The Army just made it harder to graduate from basic training

FORT JACKSON, S.C. ― It’s day three of basic training’s culminating field training exercise, and the soldiers of 3rd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment are lined up along the side of a road on a thickly wooded training range.

It looks a lot like a scene out of “American Gladiators,” actually — two soldiers at a time are suiting up to whack each other about the head and body with foam-padded pugil sticks. The weapons are stand-ins for rifles, and the soldiers are in round one of a battalion-wide combatives competition on the road to graduation.

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