s entire life and career was in service to a lie. A waste to prop up an anti-White empire. I quit the local USO I joined to support my then-enlisted son because so many of the volunteers had daughters and granddaughters in the service and lionized the one Gold-Star mother who was black.
I hope the new model multikult army gets its ass kicked by whomever it targets.
The US military is mostly air-power. Take away the air-power and the infantry (as you indicate) ain’t much to work with. Yes, there are mostly-White ‘special’ groups that are highly effective at small operations, but, overall their track record of ‘boots on the ground’ without air support is dismal.
What do you make of John T Reed’s (well rounded baby boomer writer and former football coach) writings on West point and his combat experience in Vietnam?
If you have not read them they are well worth reading although sometimes he is contrary for the sake of being contrary.
Speaking as a U.S. army vet and National Guard/Reservist for twelve years, I liked this article. It reminds me of West Point, an essay written in the 1970’s by Gore Vidal, stating much of the above. And his father was a West Point graduate, and Gore was born at West Point. I also think of Soldier, a book by Anthony Herbert, ex- colonel and the most decorated soldier in the 1950’s army. Herbert, who rose from the ranks, argued West Pointers were taught to be ‘quibblers.’ They would argue minor points to get their way. he always found, on maneuvers, they demanded more concessions than the OCS and ROTC cadets, and if caught, say smuggling food in the field, would insist on an obscure regulation that backed them up. He and other troops found them annoying.
Herbert argued the problem with the army began in the 1950’s, when business school policies took over, and officers had to get promoted or they were kicked out. Ticket punching began. In Vietnam, he found a lot of cover-ups like atrocities, racial incidents (in his book, although euphemized, it is apparent blacks were a major discipline problem), etc., were swept under the carpet so the division C.O. wouldn’t have a bad report on his record. When Herbert reported these incidents and tried to do something, he was in the dog house.
I know in the 1970’s when I was stationed in Germany, a lieutenant in my company, a West Pointer (a 40 percenter), argued women being admitted would wreck the academy because they would be held to a different standard than male cadets in regards to physical strength, endurance, etc. it would lead to the end of a general, admitted standard for everyone.
As Gore said, cadets take an oath to duty, honor, and country. He said the priorities should be reversed.
I cannot follow this argument:
[Then the general went into the rest of his briefing. Incredibly, it boiled down to suppressing naughty “Jody calls.” A Jody call is a song sung by a formation of running or marching soldiers in a call-and-response format. [1] The audience continued to nod attentively. I nodded along too.
Later, I came to believe this general had done everyone a disservice. He had just survived the most unique terrorist attack in the history of the United States. His army was going to deploy to one of the most difficult trouble spots in the world. Meanwhile, President Bush and his Jewish neoconservative advisors were planning an invasion of Iraq, and all this guy could talk about was the threat of naughty Jody calls.]
Note what the author does not provide – context or examples. What exactly were these “Jody calls”, and why was the general concerned with suppressing them? I’m sure the general was a PC mediocrity, but that doesn’t mean the reader shouldn’t receive his POV. Reading these two paragraphs, I actually have no idea what the reviewer is referring to. They don’t really advance his larger theme about military decline, either.
Also, his two recs at the end are worthy but ludicrous. Of course we should have a whites-only military – in a whites-only nation! WTF are we discussing around here!? The point is that we DO NOT HAVE THIS; the further point, the relevant one, is, HOW DO WE GET TO THERE? Ditto removal of females.
Given that these reforms have precisely zero chance of passing either Congress or SCOTUS, perhaps the reviewer could have suggested some real reforms; ie, ones that have perhaps some chance of realization. Here are a few:
1. Shrink the regular Army and Marines, but then either increase required IQ scores (is it AFQT scores?) for eligibility, or at least expand the Special Forces (who I’ve, been told, are the only real soldiers anyway, and do the real work; plus, are still mostly white – this latter point is very important: our goal is not to have the most effective military for waging stupid wars overseas, but rather to have one that is as close to prowhite in outlook as possible, for when the SFinallyHTF).
2. Can we demand higher quality in the Navy and especially Air Force, too, say, by requiring much better entrance qualifications in exchange for greater pay and benefits? The AF in particular should be considered a very prestigious career, not just a stepping stone to becoming a commercial pilot. We must have much higher quality whites in continuous charge of the nuclear facilities. But Navy, too, should be so viewed. Note also that, while Navy and AF are more important to America’s genuine defense needs than Army/Marines, they are also less likely to be utilized against patriot forces in any coming civil war. White nationalists need to consider Army/Marines as potential future enemies – not just the nonwhites in them, but indoctrinated or mercenary whites, too.
3. This is more foreign/defense than military reform policy, but we must work to bring home as many overseas stationed troops as possible – esp getting them out of Europe (which should be easy to do, 3/4 of a century after WW2) – and then simply decommissioning them, rather than keeping them on internally (at the least, shift them to East Asia, where they might be useful – and NOT used to suppress indigenous Eurofolkish revolts against the Great Replacement).
4. Toughen up physical standards, and then make a lot of noise about “not lowering them”, which should serve to keep most women out of combat, where they are in the way.
5. Absolutely do not allow (as has been done, I was incredulous to learn about the Iraq War) illegal aliens to serve in any capacity (trans: make US citizenship a mandatory requirement for service).
6. I’m no expert on West Point (I did consider applying there in the late 70s; very glad I did not). I thought there was some political appointment aspect to it. That should be removed. Just open admissions, for all the service academies, to Born Americans only strictly based on merit – and then design that merit in a way which favors white men (as, to be fair, I think any meritocratic approach would).
I’m sure this list is a mere start. But we must start slowly taking back some of our institutions, and the military is #1 ( then DA offices, police – anything law enforcement; then we must deal with the corruption of all aspects of Education). I say this even as a white ethnostatist. Yes, the ultimate goal is separation, but while this could theoretically happen peacefully, I don’t think it will. The ‘ring’ is constantly closing around us, our peoplehood, our race, and our future. Whites are being progressively, internally conquered, no doubt about it. Recognizing that fact, along with biological realism, is the essence of modern American white nationalism
“Jody calls” are chants used on the march or on a jog, some having (gasp) bad language. If you’ve seen “Full Metal Jacket” there’s one that includes “I don’t know but I’ve been told … Eskimo pussy is mighty cold …”
So the irony here is that on 9/11, this officer is pushing some PC initiative to clean up bad language.
Women have served with distinction as nurses in every war the US military has fought. Get rid of the “Chelsea” Mannings and “Jennifer” Hills. But keep the Dorothea Dixes and Tulsi Gabbards.
Likewise, men who go with male or Philippina hookers should experience opprobrium– because we know “of the very real consequences” of half-Phillipino offspring who later want to join dad in the US.
Why would we want an all white army? That’s nuts! As you mentioned, all our skirmishes are in service of ZOG so why should we sacrifice our young whites for that garbage?
Also, I think the army will eventually be utilized against our own. It’ll put down any “insurrection” any uppity whites get about their displacement. And all the Mexicans and blacks, armed to the teeth, will gladly use their premier weaponry against us. It’s coming.
I think you just answered your own question. We want an all white military because eventually the military will be called against us. I’d bet quite a few more white soldiers would refuse to follow that order compared to their diverse counterparts.
If White LEO behavior is anything to go by that’s unlikely and that’s low stakes compared to disobeying orders in the military.
Absolutely. I’m just saying the chance is better. Otherwise they wouldn’t be pushing diversity so hard.
I’m no expert on the subject but it seems like the US military goes through degenerate periods after every long, pointless war with no victory. The same thing happened in the post Vietnam era.
As for the military being a last bastion of Whiteness — maybe, but Whites overestimate their military prowess. A large volunteer military like ours will need to accept diversity just to fill the ranks. As American imperialism declines we’ll see the end of that, hopefully.
“No department of defense ever won a war” (or words to that effect) – Robert Heinlein somewhere in Starship Troopers
Consider the narratives which have been pushed about the insurrection that ravaged many American cities over the year 2020:
* black males are the innocent victims of a wave of police violence
* there was no rioting, it was mostly peaceful protest
* OK, there was rioting but it was committed by mostly violent White Supremacists
* …and those same White Supremacists are also responsible for most of the terrorism in the USA, not to mention the world
All these narratives are false, for reasons which need not be explained to readers here. The entire Regime, the mainstream media, academia, IT monopolies, Wall Street, all promote these false narratives. Apparently, there are members of the national security establishment who buy into the false narratives.
Now, you can not have an effective military strategy based on false information.
False information means you end up attacking the wrong foes while ignoring the real threats. False information means you never can not develop war winning tactics. False information means you will be crashing around in the fog of war while enemies who operate with realistic information gain the ascendancy.
Multiply all this by the ideological diktats which dominate in the Regime like the emerging political commissar system in the form of “diversity” officers and indoctrination, with “equity” policies that mandate equal outcomes regardless of actual performance. Politicized militaries end up marching into disaster. As the article notes, look at the fiascos this led to “in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.” Then consider how much further the foundations of American civilization have disintegrated since 9/11.
During the 2020 insurrectionary clambake many “woke” city regimes gave the police orders to stand down in the face of those mostly peaceful but really White Supremacist violent rioters, as well as actively opposing President Trump’s efforts to enforce the law. If the home front capitulates in the face of an insurrection, there is no basis for an overall national defense strategy.
Do the United States and its Atlantic allies have what it takes to fight and win even a moderate sized war, let alone take on major powers like Russia or China? Well, whatever tactical victories have been gained in the Persian Gulf Wars of the last three decades have not made up for the overall strategic indecision. The long term goal of bringing democracy to the world has been a failure. Heck, half of American voters are coming to the realization that there is no democracy at home due to the fraud involved in the 2020 presidential election.
Given all this, how does the defense establishment plan to fight and win a real war?
A lost war generally leads to a crisis within a regime. There may be opportunities opening up for a national-populist movement to exploit such a crisis.
Stay tuned…
I served 11 years on active duty in the regular Army as a field artillery officer, and agree with some, but not all, of this article:
1. West Point. I had extensive experience with around 200 officers during my service, and came to know fairly well several score. I found USMA grads to be – on average – superior to ROTC grads, although there were many, many exceptions. (I’m not a West Pointer, myself.) One of my two best commanding officers (battalion commanders) was West Point; the other was from New Mexico Military Institute (NMMI). My worst battalion commander was also West Point, a “ticket-punching” careerist who acknowledged he knew little about gunnery (the core of any competent artillery officer’s skill set), but claimed (falsely) he was a good manager. My best battery commander was OCS, who had first served as a helicopter pilot. Of the three finest company grade (lieutenants & captains) officers among my contemporaries, one was West Point; the others were ROTC, from non-elite schools.
So – at least in my experience – USMA produced a pretty good 2nd lieutenant around 60 to 70% of the time, not 40%. ROTC products were more uneven, running the gamut from terrible to excellent. One time I asked some enlisted men (privates, Spec 4s, & sergeants) what they thought of the officers (i.e., the lieutenants and captains they worked with daily). Uniformly, they had respect for West Pointers, who had gone through long & rigorous training before receiving their commissions. For ROTC officers, they had little respect, unless it was earned on the job. In their minds, at least, West Pointers had earned their “entitlement.”
But that was then: 1975 – 86. West Point was still a STEM oriented institution with no majors other than a very general B.S. in engineering. This all changed with the admittance of women in the late 70s, the gradual increase in their numbers (over 20% & soon to skyrocket under Biden, I predict), the creation of many majors, including liberal arts (though no gender-studies or black-studies, so far), and finally, the infusion of what can only be described as insanely radical feminism and other doctrines of late-stage liberalism into the curriculum, and culture, of West Point.
In other words, West Point has been transformed into what Arnold Toynbee defined as an “enormity,” a central institution and pillar of a civilization, which has slowly transmogrified into something which is now helping to destroy that civilization.
Of course, this is also true of ROTC programs, and their universities.
2. Reforms. Women don’t belong in combat arms, or at West Point, or in many ROTC programs, but as a previous commenter pointed out, they have proved their worth in many non-combat related fields, especially nursing, and even a few “non-traditional” roles, like intelligence interrogators and analysts. (E.g., the CIA officer perhaps most instrumental in locating Osama bin Laden was female.)
But really, at this point, talking about reforms in the military is almost like talking about patching up the Titanic. West Point, the Army, and the rest of the military, have become toxic enemies of white people and western civilization. And unfortunately, the military remains by far the most powerful instrument of violence and coercion available to our enemies. Given present conditions, we can’t “reform” it.
We can infiltrate it, however. Slowly, stealthily, both to weaken it as it currently exists, and to learn the skill sets a white militia will need to carve out a space for an ethno-state at some point in the future.
When reading this series I keep thinking back to men like Caesar and Napoleon, who were known as great military leaders but undeniably ranked among the greatest statesmen of their time as well. Surely the problems outlined are caused more by the current political condition in the west, as opposed to the military mindset itself.
The Jody calls.
Here is a classic I remember from the army of 1973:
‘The prettiest girl/I ever saw/was sipping bourbon/through a straw
I picked her up/I put it in/I pulled it out/I set her down
And now I have/a father-in-law/and sixteen kids/who call me pa
The moral of/this story’s clear:/Instead of whiskey/ drink a beer’
And later, when Vietnam was over and we needed new enemies:
If I die on the Arab shore/ bury me in an Arab W*****
If I die on the Russian front/ bury me in a Russian C***
In the late 1970’s, the army had its infusion of women. What did they chant while marching?
‘Trainee, trainee don’t be blue/your sergeant once was a trainee too’
I’ll stick to Jody
Remember the one (made up? I have no idea) from FULL METAL JACKET?
This is my rifle / this is my gun (grabbing crotch)
This is for fightin’ / this is for fun
That scene was so well done. I still recall laughing more than 30 years later.
A memorable one from Army basic training in 2008:
“I wish all the ladies/ were pies on a shelf/ and if I was a baker/ I’d eat them all myself.”
I was lucky to have been sent to an all male Basic Training post at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. A chant like that or a popular Drill Sergeant phrase such as “Soldier, stop smiling at me like a f****t at a weenie roast!” would have been unthinkable at a mixed male/female installation. By the time I left in 2013, we spent more time engaged in suicide awareness and sexual harassment/equal opportunity training than we did in job specifics or weapons training. To me, that kind of emphasis on concerns originating from the greater civilian/academic sphere didn’t translate to a healthy military mindset. I know that it would be naive to expect otherwise seeing as how the progressive brand of insanity has blanketed all mainstream institutions. I truly hope for healthier times, but suspect that the host organism (said institutions) will need to perish first.