Why? Because screaming at recruits worked well in Korea? In Vietnam? In Iraq? In Afghanistan? America lost all those wars.
The only wars America hasn't lost were won by the two least yellingest branches in the military: the Navy and the Air Force. Mostly the Air Force, though, and especially the big ones like 2003 and 1991, which were the only major wars the U.S. has won in the past
70 years, need I remind.
FWIW there are some pretty brutal anecdotes about the Vietnam stuff.
Some old guy told me how he was nearly drowned by a DS because he bumped him in the head (he didn't know how to swim properly) during flotation training and the DS dragged him under water until he passed out. When he woke up he coughed up a bunch of water and got yelled at. Yeah, great training, he knows how to swim now for sure. He told me that like it was just normal, which I guess it was, since he didn't have expectations, but I'd expect my leaders to be better people.
Want another one? How about a decade and a half ago, instead of 45 years ago? Back when 2008 was gearing up and dudes had to be trained for Iraq deployments, there was a battalion of medics getting ready to ship out of Fort Riley. They had a woman, if you can believe it(!), in their command company. The colonel commanding was some codger the Army dragged out of individual retirement for wartime call up and they ran a bunch to get in shape. The woman fell, for some reason or another (I think she was overheating), and someone stopped to try to help her. Colonel's response was "leave her, if she dies, we'll be stronger for it," and he wasn't actually joking, as it turned out! He got drummed out for nearly killing someone IIRC was the end of that one.
A few guys who do the Vietnam-style stuff today
have ended up killing guys by giving them hyperthermia because they don't believe in thermometers or weather forecasts (or, apparently, basic medical training). No doubt the brutality of the training,
in contrast to the abbreviated courses of WW2 that primarily focused on building bodily strength, contributed to the morale problems of the US military through it all.
Kids get yelled enough online,
and kill themselves in their closets because some teenagers said something mean on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever. Yelling had a point when the guys in the room only knew themselves and their immediate pasts, and some dude would always lie and say he was the toughest dude around. The DI walks in and smacks him a bit, he's humbled by it, then everyone moves on.
Kids don't believe in second chances. They think if you blow it the first time, it's over forever, and so they're extremely fatalistic. They expect to die young, because they've grown up reading articles about how "Boomers" ruined the world, and climate change will kill us all 20 years from now. They also aren't in the business of learning by themselves, mostly because no one teaches them how to do this, either. Not their parents,
who often are too busy working sometimes multiple jobs just to pay for food; not their teachers,
who think the Internet is a great source of self-pedagogy because teachers are overworked themselves; and not their DIs, who think yelling will straighten them out because...listen, it just will, okay.
I'm sure the Iron Duke held the same opinion of the cat o' nine tails, but only Singapore is morally strong enough to retain the lash as a form of corrective punishment for military recruits.
The best place I've seen young kids learn is literally at my work where I occasionally show people how to do stuff and watch them for a bit, show them how to do it if they screw up, and where people only yell because I work in a loud place where everyone wears ear protection.
Shockingly enough if you show someone how to do something, they will learn. If you yell at someone and tell them to do it better, without showing them, they won't improve at all. If you show them how to do something, be patient, and wait, they will learn better than being shown how to do something, yelled at, and being shown again.
The current training change is because some older Soldiers grew up where the Vietnam-style "beat the shit out of them until they bleed" was going out of style, so the DSes who were bad back in the day (the '90's) then simply had to deal with being assholes other ways, usually through verbal abuse and insane punishment duties that resulted in guys dying in drowning or heatstroke. Because the DS never laid a hand on 'em it ain't his fault that guy was just a weak pussy, duh.
It's not productive. You aren't a better Soldier for surviving because your DS was some hard ass or whatever. It just means you're a bit tougher, maybe (or you had a real chip on your shoulder for the DS to smack you around), but for every tough dude there's another three or four guys who had the strict-but-fair DS face that was mentoring as a DS should. Not everyone in the Army has to be a badass Ranger or 18-whatever, and I'm not even sure if those dudes had hard DS's, since you only get one go at Basic usually. A soft and fluffy DS would work just as fine for a Patriot operator, a truck driver, or a vehicle mechanic. You aren't more disciplined because you got yelled at in BCT "back in the day" you're just more tolerant of people yelling at you. That doesn't actually translate to being capable of being shot at.
Discipline isn't groupthink. Discipline is following orders when they're lawful and sound, providing constructive criticism to a Commander when it matters, and being taught the right way to do stuff through Battle Drills and routine training. I don't expect a Joe to question being ordered "driver, forward, fast," in an ambush situation, but I expect him to be able to know that he can safely tell his Commander that someone did a crime without being penalized for it because he learned that criminals get punished.
Otherwise America might as well return to the 1970's and allow drugs in the barracks again, require fire guards to carry sidearms, and generally be bad. Soldiers should be allowed to bitch to their Commander's boss or Commander about their CO being a doofer or sarn't being a bully. They shouldn't expect to experience the workplace toxic bullying that goes on in Basic. Save that for the real Army. Congrats, recruit, you aren't in the baby leagues anymore, now you get to experience being belittled by a fat man developing jaundice because he's taking his anger about his home life on you.
DS will still do it and kids will still rope themselves or jump out of windows or blow their brains out on the range, but maybe if DS are just 70% good and 30% bad, it would be less rough on the kids. I don't think it will help with retention but it will certainly help with hooking that contract's claws in! What's that? You got out of Basic, are being yelled at in your first Duty Station, and want to go home? Why? You made it through Basic, now you get to experience the real Army. Just remember what your DS said, when they go low, you go high, and now go practice your muscle ups to burn off some steam after work.
Next on the list will be free T shots for anyone who isn't hitting max on the ACFT. Roider Army would be the second-strongest Army after
WW2 Army. Call it Freedom Juice or something and put it in every Rip-It.
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