Advanced Individual Training
by Andreas Mueller
Last updated -- Oct, 2001
Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, TX
--- Aug - Oct 10th, 1987 ---
Hopefully you read my recollection of Basic Training prior
to reading this.
Out of roughly 40 Maniacs that started Basic, we had maybe 35 left. A few days after the basic
training graduation ceremony, we piled our few belongings into a chartered bus and headed to Ft. Sam
Houston for a new chapter in our respective military careers. I remember spirits were high, we
had a great time travelling to Ft. Sam. We had grown into a tight knit bunch, I really don't
think we even had many feuds amongst our group, everyone got along pretty well.
We arrived at Ft. Sam late at night, so late in fact, that there was a lot of confusion about
where our new training area and barracke were located. Our bus driver and post personnel
finally noodled it through, took us to the correct barracks and we inhabited our new "home" to be
for the next 10 weeks. We spent a few days "inprocessing" to Ft. Sam and our training "acadamy",
since we were not a "full" platoon anymore, we received a few folks that would complete our
platoon. One person in particular comes to mind: A sargent from a Special Forces unit, green
beret, jumpwings, etc. Since all of us were going to Jumpschool next, he was sort of an icon to
most of us.
The training itself was strenous. The day would start with PT early in the morning (4-5am?). Then
it was back to the barracks for personal hygiene and of course to clean the barracks. The school was
run by Cadre, they weren't as tough as our drill sargents, but you still had to be on your toes.
Then it was off to breakfast, from there then march to our classroom. We had 2 great teachers, I
think they enjoyed having us, since we all knew each other, team work was already not an issue for
us. Amidst our bunch of maniacs was also some unusual medical talent. Turns out that Noble
Ezukanma, a really nice, softspoken fellow from Africa, revealed that in fact he was a Doctor in
his native country, and that he only complete this 10 week course to be commissioned as a Captain.
It was great having him in our class, as he at times would question our instructors on various
medical procedures. He was the only maniac we lost after AIT, and only because of his being promoted
into the Officer Ranks as a Capt. I'm pretty sure he didn't go through Jumpschool with us. We
learned everything there is to know about combat medical aid, in other words very similar
to being an EMT in the civilian world. Only our training involved treatment of wounded in times
of combat, including bio, chemical and radiation injuries. We drew blood from each other, gave
each other IV's, gave each other shots. There were a lot of written exams, which Doc Ezukama "aced"
consistently. Towards the end of this 10 week course, we spent about a week in the field, where all
of our training was applied in simulated combat environments. We had to find, triage, treat and
evacuate the wounded, using the knowledge from our training.
To recap, AIT was great. Weekends we usually had off, i.e. no classes, you could actually go to
the PX, Commissary, Movie Theater, etc. There of course was an E-Club (Enlisted Club), in which
some of us spent a good deal of time "tieing one on". Richard McKellop's talent of "doing the
mule" was revealed. Don't ask. There were females going through classes as well, so that in itself
made things more interesting. A few times some of us went to the Riverwalk in San Antonio during
a weekend pass. What a blast that always turned out to be. After the graduation (10/10/1987) some of us took
leave, actually the more I think about it, most of us did. For some reason I didn't, I went on
to the next phase of our platoons training, which was
Basic Airborne School, in Ft. Benning, GA.