From our own Military.com news page comes word that the
Army's Training and Doctrine Command wants to dump bayonet training. New
recruits just don't have enough time to learn all they need to prepare them for
today's wars in a 10-week basic training course, so teaching soldiers to gut
the enemy with a few inches of pig iron has got to go, according to Army Lt.
Gen. Mark Hertling.
"We were teaching Soldiers too much stuff," Hertling is
quoted as saying. He said bayonets don't fit on modern rifles anyway so the
training was kind of pointless.
Now, how long does it take to train a soldier to stick a
bayonet into the enemy? Maybe five minutes of classroom time spent drawing out
the idea on a chalkboard and then a few practice runs stabbing a straw filled
dummy, I would think. After all, most humans intuitively know how to jab
something with a sharp stick.
While I think most would agree that bayonet training may be
a bit superfluous on today's battlefields, the training might have some value in
providing soldiers some of that "warrior spirit," because further down in the story we
read this:
"Hertling
also wants combatives or hand-to-hand fighting to de-emphasize grappling or
basic wrestling moves. Instead, Soldiers need to learn to fight with their
hands and use anything they can grab -- whether it is a knife or stick -- as a
weapon, he added.
Recruits
need to learn how to use their hands, the St.
Louis native said. "A greater majority of recruits
have never been in a fistfight," he added."
Never been in a fistfight? What are they teaching kids in high
school these days?
