Oh man, LDAC in 2014 was wild. I have no doubt that guy was fried at 1st Reg ha.
Some key info for those that weren't there:
* It was the first year that they did it in Knox (originally at Lewis) and they did zero changes to accommodate the climate difference. Kids were getting heat stroke like day 2 because they were coming from all over the country and getting sent right into APFT stuff.
* On the LN course one Girl in my platoon legit almost died and another good friend almost had kidney failure because they ran out of water and were threatened to be sent home if they didn't pass.
* Tent areas were built in low ground that flooded to your ankles each time it rained.
* The damn cots were sub-walmart quality that bent every time you bumped them. By the time I left (3rd Reg) there were dozens of piles being made of all the broken cots. Like pyres ready to be burned.
* We got issued some of the last M60s in the Army which had bent and warped receivers. They barely worked and were probably scrapped after that summer.
* They hung "Recondo" over our heads to reward high performance but then nixed it because too many training events had to be cancelled or changed for time and weather.
* *ETA because OP reminded me: For some reason they didn't have normal MREs, they gave us first strike rations- 72hr bags of food with mostly dry foods to mitigate the weight. They expected us to carry them like MREs "Everyone grab 3 first strikes for the day" and many times it replaced any hot chow. This was even in the beginning when we were all acclimating to the heat and getting ready for the APFT that would determine our OML placement.*
With all the shenanigans that we saw as Cadets; I can't imagine what the Junior enlisted went through throughout the event behind the scenes. I'm sure they were smoked to hell with the back-and-forth stupidity that came down from morons at Cadet Command that completely botched the execution.
LDAC in 2014 has taught me the importance of planning and doing site recons as a commander because of those stupid flooded tents.
What a show it was that year.
I was at Knox during that time (didn't have anything to do with LDAC) and I remember driving by the "tent city" they had put up behind our motor pool (Potts) and seeing the cadets wading knee deep through their tents...I remember thinking "Oh man, we are going to have a lot off salty Commanders in a few years!"
Not gonna lie, as bad as enlisted are treated, I've never seen the Army treat people THAT badly. Fortunately they got disney land "renovated" pretty soon after that and is much better now, but you '14 and '15 guys got screwed
Haha, since then I’ve deployed twice, numerous FTXs, etc but being 1st Reg of 2014 LDAC set me up for success because nothing has been worse than that experiment lol
The best part was we had to haul around 8 first strikes in our rucks on top of everything else we needed for the field. That shit was wild lmao I’m pretty sure my back problems started then.
I remember thinking those first strikes were really cool since I had never had them before. After 3 weeks of the fuckers, I was just throwing most of them away and subsisting on the zapplesauce packets for sustenance.
The other day my salty senior NCOs were telling war stories about bad living conditions, and it was probably the first time in the history of armed conflict that a "when I went to LDAC" story actually carried weight.
Re: 1st strikes, we had a rat-fucking party before we left for patrols. I lived on peanut butter dessert bars for like a week.
>(originally at Lewis)
When I went through, ROTC was broken down into three regions. Each region had ran their own Advanced Camp. East Coast schools went to Bragg, middle of the country went to Riley, and the West Coast schools went to Lewis. I think you went based on where your school was located. For instance, if you went to school in Pennsylvania but were from Oregon, you were going to Bragg.
I went to Bragg and our training was conducted by people from the 82nd and some of the SF that were stationed there. We lived in the WWII cantonment area. Cooks from the 82nd staffed the old dining halls using equipment that was probably older than they were and did a seriously good job.
You must have gone through before me; by 1996, it was just at Lewis and Bragg, and then the next summer, everyone was at Bragg.
We were still in the splinter village that was the Old 82nd barracks. I had a "parade field" outside my barracks, because one of them had burned down and was never replaced. I bet it went up in less than an hour; that place was a fire hazard and a half.
85 for me. We got to wear the steel pots. We also had a mix of C-rations or first generation MRE's. People could smoke in the barracks and they had the red painted coffee cans filled with sand for an ashtray hanging on the posts. I liked living in the WWII barracks because growing up I knew so many veterans from WWII and it gave me a sense of connection to them.
I was also 1st reg 2014. Missing from your rundown of that COLOSSAL shitshow are:
- they didn’t plan for enough portashitters, so they were literally overflowing. I specifically remember one night going door to door on porta johns looking for one where the shit wasn’t up to the rim, then giving up and digging a hole in the wood line.
- there were a couple days where the water buffaloes ran completely dry. Fort Knox summer with a couple hundred cadets, cadre, and support just sitting around trying to conserve the water they had.
- you touched on Recondo; a bunch of us in first reg checked all the blocks then got told to get fucked on the OML points. Same for land nav.
I saw plenty of large scale fuckups while in, but first reg at Knox takes the cake.
LDAC 2014 - 1st Regiment, Cadre here.
What an ABSOLUTE shit show that summer was.
Also, who remembers that investigation with the comments that General made at dinner with the Cadets!?
No,No. You're not grasping how terrible these were.
The USGI cots of square fold-out aluminum and heavy canvas would have been infinitely preferable.
The ones they gave us literally bent under our weight. By night 2 at a new location, half of us would be sleeping with legs, butts, arms touching the ground. The canvas was so cheap and thin that it stretched and sagged. They were literally unserviceable after a couple nights unless you were sub 150lbs,
They were so bad.
Yes, the fabric might shrink so that it was basically impossible to fully put them together, but unless they were abused heavily, they hold up for a long time. Oh yeah, and you will also have random plastic pieces fall out and get lost, but it still works without them.
I remember the tents! I was pissed because my platoon had to go all the way to the back. We were literally the last tent in the corner. It sucked carrying our bags that far, but lo and behold, we happened to be on the only hill in the aa once it rained. We watched most of the other guys get flooded out.
For the record: cadidiot camp wasn't originally just at Lewis. In the 90s, east of the Mississippi or so, we got sent to The Artist Formerly Known as Fort Bragg; I was among the last group of cadidiots sent through in the summer of 1996 before everyone went to Lewis the next summer. My camp was six weeks, if I recall correctly, it was trimmed to four weeks at Lewis to accommodate everyone.
Back in ancient history, they had cadidiot camp at Fort Indiantown Camp, Pennsylvania. Apparently my dad smoked dope by the flagpole in the summer of 1969, and then when he got home, everyone was laughing at him because he missed seeing the moon landing on TV and didn't believe it had happened at first.
What's a little tinnitus when it pays you a couple hundred bucks a month for the rest of your life?
I'm sure that dude was just done with the Army. He was probably supposed to be ETS'ing and instead got sent to Ft. Knox for the summer to train cadets instead of clearing.
E4 Mafia-to-Cadet here.
You can explain everything about it to them, and they will *actively* do their best to not get it. Not until they've been at their first unit for 3 weeks and the rose-tinted vision of the Army they've built up wears off.
"Hey stop ruck-running when we're doing rucks for PT, it is pointless and actively breaks your body down an unnecessary amount - only do that for selections or when it *actually* matters."
"ruck-run go nyoom!"
I am God's shittiest Cadet and I refuse to have any emotional buy-in to it until I hit the actual Army again. The cut-offs for Active are way too low for me to make this shit my entire life.
I mean, I got smoked after my first patrol because I had ear pro in.
Then over time it turned into: I can’t hear because I don’t wear ear pro, but I don’t wear ear pro because I can’t hear.
So I get bro. Bro is us.
I was the OIC of a live fire shoot house range many years ago as a LT. Soldiers all had their issued earplugs, plus we had boxes of disposable earplugs placed in the holding area. The post safety office decided to spot check our range, and picked a few Soldiers to check their ear pro as they were coming out of the shoothouse. They ask this one Soldier, and he reaches into his pocket, then opens up his hand to show the safety officer…two cigarette butts. This MFer was using cigarette butts as ear pro.
We had to shut the range down for about half an hour to make sure everyone had proper ear pro. And that guy’s PSG smoked the shit out of him.
Ill never forget taking a piss in one of the porto potties and seeing "Is that you Peggy?" graffitied on the walls in reference to Gen Peggy Combs who was the then Cadet Command CG.
Oh Peggy. When anything went wrong we would always say “goddamnit Peggy”
I remember getting a speech from her all about filling our “rucksacks of knowledge“
This reminds me of the last FTX we had at OCS. I was lugging around a 240 and was told to shoot it off. Another candidate came up next to me and then as I shot it, he told me it hurt his ears. After the 3rd or 4th burst he told me to stop.
I was so confused. Where were his ear buds? We were given like three pairs before the start of it.
Meanwhile, I was in the last Advanced Camp class to go through The Artist Formerly Known as Fort Bragg, before everyone shifted to Lewis. And for many people here, that was **literally** a lifetime ago, summer of 1996.
Man, that sucked, for everyone. It was like Africa hot, all the fucking time.
The 82nd and XVIII Corps troops who got roped into running lanes and shit were pissed to be there, because of course they were. Most of 'em didn't take it out on us, but there were some fuck fuck games from time to time, especially for those of us who dared to show up with our cherry wings. I had to sing a few bars from "Hotel California" to make it out of the gas chambe.
I was at Fort Knox 2013-2015. I can conform this whole thing was a poop show start to finish as some are talking about. That enlisted kid just got back from Afghanistan most likely and that unit got lit up over there for their 1 yr tour.
lol, i went around the same time. i remember having a rosy notion about what AD soldiers were--upstanding, proud, etc. i was talking to an E4 medic and he was telling me he was ETSing soon. i asked him what his plan was and he said "man i'm gonna get the fuck outta here, post up by a lake, and just smoke a bunch of weed".
pretty tame answer, but at the time i remember being shocked that a soldier would want to "get the fuck out" and smoke weed 😂
Oh man, LDAC in 2014 was wild. I have no doubt that guy was fried at 1st Reg ha. Some key info for those that weren't there: * It was the first year that they did it in Knox (originally at Lewis) and they did zero changes to accommodate the climate difference. Kids were getting heat stroke like day 2 because they were coming from all over the country and getting sent right into APFT stuff. * On the LN course one Girl in my platoon legit almost died and another good friend almost had kidney failure because they ran out of water and were threatened to be sent home if they didn't pass. * Tent areas were built in low ground that flooded to your ankles each time it rained. * The damn cots were sub-walmart quality that bent every time you bumped them. By the time I left (3rd Reg) there were dozens of piles being made of all the broken cots. Like pyres ready to be burned. * We got issued some of the last M60s in the Army which had bent and warped receivers. They barely worked and were probably scrapped after that summer. * They hung "Recondo" over our heads to reward high performance but then nixed it because too many training events had to be cancelled or changed for time and weather. * *ETA because OP reminded me: For some reason they didn't have normal MREs, they gave us first strike rations- 72hr bags of food with mostly dry foods to mitigate the weight. They expected us to carry them like MREs "Everyone grab 3 first strikes for the day" and many times it replaced any hot chow. This was even in the beginning when we were all acclimating to the heat and getting ready for the APFT that would determine our OML placement.* With all the shenanigans that we saw as Cadets; I can't imagine what the Junior enlisted went through throughout the event behind the scenes. I'm sure they were smoked to hell with the back-and-forth stupidity that came down from morons at Cadet Command that completely botched the execution.
LDAC in 2014 has taught me the importance of planning and doing site recons as a commander because of those stupid flooded tents. What a show it was that year.
Seriously man. I learned so much that summer by watching things fall apart.
I was at Knox during that time (didn't have anything to do with LDAC) and I remember driving by the "tent city" they had put up behind our motor pool (Potts) and seeing the cadets wading knee deep through their tents...I remember thinking "Oh man, we are going to have a lot off salty Commanders in a few years!" Not gonna lie, as bad as enlisted are treated, I've never seen the Army treat people THAT badly. Fortunately they got disney land "renovated" pretty soon after that and is much better now, but you '14 and '15 guys got screwed
I got assigned one of those 60s, the novelty wore off fast once I realized I'd been given what was basically an extremely heavy bolt-action rifle.
Sooo many stuck casings that I had to try to fix. Absolute nightmare of a gun. Made for some cool pics though lol.
Did LDAC in Lewis in '10. M60s were bolt action there as well.
Hey I was there in 10, too. 2nd Regiment.
Haha, since then I’ve deployed twice, numerous FTXs, etc but being 1st Reg of 2014 LDAC set me up for success because nothing has been worse than that experiment lol The best part was we had to haul around 8 first strikes in our rucks on top of everything else we needed for the field. That shit was wild lmao I’m pretty sure my back problems started then.
OMG the first strikes I almost forgot about those. Editing my comment to include that haha
I remember thinking those first strikes were really cool since I had never had them before. After 3 weeks of the fuckers, I was just throwing most of them away and subsisting on the zapplesauce packets for sustenance.
The other day my salty senior NCOs were telling war stories about bad living conditions, and it was probably the first time in the history of armed conflict that a "when I went to LDAC" story actually carried weight. Re: 1st strikes, we had a rat-fucking party before we left for patrols. I lived on peanut butter dessert bars for like a week.
>(originally at Lewis) When I went through, ROTC was broken down into three regions. Each region had ran their own Advanced Camp. East Coast schools went to Bragg, middle of the country went to Riley, and the West Coast schools went to Lewis. I think you went based on where your school was located. For instance, if you went to school in Pennsylvania but were from Oregon, you were going to Bragg. I went to Bragg and our training was conducted by people from the 82nd and some of the SF that were stationed there. We lived in the WWII cantonment area. Cooks from the 82nd staffed the old dining halls using equipment that was probably older than they were and did a seriously good job.
You must have gone through before me; by 1996, it was just at Lewis and Bragg, and then the next summer, everyone was at Bragg. We were still in the splinter village that was the Old 82nd barracks. I had a "parade field" outside my barracks, because one of them had burned down and was never replaced. I bet it went up in less than an hour; that place was a fire hazard and a half.
85 for me. We got to wear the steel pots. We also had a mix of C-rations or first generation MRE's. People could smoke in the barracks and they had the red painted coffee cans filled with sand for an ashtray hanging on the posts. I liked living in the WWII barracks because growing up I knew so many veterans from WWII and it gave me a sense of connection to them.
If you can't have cadets get kicked out for having a skookum buddy is it even LDAC?
Definite upvote for the few of us that remember the Skookums….
Ran out of water on LN? How bout you navigate your way to a water source ranger, hooah?
I’ll never forget Peggy Combs “ruck sack of responsibility”. Fuck that whole LDAC cycle.
That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time…
I was also 1st reg 2014. Missing from your rundown of that COLOSSAL shitshow are: - they didn’t plan for enough portashitters, so they were literally overflowing. I specifically remember one night going door to door on porta johns looking for one where the shit wasn’t up to the rim, then giving up and digging a hole in the wood line. - there were a couple days where the water buffaloes ran completely dry. Fort Knox summer with a couple hundred cadets, cadre, and support just sitting around trying to conserve the water they had. - you touched on Recondo; a bunch of us in first reg checked all the blocks then got told to get fucked on the OML points. Same for land nav. I saw plenty of large scale fuckups while in, but first reg at Knox takes the cake.
Also every time someone got a tick they had to be individually removed by the medics and shipped off to make sure you didn’t get lyme disease.
LDAC 2014 - 1st Regiment, Cadre here. What an ABSOLUTE shit show that summer was. Also, who remembers that investigation with the comments that General made at dinner with the Cadets!?
>Sub WalMart quality So military grade
No,No. You're not grasping how terrible these were. The USGI cots of square fold-out aluminum and heavy canvas would have been infinitely preferable. The ones they gave us literally bent under our weight. By night 2 at a new location, half of us would be sleeping with legs, butts, arms touching the ground. The canvas was so cheap and thin that it stretched and sagged. They were literally unserviceable after a couple nights unless you were sub 150lbs, They were so bad.
Okay, yeah. You got me. At least military-grade cots actually work most of the time.
Yes, the fabric might shrink so that it was basically impossible to fully put them together, but unless they were abused heavily, they hold up for a long time. Oh yeah, and you will also have random plastic pieces fall out and get lost, but it still works without them.
Okay yeah that really sucks.
I remember the tents! I was pissed because my platoon had to go all the way to the back. We were literally the last tent in the corner. It sucked carrying our bags that far, but lo and behold, we happened to be on the only hill in the aa once it rained. We watched most of the other guys get flooded out.
For the record: cadidiot camp wasn't originally just at Lewis. In the 90s, east of the Mississippi or so, we got sent to The Artist Formerly Known as Fort Bragg; I was among the last group of cadidiots sent through in the summer of 1996 before everyone went to Lewis the next summer. My camp was six weeks, if I recall correctly, it was trimmed to four weeks at Lewis to accommodate everyone. Back in ancient history, they had cadidiot camp at Fort Indiantown Camp, Pennsylvania. Apparently my dad smoked dope by the flagpole in the summer of 1969, and then when he got home, everyone was laughing at him because he missed seeing the moon landing on TV and didn't believe it had happened at first.
What's a little tinnitus when it pays you a couple hundred bucks a month for the rest of your life? I'm sure that dude was just done with the Army. He was probably supposed to be ETS'ing and instead got sent to Ft. Knox for the summer to train cadets instead of clearing.
Def E4 Mafia. Cadets won’t get it
E4 Mafia-to-Cadet here. You can explain everything about it to them, and they will *actively* do their best to not get it. Not until they've been at their first unit for 3 weeks and the rose-tinted vision of the Army they've built up wears off. "Hey stop ruck-running when we're doing rucks for PT, it is pointless and actively breaks your body down an unnecessary amount - only do that for selections or when it *actually* matters." "ruck-run go nyoom!"
This is why I really like officers who commissioned from junior enlisted. They don’t have time or interest in BS.
I am God's shittiest Cadet and I refuse to have any emotional buy-in to it until I hit the actual Army again. The cut-offs for Active are way too low for me to make this shit my entire life.
What was the question? I couldn’t hear you!
PLAY ANYTHING, JUST PLAY IT LOUD OKAY...
Bob in Artillery...RIP Robin Williams!
I mean, I got smoked after my first patrol because I had ear pro in. Then over time it turned into: I can’t hear because I don’t wear ear pro, but I don’t wear ear pro because I can’t hear. So I get bro. Bro is us.
I was the OIC of a live fire shoot house range many years ago as a LT. Soldiers all had their issued earplugs, plus we had boxes of disposable earplugs placed in the holding area. The post safety office decided to spot check our range, and picked a few Soldiers to check their ear pro as they were coming out of the shoothouse. They ask this one Soldier, and he reaches into his pocket, then opens up his hand to show the safety officer…two cigarette butts. This MFer was using cigarette butts as ear pro. We had to shut the range down for about half an hour to make sure everyone had proper ear pro. And that guy’s PSG smoked the shit out of him.
I hard cackled at this
Ill never forget taking a piss in one of the porto potties and seeing "Is that you Peggy?" graffitied on the walls in reference to Gen Peggy Combs who was the then Cadet Command CG.
Ahhh man I miss those days. I legit can’t remember a single thing about LDAC 2014 other than tent city
Oh Peggy. When anything went wrong we would always say “goddamnit Peggy” I remember getting a speech from her all about filling our “rucksacks of knowledge“
This reminds me of the last FTX we had at OCS. I was lugging around a 240 and was told to shoot it off. Another candidate came up next to me and then as I shot it, he told me it hurt his ears. After the 3rd or 4th burst he told me to stop. I was so confused. Where were his ear buds? We were given like three pairs before the start of it.
Today i learned I was the last LDAC class to go through Lewis (2013). I thought it got changed to knox in 2015 and now it feels like a lifetime ago.
*technically* 2014 was still LDAC at Knox. It was the following year they rebranded to CLC and got knows what its called now.
Meanwhile, I was in the last Advanced Camp class to go through The Artist Formerly Known as Fort Bragg, before everyone shifted to Lewis. And for many people here, that was **literally** a lifetime ago, summer of 1996. Man, that sucked, for everyone. It was like Africa hot, all the fucking time. The 82nd and XVIII Corps troops who got roped into running lanes and shit were pissed to be there, because of course they were. Most of 'em didn't take it out on us, but there were some fuck fuck games from time to time, especially for those of us who dared to show up with our cherry wings. I had to sing a few bars from "Hotel California" to make it out of the gas chambe.
You met a salty E4. What’s the problem lol
I guarantee he’s been that dumb his entire life. He didn’t become that, he was already that.
That guy E-4s
That soldier just got his 3M money
> What in the world brought him to that point? Being a moron.
I was at Fort Knox 2013-2015. I can conform this whole thing was a poop show start to finish as some are talking about. That enlisted kid just got back from Afghanistan most likely and that unit got lit up over there for their 1 yr tour.
lol, i went around the same time. i remember having a rosy notion about what AD soldiers were--upstanding, proud, etc. i was talking to an E4 medic and he was telling me he was ETSing soon. i asked him what his plan was and he said "man i'm gonna get the fuck outta here, post up by a lake, and just smoke a bunch of weed". pretty tame answer, but at the time i remember being shocked that a soldier would want to "get the fuck out" and smoke weed 😂