In American media, Drill Sergeants are often portrayed as mean and shouty. Yelling at recruits / treating them like garbage.
The only thing I could think of is that they’re going for a “military service is hard so I’m going to make this as unpleasant for you as possible because life is hard” kind of thing, but couldn’t discipline be instilled in soldiers without the yelling and humiliation? Why is this the only way?
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Mine was great, very helpful, always willing to lend an ear and listen to your problems, and man, the back rubs, you could tell he really cared by the way he’d rub our backs.
traditionally yes. military training was to break down the recruits and then mold them into suitable disciplined soldiers. but more recently, that type of training is going away and the military is becoming a more welcoming training program.
you can watch this video for some more info [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgkyMXp3Nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcgkymxp3nw)
Modern drill sergeants don’t yell like you see in movies, but what you see in movies was true to the time. The belief then was two fold. One: enforce good order and discipline by accepting no mistakes no matter how small. The job was to break down civilians and turn them into soldiers who follow orders. Two: Induce stress. War is hard, combat is harder. Soldiers need to experience stress so they can function on a battle field in a stressful situation.
Very mixed for the USAF. Mine threatened to rip out my throat with an M16 charging handle for example, so my MTI was very much the typical swearing and threatening type, but many of my fellow airmen were surprised I had such an experience and had way more chill basic training instructors than I did.
They can be but it depends on the instructor themselves. But they whole point of the yelling, as described to me by my MTI, is to teach you how to think clearly under pressure. If you can think and problem solve while a grown man is screaming in your face, you can react properly in just about any day to day situation. Now in most cases of basic training/boot camp nowadays, they arent cruel or treat you like garbage. They can be mean, yeah, but their job is to instruct you and teach you. Basically break you down and build you into what the military wants you to be.
Some are, some aren’t. Certain branches are more than others. They’re definitely loud at a bare minimum. In my experience (Air Force), they’re more stereotypical during the first few weeks and as time went on, they loosened up.
Honestly while it may suck for the person getting yelled at, MTI’s have some of the damned funniest insults I’ve ever heard and it’s a legit challenge to not burst out laughing when they’re smoking someone.
If you can’t function cause somebody is getting in your face, how are you gonna function when people are shooting at you?
Highly dependent on the branch. Marine Corps Drill Instructors are pretty close to the movies except they can’t technically hit recruits anymore. But yes they yell a ton and are pretty “mean” but it’s all for the purpose of breaking down recruits and building them back up. Other branches are generally known to be “softer” and don’t yell quite as much, but still won’t be best buddies with recruits.
The short(ish) version of this is, yes.
It was our job to put recruits in higher pressure situations.
The vast majority of recruits I got in were barely out of high school, had never been away from home.
Imagine trying to take a kid, essentially, and prep him/her to go overseas in under a year. Every day counts, every rep counts. Their window for learning is incredibly short for what they need to learn and a lot of times, training schedules got truncated. Which, of course, only added more pressure.
Throughout my career, I ran into a few Privates that I’d trained, all of them loved catching up. I’ll never know what happened to all of them, but I know I did the best I could to prepare them.
And, yes. This was the short(ish) version.
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