HISTORIC: First Mother, Son to Attend Infantry School Together
FT. BENNING, GA – Like most of his peers, Private Jack Jerrelsen has been sternly reprimanded for his shortcomings during Infantry training.
Stand up straight.
What are you doing coming out here with your uniform wrinkly like that?
You call that making your bunk?
But for the 17-year-old Washington native, the source of those criticisms isn’t his instructor. It’s his mother, Private Sharon O’Brien.
“By the time the sergeant gets to Jackie to inspect him, he doesn’t have anything to say, because I already got to him first,” the 36-year-old O’Brien said.
Jerrelsen and O’Brien are attending One Station Unit Training, the Army’s Infantry school, and are in the program’s second phase: Advanced Individual Training. They are the first mother-son pair in U.S. military history to attend Infantry training together.
“When Jackie told me he was going to sign up for the Army, and for the Infantry no less, sure I had some reservations,” O’Brien said. “You don’t raise a kid so that he can go out and get him…
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