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Michelle Khare's 48 Hours as an Army Recruit at Fort Benning

Michelle Khare · ▶ 14:22 · 9 min read
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Overview

In this episode of Challenge Accepted, Michelle Khare spends time at Fort Benning to see what it takes to be a soldier in the United States Army. The episode is sponsored by the Army. She is joined by fellow YouTuber Austen Alexander. Over roughly 48 hours they get what the narration calls "a very small taste" of soldier life: a team obstacle course, airborne tower training, a planned skydive with the Army's Golden Knights, a close look at a tank, and a session with the Army Marksmanship Unit. Khare is careful to say that her experience "barely scratches the surface" of what real soldiers go through. Her recurring theme is how being part of a team changes the way you handle fear and failure.

9 min read
0:43

A Team Obstacle Course With Strangers

The first lesson is teamwork. The instructors present obstacle courses as one of the Army's tools for building teams, and they tell Khare that her small stature will matter less than usual because this is a team effort. She is put with four people she has never met and given less than two minutes to make a plan. She works out that on the tall walls she will have to go either first or last. The group agrees to keep three points of contact and to push from the bottom while people at the top grab climbers by their belts and haul them over.

Khare admits she was nervous and that she, like everyone, has a fear of heights. She says that fear "almost melts away" when you are part of a team. An instructor says that recognizing how much more you can accomplish together than alone is "an integral part of being a soldier." Afterward Khare says she was surprised the team succeeded, because they had looked at the obstacles and thought they were a short team. The instructor points out that they did it with people they had known for about five minutes.

2:16

The Race, and a Rope Climb Redemption

Next the teams are put head to head. The losing team will do 50 push-ups each. Austen and Khare trade jokes beforehand: he says he can't help being tall, and she claims she has "baby hands" and can't grip.

The race includes crawling on elbows and knees, pushing through a crowd, and a rope climb. Khare had a personal stake in the rope. A few years earlier she had failed a similar climb at Marine boot camp. This time she did "even worse" at first and got stuck less than halfway up. She says it felt like fifth-grade gym class, being laughed at while hanging on. Then she realized her teammates were encouraging her, not laughing, and she decided she had to reach the top to honor their effort. She did, which she describes as finally redeeming the Marine boot camp failure.

After the rope the two teams were neck and neck. Austen's team gradually pulled ahead. Khare saw them struggle on the final obstacle and thought her team still had a chance, but Austen's team won. Austen's side told them they owed push-ups. Khare later refers to this as the first of her losses to Austen.

4:21

Why One Officer Keeps Serving

An officer overseeing the visit says he expects Khare and Austen to give it everything they've got. He tells them they are now part of something bigger, a legacy going back to the founding of the country. He describes what the Army gave him personally: two master's degrees, the chance to travel the world, and the chance to learn foreign languages. He says it has given him more than he could ever give back, and that this is one reason he continues to serve.

5:09

Airborne Training on the 34-Foot Towers

Fort Benning's Tower Branch introduces Khare to airborne training, which the instructors describe as something that happens uniquely at Fort Benning within the Army. The focus at Tower Branch is learning how to exit an aircraft, practiced by jumping from 34-foot towers in a harness.

An instructor says Army parachuting dates to the early 1940s and has repeatedly given the military the upper hand in engagements throughout U.S. history. Khare has heard there is a height requirement for paratroopers, and the narration treats it as an open question whether she will "make the cut." The instructors explain the requirement is practical. A paratrooper has to reach up and hook their static line to the anchor line cable, which runs along the long axis of the aircraft. Arm length matters as much as height, so someone shorter with longer arms can qualify, as can someone taller with shorter arms. They decide Khare should be able to reach it.

At the tower door, the instructor tells her to leap out as far as she can. After her jump he says, "I've had students do worse." Khare calls it terrifying. Alone at the top she had too much time to get in her head. When she was with the team, she was focused on needing to go and be there for the others, and the fear felt much smaller. The narration presents the tower jump as preparation for the next challenge.

6:49

The Golden Knights Skydive That Didn't Happen

The next challenge was a skydive from 12,500 feet with the U.S. Army Golden Knights, which the team describes as its professional parachute team. The narration says the Golden Knights represent the top level of free-fall parachuting and are named for the gold medals they have won in competition. Khare and Austen were fitted with Golden Knights jumpsuits. One instructor joked it was "the latest in fall fashion."

The safety briefing included a warning about the "two spinny things on the airplane." An instructor explained that this is why characters in The Incredibles don't wear capes, since a cape can get caught in propellers. Khare had never seen the movie. When she started asking her instructor about his 10,000 jumps, he cut her off with "don't ask."

Then the weather intervened. A Golden Knights member explains that clouds are skydiving's biggest nemesis. The decision comes down to whether there is a hole in the clouds and whether it is big enough to meet FAA requirements for putting jumpers through it. There wasn't, and the jump was called off. Khare says she was really nervous but still wanted to do it, and was disappointed. A team member calls it a difficult but necessary decision. While they want to give soldiers interesting experiences, they also have to do it safely, so they made a safety call.

9:08

Inside an 82-Ton Tank

To keep the visitors busy, the soldiers showed them a tank. A crew member describes it as a $6.3 million machine weighing about 82 tons in its current configuration. He shows Khare the driver's compartment, where the driver lies back in something like a recliner and looks up into three periscopes to see forward. Khare is delighted that something so big has windshield wipers.

The crew member says the tank's main purpose is to carry its M256 120mm cannon. He says it can engage targets with fairly pinpoint accuracy out to about 5,000 meters, with a projectile flight time of usually about a second to a second and a half. Khare notes that the round hits almost instantly, but there is a delay of a few seconds before you hear the explosion.

When Khare asks whether he has fired a tank in combat, he says yes. He spent 15 months in Iraq with a unit out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. He describes what it is like inside. When an AK-47 round hits the tank, it barely makes a dent: you hear something like popcorn outside and feel no vibration. When an RPG goes off nearby, "you know it." He says it is scary but not so bad if you are inside with the hatches shut.

10:40

The Army Marksmanship Unit and a Shoot-Off

With the weather still preventing a safe skydive, they went to the firing range. A member of the Army Marksmanship Unit explains that the unit competes nationally and internationally, including at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Khare asks whether that makes him a full-time athlete for the Army, and he says you could put it that way. He explains that the lessons learned from weapon systems used in competition are fed back into what can be used in combat.

Khare says she was awkward when handed a series of firearms. She shot the Mark 12, which the instructor describes as basically an M16 with a higher-quality barrel, a better trigger, and a suppressor. The 300-yard range has electronic targets downrange. Red lights at the front are chronograph screens that measure muzzle velocity, so shooters get instant digital feedback on accuracy. Khare calls that very helpful, and compares the setup to the doors in Monsters, Inc.

After some test rounds the instructor called "perfect," Khare got her chance at redemption in a shoot-off against Austen. She lost again. Austen pointed out that on the last course of fire she had shot the pistol one-handed, joking that she must have strong front delts and that he didn't, so he had used both hands. Khare responds by calling him "Austen 'Baby Hands' Alexander."

13:22

A Second Attempt at Fort Bragg

Khare closes her Fort Benning week by repeating that her experience was limited. She says even that gave her much greater appreciation for soldiers' service. The skydive was still unfinished, so a week later she and Austen flew to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to meet the Golden Knights again. The colonel who had sent them off the first time came in from Kentucky to see them off again. Asked whether he's ready, Austen says he's "always ready," and the episode ends with them heading out for the jump.

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