Thursday, January 16All That Matters

1 Hour of raw uncut footage from U.S. Army Basic Training in 1998 recorded on VHS ( with timestamps in comments)

36 Comments

  • Hi folks, my hobby is preserving cool stuff I find on VHS tapes and uploading them online. My father was an officer stationed at the U.S. Army combat training facility at Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri and he recorded several VHS tapes of the training process while he was there. Out of all of his tapes, this was his the longest one. The video has aged a bit, especially the beginning due to him rewinding it and showing it to all his co-workers over and over again, but the majority of the footage is fantastic quality (for a VHS camera anyway).

    Nobody but a few dozen soldiers and drill sergeants were ever meant to see this footage, but now you can enjoy it too.

    Please watch in 1440p for the best quality.

    If you’re interested, he even [commissioned an entire music video with some of the footage](https://youtu.be/I6QM7o3VyHo) with the help of a family member who worked as a TV editor.

    Anyway, here are the timestamps:

    00:00 New Privates arrive on post and experience the infamous Army shark attack
    1:00 One tired private get smoked by multiple drill sergeants
    3:55 More new Privates arrive
    5:25 Three new soldiers just found out what they signed up for
    7:15 First day exercises
    9:45 Using drug-sniffing dogs to search through Private’s bags for contraband
    10:41 First day of physical training
    12:07 WE LIKE IT, WE LOVE IT, WE WANT SOME MORE OF IT
    13:13 YES DRILL SERGEANT 🤓
    13:20 Rolling around in the mud
    14:28 Tear Gas chamber training
    18:43 Brother absolutely loses it in the gas chamber and runs out like a cartoon character
    20:05 A compilation of Privates leaving the gas chamber, freshly peppered
    21:34 Interview with a tear-gassed Private
    22:47 Smoke grenade demonstration
    23:13 Thermite demonstration
    23:53 First day of grenade training
    24:56 Drill Sergeant gets up to completely smoke one of his Privates who just left their pillbox with a live grenade (off camera)
    26:27 Privates navigate an obstacle course over open water using homemade bridges and rafts
    33:20 Private falls in the water after one of their homemade bridges fails
    33:52 Drill Sergeant does some spicy poses for the camera
    34:17 Rifleman qualifications with M-16 A-2 Rifles
    35:06 A Private prays before his rifleman qualification
    37:23 4 exceptional Privates receive their sharpshooter qualification
    38:33 Chow time in the field
    38:54 AT4 Rocket Launcher training
    40:50 Light Machine Gun familiarization training in a hot tin shack
    41:25 Rifle melee training and marching in cadence
    42:28 M203 under-barrel Grenade Launcher training
    43:56 Pugil-stick training introduction
    46:34 Pugil-stick fighting begins
    48:48 First day on the Confidence Course
    55:10 ARE YOU A MAD DOG? ARE YOU MOTIVATED??
    56:04 😝MAD DAWGZ
    56:17 Visiting unsuspecting privates on KP duty
    57:35 Privates digging latrines and rudimentary foxholes for cover
    1:00:46 My dad softly harassing a Private just trying to enjoy her lunch

  • Somewhere I have a video just like this from 95 I think and my brother is in it. Always get a chuckle when I see him coming out of the teargas shack. What hell bootcamp must be.

  • I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I jumped around to a few point.

    Pretty similar to basic when I went through in the early 2010s. Our platoon was even the Mad Dawgz. The camo was different but the drill sergeants are still the same.

  • Crazy how it’s not that much different then as it was when I joined in 2013. The shark attack was more or less the same, the way everything was then hasn’t changed that drastically over 20+ years. Only thing missing from this footage is drill sergeants being able to whoop people’s asses. Great video OP.

  • Watching this feels like a time-traveling workout session, I kind half-expect the VHS to ask, ‘Are you still watching?’ while I reminisce about the good ol’ ’90s boot camp workouts

  • The worst part about boot camp (for me anyway) was the sleep deprivation. After a few days the yelling didn’t bother me and I got used to the constant physical activity.

    The lack of sleep, however, I never got used to.

  • Do they still bring you in on cattle cars? I remember a number of guys just straight collapsing on day one from the heat (ruck PT) where you hold the bag for what feels like hours over your head.

    Good times man!

  • My first trip to the chamber was 1992 at Ft.McClellan, they called it the “Disco Hut” because people do a dance when exposed to a concentration of CS in a small room. I was at the end of the line. There were three DS going down the line and when they approached we had to unmask and call out our name and serial number. When they got to me, I unmasked I froze as the pain hit. Drooling and crying, the DS tells me to mask up and clear it. Upon our exit a large oak tree stood immediately as you open the door. The first couple people run out, smack into the tree and are writhing in pain on the ground. We come from behind and pick them up and drag them towards the water hoses set up to wash off any residue. It wasn’t fun, but funny. I had to go through it a few more times after in my career, didn’t get any better.

  • When we got off the white bus with our bags a Drill Sergeant stood at the door and grabbed us by our bags and made everyone go tumbling onto the grass one by one. Then we had to run up four flights of stairs. It was so exhausting.

    Also when we first got onto the busses from Reception Battalion heading to basic training as soon as it started moving a Drill Sergeant on the bus suddenly shouted “EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HEADS DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP”. They didn’t want us to see the layout of the area in case someone tried to run away. And a few weeks into basic one guy who had been recycled from the previous basic training and was basically stuck in limbo lost his mind and did end up running away.

  • There was a moment here at Leonard Wood when the Drills had us all in a theatre and informed everyone that service was completely voluntary and that if you felt it wasn’t right for you, just raise your hand and they would bring you down to the front of the auditorium and issue you separation papers then and there. For a split second, I wanted to raise my hand so badly…

    When the had them all assembled at the front, one of the drills said, “Do you see these people? Does everybody see these people?? Do you know what these are????”

    You could hear a pin drop….

    …,” These are my BITCHES for the next 9 weeks…..”

    So much terror lol. I was in the last all male basic class there prior to gender integrated trainings in 91.

    So many madcap stories like this….

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