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July 24, 2009
So this week has been good so far. I’ve decided I’ll divide my updates by day so here goes.
Monday – pretty decent day overall. We started out with our first run as a company. They used our scores on the 1 mile run last week to decide which of four groups A-D they would put us in. My time of 6:44 put me in A group which is cool, I’ll probably have to push myself pretty hard to keep up. The first run wasn’t too bad though. We ran between 2 ¼ and 2 ½ miles (2 mile course plus running there and back). Not really a long way but we did a pretty decent pace (14:35 total) and I found out that Georgia has quite a few more hills than I’d previously realized. I was proud of myself though; I started out in the 4th rank (yes, we run in formation) and ended up on the 3rd (no reason for this group of parenthesis, just thought I’d accentuate their overuse).
After the run we did more combatives. We finished up battle drill 1 which teaches basic positions and escapes and gives the basis for the rest of the combatives program. Then we had a bunch of time to spar. I had two really easy opponents and one who was alright. We were probably split 70/30 with my having control 70% o the time and him tapping out twice for a reset. I was kind of disappointed because I’m only midpack size and strength wise in my platoon (I’ve put on 8 pounds so far by the way despite losing a little bit of padding, mainly my arms and legs are getting far denser). I’m sure to get harder opponents in the future though. The main thing that made me happy though was the match between two other guys in my platoon. One is really cocky, constantly smuggling food in, always trying to be in charge and constantly singing songs by Lil Wayne. The other guy we call “Juggernaut” because he looks a lot like the x-men character. He’s just over 6 foot and very built. He was first in state wrestling in New Hampshire and benches 300+. He’s super nice too. Well, the first kid has such a bizarre superiority complex that he kept getting in Juggernaut’s face and saying he was going to destroy him in combatives despite being outgunned by probably 80 pounds of muscle. We were all very satisfied (though not surprised) when he easily pinned him several times in a row.
After that section, we ate, got smoked a little for people being dumb, sparred some more, and got smoked a lot for the same people being dumb. Smokings don’t really bother me too much but it was a good self-discipline exercise because I had to resist flipping out on the kid who was in Juggernaut’s face because he caused a lot of problems that we got smoked for and then didn’t even do the workouts.
The rest of the day was mostly low-key. We had to leave the combatives building because other people were using it but they didn’t plan on any other training for us, so a lot of kids sat around and wrote letters and were useless, but again, I refuse to be that guy. So I cleaned and sterilized a huge section of the bay and went down to our final formation feeling like I actually had a purpose here and like I might not get “the plague.”
CQ formation was interesting because as they were taking their count we were one short. So they had us form up as platoons and we figured out it was a guy in our platoon. Now this guy’s 19 but he’s been hacking with his siblings since he was 12 and now designs secure web-sites for corporations. He’s making ridiculous amounts of money and really didn’t need to come here but wanted to do something different. At first I had a lot of respect for him but then he got smoked one time and stopped and started yelling at the drill sergeant. We thought that issue had been worked out but he proved that wasn’t true. It turns out he was upstairs hiding in his wall locker. He’s been really sick with who knows what (barfing, coughing up blood, fever) and would have been late for formation and didn’t want to get in trouble again. Of course this got him in more trouble though. He’s lucky though because one of our drill sergeants was going around tossing unlocked lockers and was three away from his locker when people who knew he was in there came up and got him. This drill sergeant is really cool, my favorite here, but I think he has a moderate case of PTSD and probably would have knocked him out when he opened the locker just as a reaction. Stupid mistake though. He got off easy because he told him about him being sick (he hadn’t told anyone because it might be related to the fact that he “used to” do acid) but it was still really dumb. We got quite the lecture on accountability of personnel and not hiding your issues or hiding from your problems. (BTW, it’s Wednesday as I’m writing this and he’s been fine since mid-yesterday, it was a passing thing.)
Tuesday was an interesting day in some respects but it was pretty dull overall. To start off we had our first road-march. Because it was the first one it was pretty short (3 miles) and we only had half our equipment. It was fairly easy but much more difficult than I expected. We had a load of 30 lbs or so which was enough to make my shoulders sore and carrying the M16 did tire my arms out a bit but it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t have anyone in our platoon fall out but we did have one kid go into some weird trance and have to get yelled at by two drill sergeants before he snapped out of it. Weird stuff happens here.
When we got to the range we were headed to we had a claymore mine demonstration that was pretty sweet. The kid they had set it off keeps freezing up so they were trying to get him to face his fears a little by setting that thing off. That was quite the explosion. It was disgusting when you thought of its intended use but by itself it was just an impressive explosion.
After that we had a class on recognizing and dealing with IEDs which is certainly an important class nowadays. Of course, people still fell asleep but I thought it was good. The training station after that was really cool. They had this little road with dead cars and mock buildings and stuff on the sides. We had to walk down this lane and check everything for possible IEDs. We ran out of time before I got to the head of the column but it was still cool. They had also buried what are called Chinese Toe Poppers. These are tiny land mines designed to disable personnel by taking a chunk out of your foot and crushing all the bones in your feet. They had replaced most of the explosive in them with baby powder so when they were stepped on they made a loud pop, hit your foot enough to make you jump, and sent up a big cloud of baby powder but didn’t even damage your boots. The other line set off three of those. That was entertaining. After that we learned how to set up claymores but I’ve done that with RSP so it was just review.
After that we waited around for two hours while we waited for them to shuttle us all back 30 at a time because training took 5 hours less than it was supposed to and it screwed up our schedule. When we got back we filled our day with miscellaneous stuff – gas mask issue, weapons cleaning, PT, etc. We probably got smoked a bit too but I don’t remember. It’s Thursday now and that’s too much to remember.
I’m really having trouble with what happened yesterday. All the days just run together. Oh yeah, we did LRC. That was actually really cool. We took buses out to the other side of the base to the Leaders Reactionary Course. This course is a big cinderblock structure with obstacles built into it as a team building exercise. According to the drill sergeants it actually gets used by corporate groups that come out and rent it too. It was cool though.
We had time for eight obstacles. Our first obstacle involved getting our whole team (18 guys randomly selected from all the platoons), an ammo can and all of the wood provided to us across two parallel pipes without touching any of the pipes or their supports (areas we couldn’t touch were painted red) or falling in the water below the pipes. The only way to do it was to set up a bridge with the wood that reached halfway across and shuttle everything across while shuffling the wood as we passed it. Since we were still getting to know our team we failed miserable and barely got anything across within the time limit.
All the other obstacles were like this and all but one involved having to reconstruct a makeshift bridge with barely adequate supplies and then moving things over bodies of water along with our team. The last one we did was supposed to represent an escape from a POW camp. We had to balance a ladder on a pipe that went over the wall that made our “compound”. When we got to the pipe we had to commando crawl on top of it because we weren’t allowed to make contact with the wall in any way. We also had to do it in silence. That one was pretty fun.
After the mixed teams did their obstacles we ate lunch and then had another platoon competition to replace the one that got cut short by the wasp nest. This involved sending another “super squad” over an obstacle that we had all skipped. We ended up winning which left 2nd platoon as the only squad that hasn’t won anything yet. We were very happy and our drill sergeants were too which is good.
After the LRC we returned, ate dinner, did some more random crap and then went to practice throwing grenades. Now, this new drill sergeant we have is really cool as I think I said before. He’s been very cool with us and has told us that he doesn’t like the games most drill sergeants play because he sees his job as just training. Of course we all really like that but some morons take advantage of it and were screwing around while we were practicing with the grenades. After we finished we all formed up and he asked anyone who had seen someone else make that mistake to raise their hand. All 61 of us had seen someone do it but as soon as he started counting it became apparent that the count would be related to a smoke session. As a result people he wasn’t looking at started putting their hands down and telling others to do the same. He ended up with a count of 41 and told us to do 41 sprints to the end of our gravel pit and back (probably 50m total). He ended up only having us do 10 or so because of time which actually made me sad. Some of these guys need to be smoked really badly and if it requires me getting smoked along with them that’s fine.
When we got back to the bay though they made me really swear for the first time which annoys me. One of the kids who is always getting me smoked got in my face saying that I should have put my hand down. What I said to him shut him up but the lack of integrity among some of these kids disgusts me, especially considering how easy they are on us. As a whole though we are getting better and hopefully those individuals who don’t get it will figure it out by the end.
Now today started out as my biggest mind over matter day thus far but ended as a really good day. So, I finally got sick. My cough isn’t as bad as some of the guys in here but I have much worse cold-like symptoms and my energy levels have tanked. Nothing on me wants to move but obviously that doesn’t work here. We began our day with PT as usual. We did about half an hour of warm up drills followed by half an hour of 30 60s. 30 60s are pretty fun. You sprint for 30 seconds, walked for 60 and repeat until they say to stop. There is a guy in our platoon that I really like who I ended up next to and we paced each other on the sprints. I was happy because he’s in really good shape but I was able to beat him on every sprint. I was dead by the end but I did it and I think I gained a lot of respect on that one because his mile time was 50 seconds faster than mine (he ran a 5:54).
After PT we had chow followed by bayonet drills where we spent two hours learning and practicing bayonet techniques in the gravel pit. That was pretty terrible. After about half an hour I started getting tremors and cramps through my legs but I made it through. When we finished our training we had what’s called Pugil Sticks.
Pugil Sticks are really cool. You put on football helmets, gloves and a chest pad and beat each other with plastic pipes with pads on the end (kind of like a two bladed version of the swards Andrew Clark made). It’s a good way to release some aggression. Unfortunately I was only about to get one fight in but it was pretty good. The guy I fought is a couple inches taller than me and outweighs me by 15 pounds but I wanted it more because he never shuts up in formation. We ended up fighting to a draw in the two minutes we were allotted.
The best part though was the tournament. This was another company competition that was very high energy and very competitive but those not competing got to sit down. I was very glad for the break. It was a sweet tournament though. There were 4 weight classes (<150 lb, 151-175 lb, 176-200 lb and 200+ lb). Each platoon picked one guy per weight class and we totally destroyed the other platoons in the 2nd and 4th weight classes and won our first bout in the 176-200 lb weight class. This gave us 4 wins out of 6 fights and two class wins where the other two platoons had one class a piece. That won us the Pugil Stick tournament and the bragging rights that come with being the only platoon to win two competitions.
After that we had chow, a couple of classes and personal time. During that personal time I got a letter from grandma which was really sweet. It’s great to hear her move went smoothly.
Here’s a little info on how mail works btw. We all sit down in the kill zone in front of the drill sergeant. He then calls out the names of the people on the letters and we acknowledge him. If the letter seems to just be a letter of normal weight he chucks it in your direction (this can get really entertaining). If it is heavy, he feels pictures, or there seems to be anything in it that doesn’t belong he throws it down next to him and we open it in front of him. If we get any contraband they simply take it and either eat it or keep it until the end of the cycle. All pictures have to be shown to them to make sure they’re appropriate and any pictures of girlfriends and stuff the guys usually demand to see (for that reason, any pictures I get with Norah and Brianna in them need to show their faces only, otherwise I’m allowed to have 2 pictures up in my locker so that might not be a bad idea). Anyone who gets 3 letters has to do ten pushups plus ten more for every letter after the third letter. Also, if we get anything that makes music (like singing cards) we have to quickly learn the song and sing it for the group. Please don’t send any of those. Mail call’s one of our favorite things though so please write.
Well, it’s actually Friday night but I need to get this out and I used up a lot of my paper using it as tissues after someone stole my TP (I’ve only pooped 4 times since leaving home so that hasn’t been a problem yet). So I’ll send Friday’s update with the next letter if possible. We should have plenty of time tomorrow and Sunday since we’re just doing the gas chamber (hopefully that’ll clear up what’s turned into a sinus infection) and haircuts tomorrow. Later guys. Hope everything’s going well.
Christopher
P.S. I understand that my grammar and stuff has got to suck in these, I really rush when we get time to write during the week. Sorry, edit accordingly if you blog any of this.
P.S.S. We have plenty of opportunities to pull out letters and read so Mark, you can write more. I love the hat story and the thought of all of you sitting around watching endless 24 marathons while I’m here. I hope you had a great b-day Andrew. Go with Mom and buy yourself something on me. You’re welcome to $20 from that first paycheck if you want it. Have a great week guys!
BTW – in case I didn’t already ask, please send news updates. Love you guys!
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