FT. BENNING, Ga. — The soldiers from Echo Company sit in a noisy chow hall, tired but on the brink of a milestone. In two days, they will complete basic training as grueling as the Army has ever dished out. And in a matter of weeks, many of them will be on the ground in Iraq.
"My wife said, 'Don't join the infantry,' and I promised her I wouldn't," said Army Spc. Jonathan Hernandez, 29, a former history teacher from Niceville, Fla. "Now I realize it doesn't matter. The enemy doesn't care if they are firing at a financial specialist or somebody in the infantry."
Today's casualty lists are riddled with cooks, mechanics, mail clerks -- all theoretically noncombat jobs. But yesterday's boot camp did not prepare soldiers for the cities and deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the theater of battle is all around.
As a result, combat training is undergoing its most dramatic overhaul since Vietnam. And as the war in Iraq forces America's military to change, the storied rigors of boot camp have become ever more rigorous.
"Whenever you go into a combat environment, there are going to be challenges you didn't foresee," said Col. William J. Gallagher, commander of the Basic Combat Training Brigade at Ft. Benning. "We are fighting a smart, adaptive enemy. They have technology and they have money and they are going to come up with ways to get us that we didn't expect."
But as a downsized, undersupplied force strains to fight a stubborn insurgency, it does not have the luxury of time. The Army finds itself with much more to teach its combat-bound recruits, and the same 63 basic training days to teach it.
So today's new soldier averages five hours of sleep a night instead of seven. The day still begins at dawn and lasts past dinner, but core training pushes further into the night, eating into time once used for review and reinforcement of the day's lessons. Sundays, once set aside for worship, laundry and phone calls home, are no longer guaranteed "light."
"If I said I wasn't tired, I'd be lying," said Hernandez, who was so determined to serve he lost 110 pounds to qualify for enlistment.
The March 2003 ambush of the 507th Maintenance Company from Ft. Bliss, Texas, was a wake-up call for American armed forces. Eleven combat-support soldiers were killed and six more captured -- including Pvt. Jessica Lynch -- lending urgency to the need to train every volunteer as a warrior.
