My First Military Experience The date was September 23rd 2003. I was leaving my home for the first time; I had been dreading the unknown of entering basic military training for months. I knew difficult challenges would lie ahead, but little did I know what changes were about to become of me in my first military experience. The trainees were stuffed into the bus like sardines; I was shoved to the very back on the floor by exit sign. The smell of fear and the odor of a gym locker room filled the air.
Night had already fallen by the time our bus arrived at Lackland Air Force Base. My heart was beating out my chest and the feeling of butterflies in my stomach made me feel like I was going to vomit. The bus stopped and a training instructor ran onto the bus and quickly started yelling and shouting. Looking back after eight years of service to my country, several key concepts in my first military experience taught me followership, responsibility, and teamwork. In the first week of basic training, we quickly learned the importance of followership.
One day while in the a briefing room where we were packed in like cattle at a cattle auction, we were instructed to quietly sit for the weekly instructional briefing by our training instructor, Staff Sergeant Smith. Staff Sergeant Smith was our primary training instructor, he was obligated to instruct and mold us into Airmen during our stay here at basic training, and he excelled at instructing and correcting us at every minor infraction. He always presented himself with a freshly press and starched uniform with a black Smokey the Bear hat cocked forward on his head.
While he was briefing us on the week’s future events, one of the trainees interrupted him with a smart alec remark and without hesitation the training instructor, Staff Sergeant Smith, got so close to him that he was spitting in the trainee’s face with a gruesome expression on his face and with a gravelly voice that instilled the fear of god he began to vibrate the room with his raging reply. “What the piss clown …this ain’t no freakin Jerry Springer Show. Get down on your face and give me fifty! ” Then he paused momentarily after hearing a trainee in the back snickering.
He turned slowly and sinisterly to face the rest of us with a menacing expression and then proceeded to shout. “Everyone get on your faces and push Texas until I get tired” Without hesitation we all dropped to the floor. Sweat dripping from me like a waterfall, my eyes stinging from the salt as I kept continuously performing push up after push up. The pain of muscle fatigue felt like a thousand knives stabbing at my body. The sweat of the trainees started to flood the bare cold floor, causing our hands to slip on the finished floor. I must have performed more than 200 pushups by the time we were finished.
After Staff Sergeant Smith released us from our punishment, he proceeded to lecture us about followership. He explained in a clear concise even tone, with great importance how followership was about following orders without hesitation or reservation. These abilities in the military trainee’s were required to be respectful to authority. In other words it meant to be respectful and keep your thoughts to yourself when listening to authority figures. In the third week of training, I learned the importance of responsibility. Learning responsibility was paramount while in basic training.
I never really knew what responsibility entailed until my experience at basic training. I spent hours cleaning the cold dark floors of the latrine with a can of powdered bleach and a toothbrush painstakingly scrubbing until my fingers bled. The training instructor always clearly stated his expectations of us, and our responsibilities, which follows at a set standard governed by Air Force regulation. He also let us know if we did not meet the standards, we would suffer the consequences. Motivated by fear, I knew what I had to do and I did it, with a smile on my face whether I liked it or not.
Teamwork was definitely one of most important concepts I learned in my experience at basic training. When we started our training no one knew what teamwork truly meant. Chaos and confusion spread like wild fire until it was raging out control with all of us trying to follow the orders of our training instructors. Like a ship without an oar, we had no direction. No matter how hard we tried to march inline or follow directions, we could not get anything right. We were trying to get tasks done as individuals which were an impossible feat, as we were all out for ourselves and not working together as team.
After encountering failure multiple times and performing our countless never ending regiment of pushups, we all broke down. The feeling of doubt and hopelessness was ever present in all of us. Finally, after four agonizing weeks into training, we started to realize if we pulled together to get our jobs done we could meet the standard set by our training instructor. We started to work towards a common goal that we set for ourselves and it was we get the job done together, no one gets left behind. We started this incredible adventure as individuals and became an inseparable team.
As the final week of basic military training came to close, we were bursting with pride at our accomplishments. Knowing that we accomplished what seemed like an impossible feat at the time to meet the standards that had been set before us by the Air Force. After serving eight years of an honorable service in the military, I treasure my first experience in the military the most. Learning the concepts of followership, responsibility, and teamwork while in basic military training was an experience in my life that I will never forget.
