There is one experience at the core of every military career, and it is that first day — even that first hour and minute — when your civilian life crashes to an end as you run straight into the reality of basic, Day-1 military training.
It’s loud, fast and bewildering, as it has been for generations before you and everyone who has come since. It’s also, when viewed from calmer later days, hilarious to watch others suffer through.
Two military academies held that day Wednesday for their newest rising freshmen, an annual tradition known at both the U.S. Naval Academy and Air Force Academy as “I-Day” — though perhaps predictably for the rival campuses, the “I” stands for different words: “Induction Day” at USNA, “In-processing” at USAFA. New classes at the other three service academies will get their high-volume welcomes next week. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point holds “R-Day” — for “Reception” — July 1, the same day as the Coast Guard Academy’s “Day One.” The Merchant Marine Academy’s “Zero Day” is July 5.
The admissions department of both schools released images and videos on social media Thursday of the intake process which will look familiar to any veteran of any military basic training: teenagers in civilian clothes being hounded, yelled at and pursued by yelling instructors.
They look scared. They look shook-up. They look just like everybody else who’s been in the same spot.
Initial training for all first-year students at all military academies runs for close to two months, with rituals and routines that any veteran of any boot camp would recognize — shaved heads, marching, standing at attention, group fitness, learning rules and never, ever getting anything right. Unlike the campaign-hatted training NCOs who oversee enlisted training, academy students are trained mostly by upperclassmen at the school.
But while being yelled at by fellow students may sound like an easier path than traditional boot camp, all three military schools maintain a small cadre of fully-qualified training NCO — Army Drill Sergeants at West Point, Marine Drill Instructors at the Naval Academy, Air Force Military Training Instructors, or MTIs, at Air Force — to join in the fun-, err, maintain standards during summer training.
Click here for more pictures of future officers getting yelled at in their first hours at the Air Force Academy and others at the Naval Academy, also known as Annapolis.
Correction, June 27, 2004: This story has been corrected to indicate that summer training at all three military academies includes a cadre of traditional NCO drill instructors.
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