These are Army 12bs mang. The MOS that legitimately tries to outdo the infantry at every turn. Our leadership was always OBSESSED with outdoing the infantry. They get five hours sleep? We'd get four. They'd do a four mile ruck march with no kit on a two day drill just to stay in shape? We'd do seven in full battle rattle. They'd go back to the barracks on a two day drill (because honestly what is the f**king point of sleeping outside for ONE NIGHT) we'd go pick the lowest lying wetland and pop up bug nets (at least these things kept you from being ate up by Kentucky mosquitos). The infantry legitimately had me wishing I'd have went infantry because their leadership was task oriented instead of focused on toughness. They'd get their shit down for the day and be done. We'd get our shit done for the day and have to come up with two dozen menial task to look like we never had a dull moment.
They didn't realize to outdo the infantry you'd actually have to work on battle drills continually. Instead we'd always f**k around with demo and breaching wired obstacles. We were good at both, and some of us older guys who'd been deployed and to a lot of schools could usually fall into the infantry squads we were attached to fairly easily, but our younger guys continually looked like a bag of ass when thrown with an infantry squad because of our companies utter unwillingness to train them on battle drills and instead focusing on demo and obstacle emplacement/breaches.
When we went on our ATs the shit was amplified 100 times.
I have had heatstroke before, and only went to the hospital AFTER I successfully completed a covert breech on a wire obstacle. I staggered back to the starting point and faceplanted in front of the cadre and leadership with a 104.5 internal core temp. It was like a movie. I kept almost passing out and then somebody would slap me in the face to keep me awake. I have a bunch of half memories where dudes were pouring water on my face out of canteens, grabbing my face and telling me to stay awake, ambulance rides, and waking up as they were taking me to the ER in a panic because my vision was so blurry that when they were pushing me to the ER on the gurney I thought I was flying toward the bright light because I was dead.
100 percent truth. Not bullshitting.
I'm glad my deployment was as a Redleg and not as an Engineer with those fools.
Good times. I miss it.
