This father and son discuss everything from basic training and KP to field exercises and then take questions LIVE from the audience…
TRANSCRIPT – Transcript and Subtitles are generated automatically by YouTube and may contain errors.
and okay i’m going to introduce my son
josh
josh ambrose my youngest guy he’s
serving with the third id
down in georgia welcome josh how you
doing fine son how you doing buddy good
to see you
all right so let’s go back to basic
training what time you guys get up in
the morning
uh depends on the day but normally 5 30.
how many days a week you work uh every
day
and at 5 30 and then what happens and we
would
get downstairs for pt by six okay um
do pt whether that’s in the rock pit
or if it’s going for a run sounds so far
so good we’re kind of similar
but now we’re going to get to the mess
hall
so tell me how the food was so
i know you called it sos we still have
it it’s just biscuits and gravy now
okay creamy beef right um
and uh yeah so we would just have like
15 minutes to get in and out
right okay and uh
uh tell me about kp uh we didn’t do kp
in
okay no you do kp ever i have not
i don’t know i mean does the army still
have kps yes yes it does
really yes okay i thought it was
finished no they still do
sergeant major or the captain of the
world lieutenant never walked through
the ranks
expecting you guys no really wow we had
a lot of that
here i have a common area and then
my own room you have an own room yes he
has his own room guys
how about that so in rome yeah
what were yours like what barracks were
you like i don’t know
the whole platoon was in about 40 guys
in the states the bunk beds yeah
yeah yeah
bunk beds it was like basic training
basically you had that right yeah
so it was basic all the time we had the
base thing where we were okay so yeah
when i i go into my barracks i have a
room key
go in i have my kitchen my uh washer
yeah
has his own kitchen guys my own washer
dryer
um i have uh
my bathroom and shower and then there’s
a private shower
well so my roommate and i share our
kitchen our
washer dryer and our bathroom we have so
you have two rooms and a kitchen
yeah it’s like a common area and then
two rooms next to it wow
okay that sounds good to me it’s a lot
more uh
technology of course oh yeah right tell
me about the thing on your head
the light the camera what is that thing
night vision no
that’s all that is the like the black
tube
no there’s like something over here all
the time it’s like looks like a camera
the thing that like pivots yeah it’s
night vision oh that’s night vision okay
anything else that you have um well we
have
uh we have zoom scopes now so like we
can see like our
optical zoom sights which you guys
didn’t have
you just iron sights and your weapon uh
m4 nice
it it works uh what would you prefer
um well they’ve been trying to upgrade
to something a bit newer
for a while now and they’re trying to do
that now too i think they got down to
like three different prototypes that
they’re
choosing between but the m4 it’s just
if it gets dirty it breaks it doesn’t
break but it just stops working there’s
an operator
yeah well that’s like a lot of weapons
they said that about the m16 i never had
a problem with the m16
a lot of guys like the m14 it was a much
more reliable weapon
and i think it was more accurate but the
m16 was like
automatic you know how long it was basic
um so mine
was six months because i had basic
and ait put together oh okay so it was
all one
it’s called osa it’s one station unit
training so we do
basic and then stay in the same unit to
do our
yeah that’s pretty for
finding some bonding there huh a long
time with the same guys yeah so you end
up
having the same drill sergeants the
entire time same instructors right
um and the same troops yeah and that’s
just for infantry
and combat mosses uh medics don’t do
that drivers don’t do that things like
that only the combat mosses do that
oh okay so what did you do when what
your basic was what ten weeks my big
eight weeks
eight weeks of basic training then now
we got a week leave
and then we uh i went back to fort
jackson south carolina to be a
i don’t know any idea how the army got
me to be a real vehicle mechanic
for some reason i was able to take
screws and nuts
a bolt a nut off a bolt faster than the
other guys and that’s how they
they sent me there so i went and then
from there i
i was at fort jackson and i spent eight
weeks doing that
and then i spent four months being held
over before i could get to jump school
oh wow so then they i became what they
call a fireman
a fireman great exemption from kp
low kp for a fireman i’d have to walk
around because we lived in tent city at
fort jackson south carolina
and i have to stoke and feed the coal
burning stoves in the tent
right so you still have tents like that
um so
we don’t have tents in
uh in the states but we were living in
tents and hungry and they got said you
had a
guy with the fire was with the coal
burning store we had electricity
see there you go upgrades 50 years later
i like that so we have we have
we have heaters it did get pretty cold
there at night so the heaters did
did help okay uh how about leave you get
any leaves any passes any
weekends off no because of cobin
normally we would have been able to go
out into like
into romania and stuff but uh we
couldn’t because of code we run a lot
out
out of the base okay i got a big
question for you here
tell me about covet situations in the
army
um so
when we were isolated on our own in
um when we were all on our own in
hungary it was just beco there
and there was nobody coming in or out it
was just us so we
really didn’t do much we didn’t really
like having much
structure for covet no exposure though
obviously
yeah no so they clamped down kind of
like quarantine
yeah i mean yeah because we were on our
base and we did what we did what we had
to do and
we never really left we never went into
town um
but yeah we didn’t really have to worry
about it there but when i was
before i left to go to um
europe i actually quarantined in the
barracks for two weeks before i could
even get on the plane yep
um then i had to quarantine in poland
oh really and then i would get kova test
every time i moved to a new location
um they had us go
to um like the tnp
all the time like you would get your
temperature taken uh when we got to
romania things really got locked down
where you would have to wear a mask
everywhere and everything like that okay
um but it wasn’t like that prior because
it was so isolated it was just a few
people
and we would have our bradleys oh yeah
so tell me about the heavy equipment you
use
uh so our bradleys they’re um that’s
part of your unit all the time
yeah our our units is
that that’s the main function of our
unit is bradley’s
mechanized yeah so if our bradleys are
down then
we’re down right we don’t do anything
without them
oh interesting okay and uh what about
tanks
uh we don’t use tanks but we have tanks
in our battalion that were working with
us
okay and uh when how was the food in
europe
what was it in hungary so
in romania it was really good because it
was an air force base
they get more jokes on facebook than
anybody if the air force does it’s like
air force food oh my god and uh
so like they had changes after 50 years
they had it so the air force base had a
24-hour defect so we could go and get
food whenever we wanted um
there was no sep there were set meal
times for real food but you could go get
sandwich and soup and
cereal whenever you wanted how about
downtown did you go downtown we couldn’t
we couldn’t go off base then what
happened
so that you already woke up you went to
hygiene you did your pt and now you’re
eating food
um so after we each out we would
normally head back to the barracks
okay into our bays get changed for the
day right and
um go whatever training we have okay for
that day
um how would you get there normally
there’s buses
oh you take a bus to training um it’s
kind of like school buses yeah
um how what would you run uh
or did they have yeah being in the
airborne outfit probably
we do a little bit more running but the
point is that no we do
uh no during basic because i mean you
weren’t airborne before basic
oh true yeah i’m sorry yes uh well basic
uh a62 that was sergeant west what’s
your
jewel soldier’s name uh my senior drill
sergeant was saint joel star and
alvarado
how many of you guys out there remember
your drill sergeant’s name matt
yeah okay of course it’s only 50 years
later still got the same hats okay
yeah mm-hmm wow 50 years old
you got to give you some credit you
don’t need to lighten up right yeah
i couldn’t imagine what it was like 50
years earlier than that
yeah you’re right that would have been
uh world war one
so okay and then what was your typical
day like
during what why in europe and europe
typical day which part of europe
okay temple germany and i mean
so germany since i was just traveling to
my unit
we didn’t really have a structure we
would wake up
do our own pt on our own you know
yeah like they trusted you to do pt i
mean they just kind of said go for a run
and we would go for a run
together
okay um and then we but
again this is because i was we were
basically just 10 of us
um this is the army yeah okay
yeah we ran a lot in fact they had me
running
and maybe you could relate to this they
would send me for five gallons of prop
blast
and they would send me down headquarters
battery to the motor pool to get five
gallons of prop blast
and they said no you they have that down
at a battery
so i’d run a quarter mile down to the a
battery
uh private campus reporting for five
gallons of prop blast
and they they go no no they sent it to c
battery
yesterday you got to go over there and
get it that the other chasing board
stretchers
two by four stretchers the other canopy
lights we had to run up the canopy
lights
what about the time you had to run five
miles because you crashed the
xo yeah don’t say that yeah okay well
okay one time i was
driving the xo and he asked me if i knew
how to drive a stick
and of course from new york i’m going to
say of course i know how to drive a
stick
but i was finding them and grinding them
or grinding them and finding them
and in fort bragg they had tank trails
with big plows would look like snow on
the side of the road but it was plowed
up there and
i ran into this snow even though it
wasn’t snowy
and the xo made me run back to the
barracks like about five miles so
he got another right something he called
some other guy up and they got a driver
and brought it back well at least you
were a track star before
before you joined the army that’s true
that was captain jackie woods
headquarters battery he’s first to the
320th artillery
fort bragg 1967. there you go
yeah that was thanks josh remember that
leave time on
weekend passes what is that you go like
locally so yeah
since i’m in georgia i can go to
savannah and stuff like that is it
when on a weekend you’re allowed to go
up to 150 miles away
without a pass okay if you want to go
further than that you have to have a
pass
right um but everything i want is
right there i have beaches i have
yeah everything that i could want so i’m
not really too we used to drive home
from fort bragg
on a friday afternoon if they give us a
three-day leave they let us leave at 12
o’clock we could take about eight hours
to drive
from from fayetteville to uh to
outside new york city uh we had three or
four guys in the
shelby gt350 which just came out
my friend ronnie tochi was the mayor of
michelle he’s
involved with the vets there in
westchester county new york
we got a ticket one time
and uh sure enough somehow we
they let the guys go you know cops are
nice state troopers paratroopers
same thing uh how about recreation
in the army now you have a pool wall you
got a softball field
um we have the gym that’s mainly where
me and my friends go most of the time
okay um
there’s a pool in there if we wanted oh
really jumping yeah
um there’s a pool a rock wall so it’s a
nice modern gym
yeah um we also have on base like
because it’s the bases are more like
small towns now
right they’re not really like how they
used to be where it’s just a military
base it’s also like a community
of course so we have like um
we have schools we have uh
like playgrounds and baseball
parks exactly and there’s a golf course
there’s the uso
which is like a free lounge for military
members to go to right
um has like video games and stuff like
that in there
it’s like so you have an em club i don’t
know what that is and this is a man’s
club yeah that’s the uso
okay yeah so uso’s on every base like
okay
yeah yeah um the only real extent of the
uso i used to have when i got out
after my second wound i got out of the
hospital and they they reassigned me to
uh
the vision headquarters rear and i in
benoit i used to have to drive to saigon
and pick up
big wigs off the airport generals or
politicians or whatever
and driving back to the headquarters and
uh
yeah the uso was downtown saigon so that
was uh i
never got in there but uh there’s also
usos in most airports like atlanta
airport has a nice one
oh yeah that’s nice there was uso
everything’s free of charge
yeah yeah so the vets go in and they get
refreshments and tvs and so like i when
i was in uh
germany we there was uso and we could go
in there get some soda
get chips get burgers nice for free
and how about the benefits how are the
benefits in the army today pretty good i
mean there’s a lot of discounts
everywhere
yeah um we never got that yeah
tell me about the medical thing what uh
president trump did
well it’s uh now you can go to your own
doctor
oh yeah we always have to go to the
military so so yes and no um you can
but you also like if you get
if you get an injury on base they’re
just going to take you to the military
hospital right if you get wounded
or sick yeah they’re going to send you
to the medics
but if you’re if like i’m home on leave
right now and i get hurt i can go to the
any document yeah
yeah okay oh how’d you get to uh when
you signed up how did you
get to georgia where’d you go for basic
fort benning
okay so how’d you get there from new
york they flew us really they flew you
okay we got on a train from
we went to whitehole street down in
lower manhattan and they had about
600 guys i guess or whatever maybe 5 400
or whatever everybody got shots
first of all and then he got on a train
for a train ride to fort bragg
i don’t know before gordon georgia yeah
i was in fort gordon
and then from fort gordon i went to fort
jackson
and then fort jackson back to fort
benning and from fort benning
uh to fort
bragg and from fort bragg to fort
campbell
and then to fort saigon and then back to
fort hamilton brooklyn i uh
i knew i only had six months to go when
i got back and they they were going to
reassign me to the 82nd
back in fort bragg and they served 101st
when we were still on jump status
and uh i i wrote i said look it i got
six months left i’m not going to
want to uh you know
be spit shining my boots every day you
know
did that before and did the war thing
lost a lot of good buddies and
so i said i want to be stationed close
to home so i wrote everybody in the
world i wrote the governor
i wrote the senators i wrote the
congressman i wrote the mayor in new
york i wrote the
president for a uh you know to get me
try to get me out of fort bragg and
station me close to home
i was giving up hope and the jets won
the super bowl back there 50 years ago
that’s not gonna happen again i know
okay but miracles do happen get ready
so what happens i’m packing my bag the
day if the monday after
the jets won the super bowl in uh 68
and uh i hear the the bell rings and i
go out to the hallway and look
downstairs because like a four-story
walk-up and uh like i said who is it and
the guy says western union like a
western union what the heck
so i mean we’re halfway down he comes
here he gives me a telegram
it says stop do not report to fort bragg
north carolina
report to fort hamilton brooklyn which
is 30 miles away
and i said hallelujah check this out
like the last day
the guy brings me a telegram and signed
united states senator jacob javits
from i got the letter over here right so
i say this is so cool so i report for my
duty the next day
it was the worst duty in the world it
was the worst dude in the world
it was funeral details not everything
can be peaches and cream in the army
you’re gonna get if you if you get what
you ask for
it’s not going to be what you asked for
but it was not good
doing funeral details being in charge of
a ceremonial
squad we had four or five riflemen we
had poll bearers
uh and if if uh
an officer wasn’t there i’d have to give
the flag to the parent or the
wife of the soldier which really
stunk because uh i lost a lot of buddies
over there and i could come back here
it’s like
who needs ptsd again i mean in a
different form like so weird
and uh and the guys who were in the uh
squad were like the 30 dozen guys
mother rapers and father rapers and
criminals and
they were like on their last section
article 15
kind of deal all these articles and they
were like they were like
one step into prison and yet they were
doing
and it was like the worst guys in the
world to try to control and
be in charge of right so this is my
squad that i’m working with now
um we finished uh our work in hungary
and wanted to get one last picture
together before we headed out nice
but this is actually the last picture i
took in
in that country okay so that was
actually right after a training mission
with the hungarians
how do you operate the hungarian is it
good soldiers yes
you sure you’re being kind they’re not
as distracted as we are though right
they uh they have their issues but every
army does amen to that brother
next go ahead uh that’s me and one of my
teammates uh we were just doing some
night training
uh walking under nods and uh
this is also in hungary and
yeah it was uh we just would walk around
in different environments uh
do different tasks right using night
vision that way we’re proficient in that
and uh make sure that we can see well
and operate well through a tube versus
just with our with our eyes
night vision we first got like the first
night vision ever used
yeah yeah starlight it’s not light
scopes
hey it’s 50 years different here it’s
really cool okay
and that’s in germany um and
the uh we would just a couple buddies an
hour every night would go wrecking
and we would like have a little cookout
and then go go for a ruck
just to stay in shape um retraining
we’re getting new vehicles uh we’re
modernizing
really so we’re getting new equipment
we’re getting
the newer versions of the bradleys uh
bigger gun
better uh electronics nice what kind of
talent what kind of uh tanks
associated with you the abrams yeah okay
there’s 90 millimeter
120 oh sorry that’s big
i think it’s 120 okay that’s okay and uh
what’s up with uh you you
how often do you trade with your rifles
and your weapon other weapons and throw
hand grenades and stuff like that
all the time okay yeah all right
okay great josh my pleasure we’re gonna
do a sound off section now thank you
very much son love you
welcome home thank you and uh you’re the
best kid
all right thank you out there we’re
going to come back here and do a little
sound off now
okay kilo 19. they offer ant way
to get easy college credits like
correspondence courses
yeah they do so you can do uh
every school you do in the army um like
airborne school
i don’t know about airborne school
actually but certain schools in the army
will give you credits for college oh
great
um basic training alone gives you like a
credit or something like that
um and then life experience stuff yeah
okay and then you can also take college
courses while you’re in the army
and then you also have your gi bill when
you get out to take free i did that i
went to north carolina state
yep when i was at fort bragg that was
great okay yeah good
okay next uh any another comment
using the second of the 69th ar
third id on kelly uh fort benning you
know what it is
yep all right there you go thank you
keylan
actually i have a friend in 269. really
yeah okay
he’s actually just upstate there you go
yeah small world what’s his name
uh shout him out um johnston johnston
how you doing there johnston
welcome hope you’re watching all right
what you got next here
what’s your most eleven bravo one one b
still the same thank you kilo 19.
okay marie kenderman hello josh thank
you for your service i can lay my head
and sleep because of men like you and
your dad go military amen
on us thank you there marie appreciate
that
okay kilo 19. i remember my drills one
ended up being
my platoon sergeant in korea years later
that’s my worst fear
if my drill sergeant ends up being in
charge of me down the line that’s my
worst fear
wow yeah i never thought of that yeah
yeah wow that’s crazy all right that’s
an interesting experience
anybody else could top that
okay where were the buses the whole time
uh they just kept on pushing back the
buses um
in germany like when we when we wouldn’t
get picked up
and they just kept on saying oh it’s
gonna happen another week or another
week i don’t know it’s
beyond me it’s not my job i don’t get
paid enough to figure that out exactly
right that’s the army
next question are you going to retire in
the military
uh that depends on how the next few
years go
how how long are you now um i
i have a five four and a half years no
how long are you now a year and a half
he’s already a year and a half already
yeah oh my god time flies a year and a
half
okay well uh i hope he does
he’s got some good ideas about using
technical abilities next
no in-ranks inspections no really that
i talked about we talked about that
before thank you keela my team about
checking out your belt buckle and uh
something you
you got a whisker on the side of your
face or something you missed it oh no
so they bust your traps they’ll if they
see that
that you’re messed up they’re gonna say
something about it and you’ll get smoked
or not smoked you’ll get correctively
trained
new army you can’t get smoke you can get
correctively trained
um but yeah no
you you if they’re going to look at you
once in a while and they’ll be like hey
let’s crochet let me ask you a question
when they let have you lined up for
inspection you’re going to be
you have your four squads probably and
you line up and
you say parade rest you stay a parade
right
or you stay at ease and the the captain
most likely is walking up and down the
major xor
jet or whatever and he’s looking at you
up and down back and forth
you never do that no really no
inspections like that
join up again man re-up all right next
question
this is a great show thank you very much
prop blast was not a real thing right oh
yeah prop glass was right
prop glass is just the wind that makes
the
is made from the propeller it’s it’s
like accelerated
wind and when you jumped out of a plane
not only did you you fall straight down
but you got pushed back
with the prop blast and
that’s prop last but no it wasn’t a real
thing to find
five gallons of it because it was air
and that you know they just make you
get jerked around by like uh being
making you stupid
it was keeping you stupid what does that
say
exactly thank you no that was some nco
sending a new private on the useless
endeavor
lol exactly right yeah canopy lights
the whole deal watch this liquid squelch
oh is he talking about the uh biscuits
and gravy
no liquid squelches uh squelches are
stuck on the radio
oh yeah uh okay i don’t know is that
like
but oh yeah grit squares there you go oh
yeah okay i know what he’s talking about
right well like uh go find the like
blinker fluid
or something like that like just go go
do something get
kick rocks they wanted us to get a 2×4
stretcher
and canopy lights for our canopy for the
parachute
and prop blast and i think that this is
about the only three things i heard
any uh any other guys out there got an
idea about
being goofed on in the army when you’re
trying to send you somewhere to get
something
and everybody else is in on the game
except you
okay there you go josh
um probably the
way what is the coolest piece of
technology
in josh’s opinion in the modern army uh
probably the
that i’ve worked with uh you know
that i’ve worked with is gonna probably
be the computer systems in the bradleys
it’s crazy we didn’t have that we had
these
glasses that we had to use and uh
binoculars that was it they had one pair
of binoculars i think for the whole
company
yeah yeah that was it and uh now we all
have one strapped to our
our rifles right yeah we have that you
have scopes
uh yeah they have scopes on their rifles
we didn’t have any scopes except the
snipers did you have snipers in your
unit yep they
uh it’s usually like six or seven people
what do they use
uh barrett’s um like 50 cals they have a
couple different ones 50 50 caliber
rifle
wow so we have a 50 caliber a bear 50
calories
and they have they have like some ar-15
variant one
two or three miles right yeah but you
don’t shoot it that far well you know
they have some guy kill somebody about
like a mile and a half away or two miles
yeah but that was a one-time thing
it’s amazing that he wasn’t able to make
that shot that’s good though let’s see
that’s the amount there okay
uh did the thirty dozen guys ever get
out of line
your funerals hi guys you asking me
about general absolutely
here we go you want to hear some stupid
stuff
we go in to the funeral parlor
you know before everybody the family’s
allowed to get there and friends
so what do the guys do they go in there
and they get a deck of cards
and you know the guy’s holding his hands
like this across his chest
they put like four or five aces in his
hand like he’s playing cards
could you imagine this these guys and
then
every time something went wrong like
they trip or they stumble or
slip or but the f word would come out
i’m talking about
right there at the funerals right
at the side of the burial it was crazy
these guys were nuts
you’re right 30 000 guys good question
okay the old radios we had right brick
25
was that in
oh vietnam i remember somebody did that
with an e5
when i got to uh i used to send new
privates to
camo shop and that’s what trick e7
okay you get that okay
next last question is
yeah you know the funerals are bad but
you know
every time i see a hearse go by now with
a
flag over the coffin
it never ends that was 50 years ago yeah
talking about ptsd it’s like everywhere
around you so
thank you very much and uh appreciate
you guys listening welcome josh welcome
back home buddy
enjoy the rest of your service and uh
happy new year everybody uh god bless
you
we’ll see you next week for another show
and
welcome home
