Extensive lessons

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER

Associated Press

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.

Military museums allow visitors to experience the rough-and-tumble jerk of a parachute jump, the barked orders of an Army drill sergeant or the segregated training endured by the first African-Americans to enter the Marine Corps.

Whether you are a hardened military veteran or one who’s never worn a uniform, several military museums in the Carolinas offer extensive lessons in military service as the Nov. 11 Veterans Day draws near.

In Fayetteville, N.C., the soaring Airborne and Special Operations Museum attracts between 120,000 to 175,000 visitors every year and tells the story of how America’s military developed the strategy of dropping fully-armed soldiers into battle from the skies.

A 15-foot sculpture of the paratrooper dubbed “Iron Mike” stands guard at its glass-and-girder front entry, which evokes both the 250-foot “jump towers” that paratroopers use to train and the wingspan of the C-47 aircraft that dropped soldiers onto battlefields in World War II.

The latest addition to the Army’s military museums is the Army’s Basic Training Combat Museum located on Fort Jackson, in Columbia, S.C., which reopened in July after a two-year renovation.

More than 60,000 male and female soldiers graduate every year from basic training at Fort Jackson, which is the Army’s largest training site. The museum offers guests and family members a taste of their grueling 10 weeks of indoctrination and combat training.

“The museum boasts a number of high-speed exhibits that zoom in directly on how civilians are turned into soldiers, interwoven with Fort Jackson’s past,” said the two-star general in charge of the post, Maj. Gen. James Milano.

Visitors may be startled by drill sergeants who appear in holographic images bellowing commands, allowing them to “feel as if he or she has enlisted in the Army and is standing there in their Army combat uniform,” Milano says.

Check out a fully loaded duffel bag, or try to lift and shoot an Army rifle. Listen as soldiers march by and learn some of the drill sergeants’ cadence calls that keep soldiers sharp and in step.

The museum gives visitors a sense of how rough training once was with displays of World War I-era barracks, complete with wood-burning, pot-bellied stoves, metal beds and modest rations.

“I learned how they’d done basic training in the past,” said Pvt. Christopher Thorngate, 26, visiting the museum with his grandparents Dale, 76, and Janet, 70, of Salem, W.Va., a day before his own graduation from basic training. “They worked the simulations in very well, so it’s not just history, and you don’t get bored.”

Grandfather Thorngate, who retired from the Air Force after 26 years, said he was pleased to learn how present-day training made use of combat weapons and tactics.

While most Marines recall their basic training taking place either at Parris Island, S.C., or Camp Pendleton, Calif., there is a third site few know about: the Montford Point Marine Museum, located near Camp Lejeune, N.C., at Camp Gilbert H. Johnson.

“We are the Marine Corps basic-training site you’ve never heard of,” jokes Finney Greggs, a retired Marine and director of the small museum located in one of the original white wooden, single story barracks buildings where African-Americans were segregated from white Marines as they trained from 1942 to 1949.

The museum holds photos, letters, uniforms and other mementos from blacks who endured tough training to earn the eagle, globe and anchor Corps’ insignia and disprove the notion they weren’t worthy because of the color of their skin.

African-Americans gained entry to the Marines after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order forcing the commandant to allow them to train.