Yeah I was at Knox the next summer, and one day in like week 8 we got our DS to relax a minute and we asked him what basic was like during 9/11. He had some wild stories about how the privates reacted. Some went into full meltdown that they'd be going to war and shit. Crazy stories.
I think the Brass didn't know how to handle it, no one was sure what exactly was happening so they just "turned off the lights" and put all the recruits in the dark, everywhere.
Some of those guys in my platoon were just kids on the delayed entry program -- 17 year olds between their Junior and Senior years of high school. They go through basic early, then as soon as they graduate they go directly into active service. Some of these kids were freaking out, they couldn't even talk to their parents. No phone calls whatsoever.
Keeping everyone in the dark when something is obviously, terribly wrong, was not the way to instill trust in your fresh guys. It really opened up the cynicism for all of us when they finally did tell us, and we were like "why the fuck were you insidiously hiding this?"
Morale went through the floor because we already learned, just 4 weeks in, that we couldn't trust them anymore.
Yeah I was at Knox the next summer, and one day in like week 8 we got our DS to relax a minute and we asked him what basic was like during 9/11. He had some wild stories about how the privates reacted. Some went into full meltdown that they'd be going to war and shit. Crazy stories.
I think the Brass didn't know how to handle it, no one was sure what exactly was happening so they just "turned off the lights" and put all the recruits in the dark, everywhere.
Some of those guys in my platoon were just kids on the delayed entry program -- 17 year olds between their Junior and Senior years of high school. They go through basic early, then as soon as they graduate they go directly into active service. Some of these kids were freaking out, they couldn't even talk to their parents. No phone calls whatsoever.
Keeping everyone in the dark when something is obviously, terribly wrong, was not the way to instill trust in your fresh guys. It really opened up the cynicism for all of us when they finally did tell us, and we were like "why the fuck were you insidiously hiding this?"
Morale went through the floor because we already learned, just 4 weeks in, that we couldn't trust them anymore.