Friday, July 07, 2006

Beasting in the Army

Someone asked me what a Beasting in the Army entails, and so I thought it was a good excuse, or at least an excuse to write a blog post.
Remembering, as you will that this is from my personal experience in the Army Air Corp over six years.
A Beasting is basically a physical exercise punishment, and not bullying or a beating as some people have stated. It is purely exercise to the extreme.
Obviously, in the Army there is a lot of physical exercise involved, especially during training, however, if a Beasting is deemed necessary, you wish you had never been born.
The one (of many in extreme cold (I remember having to do a Beasting in the snow in shorts and it was minus 20) and extreme heat) is when I was doing my Junior Cadre Course.
I’ll pause here, whilst you pull up a sand bag.
Anyhoo we had been on a three day exercise that involved sleep deprivation to see if you could handle the stress and fatigue you get from doing everything with no sleep for three days.
As you can imagine, when we finally finished and got back to camp, there were a lot of very very very tired bunnies. However, the first thing you do in the Army is look after you kit, and then look after yourselves. So we had to wash all the vehicles (that the instructors rode around in as we had to march everywhere) and then clean your weapons and hand them in at the Armoury.
When some of the lads sat down on the end of their beds to clean their weapons, they immediately fell asleep, and unfortunately one of the NCO’s walked in and saw them asleep. Well they went ballistic!
So they lined us all up (as we were to be punished as a squad) and ran us down to the Gym in full kit. We then loaded up on medicine balls and set off on a ten mile run…….
You can imagine or probably not, never having been through that, that it was more than tiring or exhausting, it was … well words escape me. People were dropping like flies, but we had to pick them up and force them to carry on running.
Then once back in the camp we were told that if they caught one single person asleep before all the weapons were cleaned, inspected and put away, that we’d be out again for a 20 mile run.
Although we were obviously a hell of a lot more tired than before, NO ONE FELL ASLEEP.
So there you are a chance for me to regal you with an old Army tale, and to impart to you the knowledge that a Beasting in the Army, to my knowledge and experience is just an extreme exercise routine.
Later Days

3 comments:

Donna said...

It sounds hideous to me, but then I would never ever want anyone I knew/loved to be subjected to any such regime. I would never encourage my kids to go into the army. Even reading stuff like yours about it being a really positive experience - it just sounds barbaric to me!

But each to their own eh?

car01 said...

Yeah, I agree with Donna. I wouldn't encourage anyone I know/love to go into the Army because not only do they do dreadful things to you, but it's just such a waste of a life. What the heck do you achieve? Sorry if that offends you Paul, just my opinion.

guards 0031 said...

you achieve in the army to be a better man than you were when you went in im 21 joined the army at 16 im remember when i got thrashed ie beasted up and down the land of nod if anyone has been to itc catterick they will know what im on about until the sun came up in method of beastings is to prepare you mentally for potential of going to a warzone in knowing that you wont crack under the pressure but in experiences beastings are just a physical punishment

justin palmer
21 platoon
guards company
itc catterick