How hard can it be? Surprisingly not that much. My time in the Marine Corps was similar. Training-wise it's all pre-planned by officers for staff NCOs to execut

How hard can it be? Surprisingly not that much. My time in the Marine Corps was similar. Training-wise it's all pre-planned by officers for staff NCOs to execute but when push comes to shove all that gets thrown out of the window at a minute's notice. Because of the escalation of the war in Iraq our training schedule was "lost" and we began an accelerated infantry course whereby all weekends were taken out, humps amped up, and classes extended. What's always been amazing to me has been the ability for people to adapt. The weak ones weeded out from boot camp end up in infantry training capable of handling quite a lot of stress and workload. You'll _feel_ tired but when the entire platoon has been asked to practice drills for another hour you simply push through and do it. When boots are on the ground, however, it's not so similar. There's so much downtime in between missions. And in time that's when accidents happen and people get careless. Maintaining discipline and order has paramount and that's when the hours and days of reflex drilling snap to and you stay alive for yet another day.