I have read a lot of posts here on the forums regarding what to expect at 19k OSUT. So I am going to clear a few things up that will hopefully answer these questions. I graduated as a 19k in 2004 and have spent a tour in Iraq. I was with the 4th Brigade 4th Infantry Division stationed in Fort Hood. Anyways When you Arrive at Fort Knox you will go into a building where you will have several soldiers waiting to instruct you. You will not be yelled at(in most cases) and will Immediately take off all your civilian clothes. Any contraband will be put in a hole ...yes a hole in a room where no one will see what you have dropped or had on you. Don't try to keep anything on you. You will go to the holding barracks where you will stay in reception for about a week..I spent 9 days there. It's basically like Meps all over again, but with Drill Sergeant's and little sleep. You will be picked up on a Friday by your New Drills and get on a bus with all your new gear. What happens off the bus I will let you figure it out..it will be a surprise and no you haven't even got a clue. All the recruits you arrived with at reception will all be in the same company. I was C Co 2/81. Don't be the HOOAH soldier who thinks they are the **** because they are a Boot E-3 or their dad was a Ranger or what not..You will just get your ass kicked later on. Yes we had blanket parties. You better make your friends quickly. Get into a group with people you have gotten to know at reception. Trust me you will need these friends. Everyone will start to break under the stress and people will try to stab you in the back when they can. Just remember these people are only dangerous when you have your back turned. I can't even remember how many fights I got into in the first week. You will now officially begin your Basic training. First Phase is red phase. Before I go any further I want to say one thing. 19k OSUT is nothing like your brother or sisters basic. Whatever they told you pretty much trash it. Combat Arms go through completely different scenarios. You are in the second hardest basic..the first Being 11b OSUT. The First 3 weeks will go by slowly. Your going to be learning the ends and outs of what is expected of you for the remainder of the 15 weeks. You will have a m4 not a m16..yes tankers are high speed nowadays. Just keep up with everyone else and listen closely to your Drills. Your going to be doing a lot of Pt and getting smoked for anything and everything. Don't blame anyone for this because the only one to blame is yourself. I will personally come to your Company and punch you in the face If I ever hear you try to blame someone else for getting smoked. You are a team now..their is no I. If someone fails you all fail..everyone says they understand this..no no no..you don't. White Phase..just another shade of red. Training does not let up or get any easier..drills are in your face all the way through you just adapt and overcome. If you make it to this Phase you will see things are easy if you get them right the first time. By now you will hate your Drills and probably want to go home..We had a lot of people run away. The drills carry 9's at night on watch. Don't ask me what they are for just don't run. You will have fireguard every night almost. This is a 1 hour period of cleaning. You will be assigned a section. Don't sleep or have your area unfinished. So if you do decide to run make sure its on your fire watch and go out your window. Take the railroad tracks to the main gate and jump the fence. Anyway you didn't hear that from me. During White Phase you will have traveled the training area a good bit and done a few ruck marches. Fort Knox is beautiful isn't it? I was there in January and it snowed the whole time. I loved it. After white Phase is blue Phase. You might be in blue Phase and still have a white flag. This is because you are not pulling together as a team. That's alright it might take you 13 weeks to get this concept. Blue Phase is a lot of high speed ranges. You will really want to graduate at this point and you may have lost a few people who have been dropped from training. At the end of this Phase you get 2 days to see your family and you now wear a beret. Don't think you are entitled to family day. They took mine away because I hit a kid in the face right in front of his family before they were going to release us! Stupid right? It felt good and he talked a lot of trash. When you come back you will immediately be smoked and play a lot of games. You are not considered a soldier yet to the drills and you are expected to give 110% for the remainder of the training period. You will spend many hours in the tank simulators..Basically you will be in a simulation of the m1 drivers hold. Next is the motor pool. You will spend almost every day here. You will wear full gear with rucksack to the training site. You get to take it off when you get there. I'm not going to go into everything you learn, but I will tell you a little about the final field training exercise. It's about 4 days long and you March out to the site. Some company's do it differently. From here you will spend 2 days at the driving range. Yeah it's a giant mud hole where you drive the m1a1 and smack everyone around. After this you will spend 2 days at a fob where you will be under attack 24hrs a day. You will be in full gear and pretty much see what it's like to be in the mountains of Afghanistan with just a few tours and barbed wire! Fun right? After this you will March back 15k at night. You will be dead tired and it's going to be around 4 in the morning. You will get your unit patch and have the rights of passage ceremony. Basically everyone cries as the Drill Sergeant shakes your hand around a bonfire. You will look back at everything you have accomplished and at this point you have about a week and a half before graduation. You will get no sleep this week. On average maybe 5 hours that's it. You have a lot to do and prepare for. This was a fun time for all of us. The last night My Drill Sergeant was drunk and we listened to music and ate junk food the whole night. I went to sleep at like 3 A.M. and Got up to graduate at 4:30! I was sent to Fort Hood as you already know, but we had some people go to Germany, Korea, and Hawaii. Your lucky if you get to go overseas. I hope this helps anyone who is looking to be a 19k. I wrote this as I went and I have left out a lot of things, but pm me if you want to know anything I haven't covered.
You will be picked up on a Friday by your New Drills and get on a bus with all your new gear.
What!?! Get on a bus...WTF? I know it's been awhile since I did BCT (no OSUT then)...38 years this Summer, but dayemm! We marched from the Reception Station to our BCT Company area (D-8-4, Ft. Knox, Sep '71), carrying our duffle. Sure, there may have been quite a bit of "route-march", but still....
To the Cavalry Scouts, I and many others would appreciate it if you tried to find some time to write one of these semi detailed accounts, of what Cavalry Scout training is like. Im just curious what Cav Scouts learn that regular Infantry does not... Thanks in advance.
Hello. I am a split option 19k National Guard. I finished Phase 1 of training (basic training) in August 2008 and have to go back this summer for the AIT part. Everything Shirty posted is true. I was in B CO 2/81, which is in the barracks less than 100 feet across from C CO 2/81 where Shirty went. Here are some more details he didn't mention. During Red Phase our whole company got smoked every single day - after each breakfast, lunch, and dinner for about 30 or 40 minutes each time. That was in addition to long smoking sessions of up to 2 hours, thankfully not every day. I lost 10 pounds during first week, and I was not overweight in the first place. We had weapons issued to us on the 2nd or 3rd day. We carried M4s with us at all times, everywhere (except church on Sundays and latrines). We literally slept with the weapons. At night, Drills would walk around the sleeping men and try to quietly pull the weapons away. Those who lost their weapons got smoked the next day. The Drills try to break you mentally by making you feel worthless and stupid. Want examples? One time a DS called a mother of a soldier in front of the platoon formation on his cell phone and told her that her son is basically a screw up, that he will endanger others' lives if allowed to remain in the Army and that he doesn't have what it takes to graduate. The kid cried in front of all of us. By the way, he did graduate . Yes, we had people run away. We also had several people drop from training for medical reasons and at least 3 claimed they were suicidal. The end of Phase 1 is something like Shirty described his end of AIT, except that it's only a couple of days and you don't get to drive tanks. You also don't get to eat junk food. Shirty, I have a question for you? Are there ANY things that are better during AIT than in BCT part? Like, do you get more free time on the weekends? Do you get to call home more often? You get smoked less often? Anything besides wearing a beret? Say yes, because I am dreading going back Thanks.
Well Seaczar it is about the same as your first go around. You do get smoked a lot and you do not get off post passes or cell phones. You are not considered prior service so when you return you will be put back into a company still in the basic training phase. They may be 2 or 3 weeks from Ait. Seriously we had several people like you put back in when we were weeks away. I'm not trying to scare you, but that is just how it is. You will get a few hours on Sunday to go to the Px. No you can't go to the game room or buy candy. Some Company's allow this however mine did not. You will actually be given a lot more attention coming back in. You are a opportunity to be ****ed with. We had a guy with the split option who thought he was entitled to be with the prior service guys and knew everything. He was brought to tears when he got smoked every day for a couple hours. You do get more calls home though and the last week you will have fun, but your not going to get any sleep at all.
Originally posted by 13658933: To the Cavalry Scouts, I and many others would appreciate it if you tried to find some time to write one of these semi detailed accounts, of what Cavalry Scout training is like. Im just curious what Cav Scouts learn that regular Infantry does not... Thanks in advance.
Route reports, bridge classification, methods of recon...
The list of things the Infantry learns and the scouts do not is alot longer.
Infantry, Scout, Tanker I've been all three. I'm no longer plagued by any notions of elitism due to my MOS.
Hey just wondering if you had any Prior Service in 19K AIT? I was Army back in 03' then went USAFR and ANG. Now coming back into the Army lookin at 19K was just wonderin if you knew how the Prior Servie thng worked out. Ive heard we dont talk to IET Soldiers, we do what we want nights and weekend, etc. Anything would be helpful... Thanks
C 2-81...oh those were the days. I was in 1st Platoon C 2-81 Aug - Dec 03. We were called pizza-party charlie by bolo bravo. We had pizza parties every sunday after red phase. Our drill was awesome, I still talk to him from time to time. I remember those days like they were yesterday.
I was E 2-81 in summer of 07. Shirty was pretty acurate minus a few things, there was a couple of scuffles but no punchin dudes in the face in front of their familly type schenanigans, he just seems like an angry fellaNo offense bro, dont cyber punch me please. I got lucky and had a fairly solid platoon The whole deal sucks, but at the same time its the most fun youll have in the Army. You will leave that place thinking the Army as the most BA organization since chucky cheese. Then you get to your unit and see how disorganized and redundant it really is. No matter what, youll always be proud to call yourself a soldier. Everyones experiences are different and alot of it is your own perspective and attitude. Youll get sick of CAV scouts talking "poop" constantly. I dont know how the other tanker companies were but our drills didnt get into all that stupid rivalry. Once you get out to your unit, youll both end up ripping on the infantry anyway
Originally posted by 13658933: Im just curious what Cav Scouts learn that regular Infantry does not... .
Cavalry Scout stuff.
SCOUTS OUT!!! TWO BAGS FULL!!!
...How to drive something to the fight instead of walking there all the time with yer house on yer back, then how to kill the enemy with somebody else's firepower, so you aren't the one that gets the counter-battery!!!
As far as the "bus" thing goes, we got loaded in "cattle cars" once to get to the range for M-16 qualification towards the end of Basic, cuz they didn't want us too tired for the shoot, but we got to walk the long way back afterwards to make up for it -
. Yes, we had people run away. We also had several people drop from training for medical reasons and at least 3 claimed they were suicidal. The end of Phase 1 is something like Shirty described his end of AIT, except that it's only a couple of days and you don't get to drive tanks. You also don't get to eat junk food. 
