This is a question for all you military history buffs--hopefully you might have some decent references for me.
I was wondering, when did boot camp become boot camp? What I mean is, training for U.S. enlisted men was nothing like what it is today (confidence courses, Victory tower, screaming drill instructors) back during WWI, from what I understand. Somewhere along the line, the military started using something (that feels to me) like psychological torture techniques to try to prepare soldiers for the field. When did this happen and why/how?
The U.S. and European militaries have had organized recruit training since before World War I.
There are several purposes for this training. At the most fundamental level one important goal is to break down the individuality of the recruits so they learn to "act like soldiers" and not always act in their own best interests.
What you call "psychological tortue" isn't so much to prepare them for the field as it is to get them used to military life, obey orders, and get them to accept the discipline of the military. This is why recruits are ordered to do things in specific, regimented way. This includes everything from how they roll their socks and fold their clothes, to how they wear their uniforms, to the intracities of close order drill, marching, etc.
This is also why recruits may be ordered to so things that seem pointless or even silly, like dress in certain combinations of their uniforms (standard trousers with dress tops and gas masks, for instance) than run outside and stand formation, and then be ordered to go inside and change into some other combination of clothes (boots, running shorts and poncho, for instance) and come back outside in formation in a specific (short) period of time. It's to get them used to taking commands and obeying orders without thinking.
As training progresses various skill and weapons training is added, etc, but the core of what seems odd is that basic training in obeying orders and disciplines.
As to when certain things were added in training, such as "confidence courses" (obstacle courses) or other specific elements, I'm sure that changed and evolved over time
Here's some links that may help.
http://www.1914-1918.net/training.htm
http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/training-to-be-a-soldier
http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/training-to-be-a-soldier
http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=120806
http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/ow_2.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga4zLsMmkE0
http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=75777&hl=
This one seems especially relevant
http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/soldiersintro.html
Given its small size prior to World War I, the U.S. Army lacked a sufficient number of training facilities to accommodate all of the new recruits. In response, the War Department hastily expanded existing facilities and constructed thirty-two new camps across the country. While the majority of the new training facilities were located in the South, only three were in North Carolina. Camp Greene, the largest of the three, was built outside of Charlotte. At one point Camp Greene had 65,000 men in residence. The Army also constructed a small tank training school at Camp Polk outside of Raleigh. Then, in September 1918, the Army opened
Camp Bragg near Fayetteville, as an artillery training facility. Fort Bragg was the only World War I era camp in North Carolina to remain in operation after the war and its presence redefined the small port town of Fayetteville, as catering to the needs of the soldiers became an important part of the local economy. Finally, though North Carolina's colleges and universities, especially at Chapel Hill, were never officially designated as military camps,
The Yackety Yack of 1918 and 1919 attest to the fact that nearly all campus activity focused on preparing the Student Army Training Corps for service. (For more, see
The Home Front/Educational Institutions.) A few North Carolina soldiers, such as
Paul Green, were initially stationed at Camp Greene, but for the most part, the members of the Thirtieth spent their time stateside at Camp Sevier in South Carolina while the Eighty-first was based at Camp Jackson, South Carolina. A few other Tar Heels traveled as far away as Texas and New Jersey for training. In turn, North Carolina's three camps hosted newcomers from across the country.
Regardless of where a Tar Heel recruit was based, they all underwent a rough three months of basic training. (See a
detailed chronology of William Umstead's training as an officer in the 317th Machine Gun Battalion of the 81st Division. For a chronological history of one of the North Carolina regiments of the Thirtieth Division from organization through training and combat, see Arthur Lloyd Fletcher's
History of the 113th Field Artillery 30th Division, pp. 214-17.) The rigorous physical conditioning, constant drilling in military discipline and modern weaponry were made even more difficult because most of the camps were hastily constructed the Army was still scrambling to gather the necessary supplies. The men of the Thirtieth Division perhaps had it worst of all, since they arrived at Camp Sevier before the facility was even completed. They spent their first days in camp
clearing fields and forests and erecting the canvas tents that would be their home. Other facilities, such as Camp Jackson, Camp Greene, or Camp Bragg may have had actual
wooden barracks, but like all training centers, they suffered from a serious lack of supplies, including proper uniforms, weapons and food. (For images of a typical officer's uniform, equipment and personal effects, see the
"Outfitting a Soldier" subsection.) In addition, the camps lacked proper
sanitation facilities.
In fact, conditions at Camp Greene in Charlotte were so rough that after U.S. Representative
Sherman E. Burroughs of New Hampshire visited a regiment from his home state training at Camp Greene in early 1918, he lambasted the War Department on the House floor for the unsanitary conditions. Burroughs explained:
There is not now and there has never been since the camp was established last summer any sewerage system whatever at Camp Greene. Dirty water from the Kitchins and refuse of all kinds are thrown into ditches, and a good part of it remains there, because it cannot get away and the clay soil will not absorb it. . . .We saw a number of old discarded latrines. They are still open and exposed and are filled with 6 or 8 feet of decaying, putrid, festering animal matter. When the warm weather comes, as it is likely to come any time in this southern climate, it takes no sanitary engineer or expert to predict what is going to happen. Flies are going to breed there in enormous quantities, and typhoid fever and diphtheria are likely to break out at any time.
Indeed, in World War I, as in previous wars, disease rather than enemy fire remained the greatest crippler of men. (For more on the wartime epidemics and their effects on civilian and military populations, see
"Introduction: Carolinians Go to War" and the
introduction to Soldiers' Experience/Personal Narratives.) Green, Hanes, Umstead, and other junior officers lived more comfortably in the camps than enlisted men, but the officers' training was no easier. On the one hand, the officers were much better clothed and fed than the enlisted men, though as a Mess and later Supply Officer for his battalion, Umstead tried to lessen that discrepancy. On the other hand, the young officers had the double burden of mastering the basic skills of soldiering while also learning to lead men into battle, all within a few short months. The American model of combat training for emphasized small units relying on their own initiative and engaging the enemy on open ground. This was marked contrast to the French, English and German approach in which huge armies directed by a central command battered each other from entrenched positions.
Finally, regardless of their rank, America's new soldiers had to master basic marksmanship as well as new modern weaponry, such as hand grenades, automatic rifles, machine guns, and artillery. In a
letter home, dated September 10, 1917, Hanes relates how overwhelming the rigors and challenges could be to a young artillery trainee like himself:
We have to know both infantry and artillery drilling, care, feeding, shoeing and riding of horses, all the army regulations, the semaphore and morse signal systems, French a lot of Mathematics and several other things. They are giving us a written quiz of an hour every Saturday at noon on the past weeks work and you have got to keep up to the notch to stay here. They are throwing them out every day. . . . We shall know the stuff when we do finish tho' that is one consolation. We start at 5 A.M. wash, shave and dress, Reville 5:30, 5:40 to 6:00 make up bunks clean up tent. . . . and street, 6 A.M. breakfast, 7 assemble for drill, infantry drill until about 10 or 10:30, artillery drill until 12, lunch 12, lectures 1 to 3, drills on horseback exercises 3 to 5:30, supper 6, lecture 7 to 8 study 8 to 10, lights out at 10. You can see from this that Sundays are the only days that I have a spare moment. I am always glad to see Sundays come too. They put me in as Captain, after I had only drilled five days. I never have been as scared in my life. I made one or two bulls [hits on an artillery target] but on the whole, considering my experience I guess I got by with it in passable shape.
Paul Green and other members of engineer regiments also had to learn new skills involved in trench warfare. Part of the engineers' task was to advance at night and cut holes in the barbed wire defenses and mark with flags the path advancing troops would take once they left the safety of the trenches. Engineers were also responsible for building and maintaining roads and communications lines. American munitions factories did not get up to full production until the end of the war so recruits often had to improvise their training when there were not enough weapons to go around. Infantry units practiced bayonet techniques with sticks in place of rifles. Hanes and the other members of the 113th Field Artillery also
drilled with wooden guns in place of cannon, howitzers and mortars. In addition, when U.S. units did receive their actual rifles, machine guns or
artillery pieces, they were most likely of French or British manufacture.
Of all the aspects of training for modern warfare that soldiers undertook, perhaps the most frightening was learning how to prepare for a poison gas attack. Recruits had to learn how to quickly don the cumbersome
gas mask and breathe the hot air that filtered through the mask while they marched under a full load of equipment.
http://iarchives.nysed.gov/Gallery/gallery.jsp?id=223&ss=WWI
