Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston wants soldiers to practice their leg tucks, and the Army’s 246th birthday on June 14 is as good as any excuse to hammer out those repetitions.
Grinston offered a little task for every soldier: “This year’s Army challenge is 246 leg tucks with your squad, and, individually, you’re going to do 246 air squats,” Grinston said in a Twitter post Tuesday.
And for soldier’s not yet capable of doing a leg tuck — the exercise has been one of the toughest on the new fitness test — Grinston suggested a work-around.
Sound manageable? You’ve got until the Army’s birthday on Monday, Grinston added.
The Second Continental Congress formed what would become the modern U.S. Army on June 14, 1775, to fight in the American Revolution.
Not long after the delegates convened, they learned that British-held Fort Ticonderoga in New York had been captured by American militiamen led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. The battle underscored the need to raise a fighting force, according to the Army’s history.
“The desire for secrecy account for the sparseness of the official journal entries for [June 14, 1775],” reads a passage from military historian Robert K. Wright’s book, “The Continental Army.”
“The record indicates only that Congress undertook to raise ten companies of riflemen, approved an enlistment form for them, and appointed a committee ... to draft rules and regulations for the government of the army,” the passage reads.
The infantry was the only branch formed the same day as the Army itself, though others, including the corps of engineers, the quartermaster corps and artillery, were created in the days that followed, according to a history of the ground branches.
The Army has grown today to include roughly 1 million soldiers spread across the total force and occupying plenty of other combat arms, support and special branches, including military intelligence, Special Forces, aviation and air defense artillery.
