In "Full Metal Jacket", Are The Boot-Camp Scenes Realistic Or Exaggerated?

[arwalden]

Surely some of you military types will know whether or not it's an accurate portrayal of boot camp life.

Also... what's the purpose of "Fire Watch"?

I can assume by the name that the person who draws Fire Watch duty would be responsible for keeping the fire burning and keeping away intruders when outdoors.

So if that's true, then what's the purpose of having Fire Watch inside of barracks on a military base?

Does the person who gets Fire Watch duty have to stay AWAKE all night long, and THEN do PT the next day?

-- Allen

[ET Awful]

1. Okay . . . it's realistic to a degree, BUT, DI's are no longer permitted

to touch recruits (with the exception of on a grenade range if a recruit drops a grenade or tosses it short, etc., i.e. to save lives). So no physical abuse.

Fire Guard/Fire Watch serves no real purpose other than to act as additional conditioning for serving guard duty in the field, etc. Usually it's done (at least during Basic) in one hour shifts, and you do have to do PT the next day.

I believe that the original intent of Fire Watch insofar as the modern army goes was to keep an eye out for accidental fires, as it began before fire alarms existed. It was to allow barracks to be evacuated in case of a fire. This was a necessity in older barracks (which are still in use on some bases) that were very dry wood construction and would burn to the ground in a VERY short period of time.

[arwalden]

5. So All The Verbal Abuse, Name Calling, And Humiliation Is Permitted...

but no slapping, no choking, no marching with pants around ankles?

Yeah, I can see one hour shifts would serve as additional conditioning... I always thought it was the full-night through.

Thanks! :hi:

[ET Awful]

7. Precisely.

Verbal abuse is the norm :) Racial slurs are forbidden though. No tolerance at all for that. Most of the verbal abuse centers on personal incompetence, not racial stuff, comments about your mother, etc.

[ihaveaquestion]

2. Boot camp is hell

Sometimes it's worse than in FMJ.

Fire watch is to watch for a fire and sound the alarm if one erupts. Wooden baracks would go up like a matchbox and this was before First Alert smoke alarms were invented.

Yes the people on fire watch (they do a 4 hour shift) still do PT the next day.

[Florida_Geek]

3. old WWII wooden barracks needed a Fire Watch

it was like two hours per shift.

[matcom]

4. pretty damned close

'cept they aren't SUPPOSED to 'touch' you anymore :eyes:

[Bouncy Ball]

6. I asked my husband once while we were watching it how realistic

it was and he said his DI screamed far worse things at them and when he was in basic training (85) they were still allowed to do physical things to you. He thought it was pretty realistic.

Nowdays, apparently, not as much.

[ET Awful]

10. The physical abuse was forbidden before '85

I'm not sure where your husband did his Basic, but the military outlawed it before then.

I did my Basic in '87, and quite a few people I served with did it in '81 and '82, same regulations were in place when they went.

[Bouncy Ball]

11. He was at Ft. Benning, Georgia

in 1985. Huh. Maybe Ft. Benning didn't get the memo (wouldn't surpise me, it was his last duty station, too and I had the "pleasure" of living there). He's described to me in some detail what was done to him and others. I mean, he expected it to some extent.

[ET Awful]

13. D'OH Dupe, self-delete

[ET Awful]

14. Well, they do cirrcumvent it in some cases, I was at Ft. Benning in

'88 (Did my Basic at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, advanced training at Ft. Benning). I never saw anything of the sort. Same for most of the people I served with (anyone who was infantry went through Benning).

I don't doubt him, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't fit in with what I saw at Ft. Benning.

[Bouncy Ball]

17. Yes, he was infantry

and he did jump school, too.

Were you infantry?

[ET Awful]

19. Yup, mechanized infantry.

Originally I was going to go into ordnance (thus the Basic at Ft. Leonoard Wood) then I changed my MOS before AIT and decided to go infantry instead, got orders changed from Red Rock Arsenal (ammunition control and accounting specialist) to Ft. Benning. I was a TOW gunner, then a track commander, then an instructor training other troops on the vehicle.

[Bouncy Ball]

21. He was mechanized infantry too.

Well, first he went to Ft. Campbell and was with the 101st Airborne. Then he went to Germany with some mechanized infantry division (can't remember which).

By the time I met him, he was in the 1st Cav at Ft. Hood, driving Bradleys.

[5thGenDemocrat]

15. I did my (Army) basic training in Jan-Mar 1974

The drill sergeants couldn't touch you physically. They could sure call you some creative names, though. My personal nick was "Shitstick," for what it's worth.
John
Adding that I thought the movie did a very good job of showing basic training, allowing for the standard Hollywood BS.

[AllegroRondo]

8. I went through basic in 88

before co-ed training, but after the ban on profanity and hitting recruits. But they can come up with some very original language that bypasses the profanity ban.

I thought the movie was pretty accurate. High pressure, too much to do and no time to do it, PT all the time, classes all the time, etc.

Fire watch - we always thought the name referred to keeping someone awake to watch for fires. 1 hour shift, and you have to do PT next day no matter what.

I learned much later that fire watch was more about keeping someone up to prevent the trainees from doing something stupid at night, like trying to steal from someone else or run away.

[Wcross]

9. It was as close as hollywood gets

I went to Parris Island in 1981 and watching that movie was like a flash-back to me. They weren't supposed to touch you when I was in either but I remember at least three beatings I took for some infractions. The most memorable thing was the way the DI's screwed with your head 24/7.

[silvermachine]

12. Went through basic in '79...

...and I thought it (FMJ) was quite realistic. I'd even say that my DI was actually worse in terms of the verbal stuff. Never had anything physical happen and didn't see anyone else go through it either.

[cruadin]

16. I went through basic in '80---ditto what's already been said..

about fire watch.
No physical abuse, but some very colorful and creative verbal abuse, some of it fairly funny.
One day, when I was particularly clumsy during drill, my TI screamed at me that I, "looked like a monkey trying to fuck a football."

[ET Awful]

18. LOL

Best I heard was probably when one of the DI's was in the tower at the rifle range and Screamed out to lane 12 "Lane 12, if you don't get that weapon pointed up and downrange, I'm gonna become the first black Superman you ever saw, fly down out of this tower and pull your nostrils over your forehead."

I missed every target I fired at for the next 5 minutes from laughing so hard. It wouldn't have been nearly as funny if it wasn't said over those staticy loudspeakers they have on the ranges though :)

[punpirate]

20. It's hyped for dramatic effect...

... to some degree, but the elements are all there. During the Vietnam war, the worst boot camps were Army and Marines--Navy and Air Force were a bit better and shorter (Air Force was, at least, I think).

But, the truth is, you have people messing with your head and yelling at you all the time. Then, you had to do everything on three to five hours of sleep a night, lousy food and put up with the occasional sadist.

Student cadre sometimes were the worst--we had a guy from NJ who was an apparent enforcer for the mob before he got drafted, and he terrorized people for a couple of weeks until he got caught in a blanket party in a stairwell about midnight--so those things do happen, too, as the movie suggests.

The whole idea of it is to break you down to the point where you don't question anything--you just do what you're told, when you're told. At that time, fight the system and you got put into a re-education unit, and then the fun really started.

All in all, I'd say it's even more dehumanizing than jail (even without the same-sex sexual predation of jail). Think about what changes you'd have to go through to kill someone on command--that's what basic is supposed to teach you to do.

Cheers.

[Cuban_Liberal]

22. Reasonably accurate, minus some of the gratuitous violence.

DI's can't hit you, etc., now...

[gratuitous]

25. Hey, I try not to be violent!

Well, unless some smartass DU shavetail recruit thinks he knows more than me, then you have to administer a good old-fashioned lesson. But that's mostly for the benefit of onlookers rather than the recipient of said lesson.

Remember also, that Kubrick set FMJ at the time of the Vietnam conflict, so any rules that may have been instituted in the late 1970s or early 1980s wouldn't have been in effect then.

[underpants]

23. The "Fire Guard" ribbon

that is what everyone called it once I got to my actual unit.

I went through basic in 1990 and our Drill Sgt. wasn't like that but there was a DS in second platoon who still beat his guys. Open hand to the chest and torso-this guy had HUGE hands.

[edbermac]

24. Based on the book The Short-Timers by Gus Hasford a former Marine...

And the film's DI Lee Ermey was a real-life DI in the Marines so I assume it was a fairly accurate depiction...

[RamboLiberal]

27. Good interview with Ermey here

Did you have to read against a lot of other actors or did Kubrick know you were just right?
I didn't read. It's amazing. This thing just keeps going. It's a Kubrick film. Kubrick's films have life -- they just never die. You can just about find it anytime of day on some tv channel somewhere, especially if you've got satellite.
The best part about the movie, and everybody seems to rave about it, is the boot camp part. I got to write most of everything I said. It was based on a novel called "The Short Timers" by Gustav Hasford, who only went through boot camp. That's his only experience with the Marines. According to Gustav, the only reason drill instructors existed was to harass, punish and torture recruits. There was no rhyme nor reason.

He actually wrote a scene where Gunnery Sergeant Hartman called the recruit squad leaders into the head, had them urinate in a commode, and then brought Private Pyle in there and shoved his head down in it. I never heard of that being done. The recruits would have never had respect for a drill instructor that would do something like that.

There's a rhyme and reason for damn near everything a drill instructor does. The new privates arrive and it's immediate jaw-flexing, yelling, screaming, jumping up and down intimidation for the first week. The reason for that is to put the private in the capable palm of the drill instructors' hand. Back in those days intimidation was the greatest tool the drill instructor had. Without that tool, he would not have had control. The drill instructor must have total and complete control. Mindless obedience is what he's after. Once they leave those camps, it's a different deal. He needs that though, he needs that leverage.

I was stationed at a marine recruit depot in San Diego from 1965 to 1967. We had twelve weeks to train those privates. We'd get them out of receiving barracks -- 60 privates per platoon-- and would spring into the training mode. In very early 1966, we needed to get warm bodies to Vietnam, so the recruit training was cut down to eight weeks. With the same stroke of the pen, the commandant also increased the size of the recruit platoon out of receiving barracks to 120 privates, so we doubled the size of the platoon and lost a third of our training time. The drill instructors actually went into an accelerated mode of desperation because privates still had to be just as well trained when they graduated recruit training. We

http://www.tv-now.com/intervus/ermey/

[jmowreader]

26. The movie was set in the 1960s when wall-to-wall counseling was OK

The fire guard had several duties.

He made sure the barracks didn't burn down.

He made sure the soldiers were in their beds and not sleepwalking, stealing from their buddies, and the like--we had a guy who sleepwalked every night, the Army finally gave him a trainee discharge. You could get up to visit the latrine, though.

He also buffed the hallway.

And in a barracks with a wood stove or other such heating system, he made sure the fire didn't go out.

Fortunately for the fire watch, he only had to serve for one hour.

[NightTrain]

28. I was in the Navy, not the Marine Corps. but...

...Boot Camp was still a motherfucker. So my guess would be that the Boot Camp scenes in FULL METAL JACKET were pretty damned accurate!

[trof]

29. How would I know?

I was an officer and a gentleman.
It says so, right on my commission.
I crook my pinky finger when I sip my tea.
I took some written tests, took a physical, got a security clearance, raised my right hand and took the oath, and they pinned the gold bars on.
(They're actually brass.)
Instant second balloon, brown bar, lootenant.
Never saw the inside of a boot camp, OCS, OTS, or any other rude thing like that.
Ah, them wuz the days.
;-)