Training and allow the army to expand from 200,000 soldiers to before5 million soldiers the war would be concluded. In that they would train 65,000 officer candidates to help lead that army. Here from all types of training, Ranger School, airborne school, one station unit training for the these are your youngest soldiers that come in, and they will begin to become infantrymen , and they will go through what we still call basic training, and then advanced individual training. They will go through those courses, the gas chambers, learn how to utilize their weapon systems, learn how to read maps, learn first aid, anything a soldier will need to survive on the modern battlefield, they will begin to teach it here. Then you can go to airborne school. Airborneall the soldiers for the entire armed forces of the United States at fort benning. If you are a navy seal you will come here for airborne training. If you are in the pararescue for the air force you will come infort benning to be trained the use of the parachute and how to land and all that type of thing. When parachutes first started at fort benning it was volunteers for the 29th u. S. Infantry regiment, 44 of them, and two officers that became what was known as the test platoon at fort benning. Time period. 1941 they would make the first combat jumps as infantry soldiers. They decided they would expand it to the battalion. Eventually they did that and eventually it was expanded into divisions. And airborne was supposed to be able to be deployed behind enemy lines as they were at normandy, and other places, in order to capture important bridges, towns, road junctures, and so on , until they were relieved by those attacking forces coming up. Ocs is officer candidate school. By generallished George Kaplan marshall, chief of staff of the army. A. 5rmy would expand to million men during this time period and a needed young soldiers that were qualified to lead them into combat. That was what the school was designed to do. The first graduating class went on. In every major operation in world war ii that the army participated in, officer candidates from fort benning, georgia were involved in the action there. If you pass the test, both mental and physical, anyone can qualify to go to officer candidate school. That was one of the provisions that marshall wanted to have it. He said, if we are a true democracy, then anyone who has the ability physically and mentally should be able to become an officer in the United States army. 1973 we started training female soldiers to go through officer candidate school. In the opening days of the ocs at fort benning it was just to train infantry officers. For all train soldiers the occupations within the armed forces of the u. S. Army. Ranger school was started here at fort benning in the 1950s, the first Airborne Ranger companies were trained at fort benning to answer the fighting in the korean war. Later it was determined in 1951 that it would become the Ranger School and they would just train individual soldiers that would go back to their units and pass on the lessons they had learned in the rangers training here to their units. It is small unit training, making sure a soldier knows how to read a map, knows how to defend himself with a small arms and his weapons. Knowing how to defend himself if he has no weapons. Hand to hand fighting and so on. Stressing every possible aspect that a soldier might experience on the battlefield. Verya grueling course, hard. Youre deprived of sleep. Youre deprived of food, in order to see how you will measure up if your supplies are cut off during the course of battle and so on. It is very important that a soldier be prepared mentally and physically to go into combat, and Ranger School is one of the best training devices the army has to make sure the soldier is tough enough, strong enough, to experience combat and survive and bring his men home alive. Today fort benning is called the Maneuver Center of excellence. Train United States infantry soldiers, we now train armor soldiers, and armor scouts and so on here at fort benning. The armor and infantry Work Together in tandem on the battlefield. Theys very important that come to fort benning and learn to Work Together even more closely than they do on the battlefield of yesteryear. Some of the problems we have here with training, the human element. When you put that into training, theres always a possibility somebody is going to get hurt, and that is one of the things they try very diligently here to do is make sure the soldier is safe during the course of his training here. We want to train well but we dont want anybody hurt in the training. We close out the cspan citys tour of columbus, georgia with a visit to the chattahoochee legacy exhibit at the Columbus Museum. We will hear about civil war era clothing, a textile loom used in the citys industrial boom, and blind tom, a slave and musical prodigy. Rebecca we are here at the Columbus Museum in columbus, georgia. Currently were standing in our chattahoochee legacy gallery. This is our permanent gallery that focuses on the history of columbus and its many highlights , from the prehistoric period 10,000 years ago up to the 1970s, even moving forward into the columbus we know today. Standing in the portion of the legacy gallery that deals with the civil war. Columbus was a significant city during the war for many reasons, not least of which was that it was the second largest Manufacturing Center for the confederacy, second only to the confederate capital of richmond. However, many residents of columbus also left to fight in the war. Bys jacket we are standing was worn by one of those residents. Is an iconic red jacket that was worn by the columbus guards. This was one of the citys private militia companies. These sorts of organizations were very common throughout the south and the 19th century. It was mainly a way for elite white southern men to socialize but also to come together in a fraternal organization. Usually their activities were limited military drills and social gatherings, but during the civil war many of these companies and their members were andally called into action went to fight as representatives of their hometowns. The columbus guard was started during the second creekmore in the 1830s and continue to be active until world war i. Up until immediately after the civil war, they chose to wear a bright red jacket. As you can see, the red jacket actually has a right and ivory color scheme. The ivory portion on the front bya bib which is attached the many buttons you see moving around the side. These buttons are actually oneofakind, theres no record of them being used by any other militia or military organization in the u. S. During the 19th century, and if you look closely at them, they depict an eagle with a c. G. Stamped in the middle. Obviously they were a unique creation for the columbus guards to use. This is the only known surviving example of a red jacket from the columbus guard. It was worn by watkins banks, a member of columbus who grew up just a couple miles from the museum where we are standing today. 1861 and weerve in know this jacket belong to him and that he acquired it just before he left because he wrote his name in his clothes. We have a picture of the inscription inside the jacket, s, and then that date of 1861. This is what banks and other members of the