One of the more memorable parts of basic training was on a live fire course. We did this twice, once during the day and the second during the night.
We were in a "low crawl" from beginning to end. There were sand bag obstacles along the way that we had to go around--and they had explosives in the interior of them---I'm not sure how they were "fired" but it seemed more than a few would go off while you were beside them. At the same time 50 caliber machine guns were firing over head. At points along the way we would have to roll on our backs to hold up concertina wire across the course---that became an incentivizing element at night.
During the daytime "trip" we were constantly told to hurray by the DIs--and I remember thinking that the night "trip" would be easier since the DIs would not know if I was taking a break
My plan was quickly abandoned when we started the night version----my first concertina wire turned me over and now I am laying there on my back---looking up at the tracers going over my head---now I have no idea how far over my head they might have been but I quickly decided that expediency was the best approach
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis