96.32% - COOL (1 of 12)

Following is Christopher's update from this past week. Ironically, because he couldn't get an internet connection while at base, he sent this from the internet connection AT HOME, just hours after he got home for Christmas. He got in at about 1300 yesterday, and will be home until January 4th!!! Some pics included in this posting of his arrival home.

By the way, he sprung another TLA (Three Letter Acronym) on us yesterday. He talked about soldiers being at training more than 25 weeks having the right to a POV. POV? Come to find out that's Personally Operated Vehicle. I kinda think "car" would have sufficed. :-)
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Dear Fam, (December 12, 2009)

Well, made it through another week unscathed and I’m that much closer to getting home!

It’s been a pretty good week here at Fort Eustis. Our room finally got a newbie to fill the last bed. He’s on day shift so I hadn’t met him until yesterday but he seems alright. He’s 29, married and has kids. He’s a really small guy though and he’s got a baby face so he doesn’t look 29 at all. To be honest we aren’t all that kind to him. We aren’t mean to him at all but we didn’t change the way we do things at all. 1am we come in, flip the lights on, and do our thing the same as always. We’re really loud. He’s new though, that’s just how it works. He’s a real heavy sleeper anyways though. He only wakes up for like 5 minutes if that. I don’t know how he makes it out to formation in the morning. He doesn’t say much but seems decently happy. We’ll see what happens with him.

Tuesday we had a fun little incident. The second guy that gave me trouble in the chow hall tried to jump his squad leader while we were standing out in formation. Other guys jumped in and grabbed him before he even got to the guy but it’s caused a lot of paperwork and lectures around here. They still won’t kick him out despite how long he’s been a problem for because that’s what he wants but they’re “dealing” with him supposedly. People are kinda mad at my APS though because after they threw him off he yelled “bet you won’t hit him!” Not necessarily a good idea but he was right. Plus if he had hit him he could have pressed charges and really hit him where it hurt. After he got thrown off the guy went and started smoking a cigarette in the gazebo and when our sergeant came out and told him to get in formation he totally blew him off. He told him to get in formation multiple times then just told him to go in and see the commander. The next day he did the same thing. Now he’s trying to file an EO complaint saying that the sergeant that’s dealing with him is racist. We’ll have to see what happens with him too. Hopefully it’s bad, that kid needs to be seriously corrected.

Things in the hangar have been pretty fun. We continue to practice doing MOCs and FIPs and ripping boxes and lights and stuff off of the bird. It’s a pretty good time. Our instructors have come to trust my partner and I so they let us actually tear apart some of the boxes and pull out the Circuit Card Assemblies and stuff. It’s pretty cool. The amount of processing capacity in that bird is ridiculous, and the new model is even more computerized.

We only had PT twice this week by the way. The day after Rivera flipped out on his squad leader we got an hour lecture about the whole thing. Then we had a 3 hour safety briefing one morning that took up our PT and personal time (it was good though). And we spent one morning getting vaccinated for H1N1. So, I’ve taken to doing supine bicycles in bed before going to sleep. I’m certainly going downhill physically being here at AIT though. PT sucks and the whole things kinda draining so it’s hard to get myself to PT myself. It’ll be good to come home and work out with the people from my unit and stuff.

Then Friday we had a half day for school. They had a Christmas party for the instructors and in order to get the day and night instructors together they had it take the second half of first shift and the first half of our shift. The material we were supposed to go over that day wasn’t really applicable to our MOS so we had a really laidback day. It was pretty good.

Then we had our gold pass weekend for the whole company which was pretty awesome. In order to let the rest of the company go for the weekend they had student leadership pull CQ. I took one of the other guy’s shifts so he could hang out with his brother who’s stationed in Oceana which is near here. So I had CQ from 0500-0600 and 0700-0800. Normally weekend CQ shifts go for $40-60 but since he was hanging out with his brother I did it for him for $20. Between the two CQ shifts I did my laundry and took a shower and I accidentally washed my cell phone since I was in a hurry. It still works though which is pretty cool. Then on Saturday Stock and I hung out all day. We got bus passes and went down to the mall and hit the Verizon store to see what my options were for my phone (turns out there kinda aren’t any). After that we went down to Buffalo Wild Wings and had a lot of wings. I had like 30 wings while we were there. It was awesome. I’m excited to go there with you guys.

After lunch we decided to go down to the movies which was more of an adventure than expected. Turns out there isn’t a bus that runs to the movie theater on the weekends so we decided to walk there. Stock was convinced he knew how to get there but we ended up going the complete opposite direction. We finally turned around and asked for directions when we hit the airport. We misunderstood the directions we were given though because we didn’t realize what overpass we were at and that was the landmark everything was based on (that was the original thing that screwed us too. We knew we had to go over the overpass but didn’t realize there are two that are equidistant from the mall in opposite directions). We couldn’t find it so we went back to the mall and got directions from a bus driver and figured out where we’d gone wrong. We then proceeded to walk down there and got there after about 10 miles of walking around over the course of 3-3.5 hours. We had a good time though. There was one part that was a little more exciting than the rest. The second overpass has no sidewalk on either side. There’s not even a shoulder, just a 2 foot wide gutter thing on either side. The movie theater was right on the other side though so we didn’t want to call a cab or anything just for an overpass even though it was a rather long overpass. So we watched the traffic for a little bit and decided we would just run across during one of the gaps in traffic flow caused by the light on the other side. Of course the gap we picked ended up having cars in it for some reason. So we had about half a dozen cars pass within two feet of us during the couple hundred yard run across the road. It was already dark too and we were both wearing black jackets so I don’t think they noticed us. It was pretty fun.

We then decided to take a cab back because we found enough guys that it only cost us five bucks a piece and decided that doing it at 2200 was probably even less safe than at 1830 due to the proportion of drunk drivers on the road. When we got home we set up our little rucksack home theater system again and watched Gran Torino. They ended up watching some other movies but since I’d been up since 445 and they were iffy movies I just went to bed. It was a good day.

Today I went to church and then went down to the PX and took care of getting some stuff with my uniform squared away so it’ll look right when I come home. I was finally able to get my busted boots and screwed up uniforms DXed since I had gotten the paperwork back on Friday. Now I’m just finishing getting this out and then I’ll probably go back to my reading of the Ensign and that book you sent up with me. It’s a really good book. Thank you. Overall it’s been a very good weekend but I’m really excited to get home. It makes being here significantly harder really because you know something better’s coming and you get really antsy. I’m excited to see you guys though. I hope the wedding went well. Have a good week guys. See you soon!!!

Well, lack of internet means that it’s now Tuesday! My buddy’s paying the bill for his internet card today though and then I should be able to send this out.

Yesterday was a good day. Started out with some fairly effective PT by SFC Barrat then sat around and just hung out most of the time until school. School was pretty good. We went over the electrical parts of the engines and the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit). The APU is a 125hp turbine engine that powers all the accessories and stuff as well as starts the main engines. We then had the first half of our test for this block of instruction sprung on us. We were supposed to have it today but the new class made scheduling a problem. I ended up getting a 92% on it though and no one failed so it worked out just fine. We’ll have the written portion today though.

This morning we had some really ridiculous PT. The females had a sexual assault prevention class so they fell out and only the males were doing pt. SSG Cut majorly took advantage of that opportunity. It was kinda retarded but it was good for us. It was very high intensity and constant and he was counting off reps and exercise changes so fast that it wasn’t really even PT. It was just an hour long, mildly-controlled, full-body seizure. It was ridiculous. We ended up not getting screwed with for personal time so far though so it’s a good day. And we have our last test before coming home today and then it’s smooth sailing for the home stretch. I can’t wait to get home. Have a good week.

Ok, it’s now Friday. We’re pretty much sitting around all day waiting to leave. I found out I got an 88% on the portion of the test we had the other day. It’s my lowest test score yet but oh well. They gave us our class GPAs and rankings and I’m still #1 with a score of 96.32% I’m pretty happy about that.

The last couple days of class were pretty ridiculous. We had nothing to do because they didn’t want to start another block of instruction before we leave. So we just sat around and talked about random crap. It was kinda boring but it was alright.

Nothing really to report for these last couple days. Just waiting to come home. See you soon!!!

Christopher

3 Semesters of College Electrical Theory in 18 Days

Dear Family: (October 24, 2009)

I hope you guys are all doing well at home. From talking to you guys over the phone it sounds like everything’s good. Having class when I do certainly makes it harder to get a hold of you guys during the week but it’s definitely better than basic. It makes this whole thing significantly easier.

Life continues to be pretty good though. I’m lucky in that I can operate just fine on 3-4 hours of sleep so I don’t have to waste all my time during the day sleeping like the other guys do. So I get a lot in during the day. I get a decent workout in then I read and watch movies and stuff and it’s a pretty nice relaxing day. I finished the first season of The Unit today. I appreciate you guys sending that up, it was good. I’ve also read through Corinthians. I’m behind since you can really only spend so long reading the Bible for 4 hours a day. It’s a good book obviously but it’s not that good. I think I might cut the Old Testament out of my reading goal before Christmas. That makes it a lot less of a chore and I can go a bit slower and get more out of it. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Old Testament anyways.

So, my classes are going well. I found out this 18 day electrical course is actually the equivalent of 3 semesters of college electrical theory. I can actually transfer this course into 9 college credits which is pretty cool I think. We just finished our AC block though which involved going over the various formulas used to find different values and faults in an AC circuit and using an oscilloscope. We had our test on Thursday and we all did pretty well. We didn’t have anyone from our company on night or day shift fail which is cool. One of the other guys from my unit and I both got 100% on both sections.

We’re now moving into our solid state block. We went over diodes and power supplies yesterday and we’ll be moving into transistors on Monday. It’s getting increasingly interesting as we move into stuff that I don’t know as well. I’ve always found solid state components pretty interesting so this is fun in a way. Our current instructor is very knowledgeable but very hard to pay attention too. So a lot of the guys are having trouble staying awake despite sleeping all day and chugging energy shots and popping caffeine pills like crazy. The guy who sits next to me though is pretty cool and was one of the smart kids in high school who was in AP Calculus classes and stuff like that so although I understand the theory behind what we’re doing better he’s better at the formulas and stuff than I am so whenever we have practical exercises the two of us race through them and talk a lot of smack so we have a good time with it and we stay awake and retain the information. I usually win too so it’s a good time (he missed one question on the AC test, haha). He’s in significantly better shape than I am though so we both have something to work on. The competition within our class makes it pretty fun though.

I have to thank mom and dad for letting me do this in the way that I did. By allowing me to sign when I did and allowing me to make such a large decision they really helped set me up for success just as they’ve done throughout my life. My MOS, being a dying MOS, was only available as a large bonus MOS until about when I signed so them being willing to expedite the process of my enlistment by being willing to sign the papers to enlist before being 18 was very helpful. If I had waited until I was 18 the advantages at the initial sign on would have been significantly less since the military has had such a ridiculous influx of recruits lately. And that goes beyond just sign on bonuses too. This schedule and everything works so well though.

Well, I hope everyone at home is doing well while I’m over here. I’m excited to see all of you guys at Christmas. I’ve got a lot that I want to do, hopefully it all works out. Have a good week!

Parade March at AIT

Dear Family: (October 20, 2009)

Thought I should try to get another update out since I’m going down to the library for a bit today and will have internet again.

There’s not a whole lot to report, every days pretty much the same here. We’re now studying alternating current in class which I find interesting since there isn’t a whole lot of AC involved with cars. As such we’re going much more in depth with AC than I’ve gone before and the oscilloscopes we’re using are significantly more advanced than the ones I’ve used before. However, the basic electrical background that I have and the fact that I’ve used an oscilloscope at all before still puts me at a distinct advantage here. I’m continuing to find that I’m glad I picked the path that I did and that I’m grateful for the training I have received.

Our instructor continues to make the class interesting which we all appreciate. We are switching instructors today and most of us are rather nervous but he’s assured us the new guy is good. He’s helped improve my abdominal strength as well as NCOs are apt to do. I am the youngest person in our class of twelve so I was assigned the job of being the safety guy which means I’m responsible for everyone removing watches, dog tags, etc. One day I forgot to check and we had five people leave stuff on. That meant I got to do 100 reverse crunches, it’s a very effective lower ab workout that I’ve decided to build into my daily regimen. He’s really cool though. We saw him angry for the first time last night though when a private was told to take out the trash by his class commander who is a specialist and he replied, “You do it.” That didn’t go over well.

We did have one exciting thing happen these last few days though. I marched in a parade. It was kind of a random thing but they took 24 people on nights down to Yorktown and we represented the US Army in this parade. We marched with formations from all the branches of service as well as a bunch of JROTCs and war recreation groups and stuff like that. It was only about a mile long and all we did was march along, do an eyes right as we passed a reviewing stand with a 1st Star and a bunch of other higher-ups and continue marching. It was still cool though. There were probably about 1000 people in attendance so it was a little parade but it was different. It was slightly maddening because the guy in front of me couldn’t keep in step (although to his credit we had to stay in step with the army band which was difficult at times) and the guy next to me kept falling back but oh well. Our sergeant thought we did well and a sergeant-major complemented us as well so it was good I guess. And if nothing else it was a fun few hours.

I’m now about 35 pages behind on my reading and won’t get more than a couple hours after getting back from getting my hair cut and going to the library but I’ll catch up. I hope everything at home is going well. Good luck with everything. I hope tomorrow goes well.

Basic Training Reflection 1

[From PFC Christopher J. Goodale. October 2, 2009. Pics posted from Family Day and graduation at Fort Benning, GA, September 9-10, 2009.]

So, I’m now out of basic training and think I’ll do an initial reflection on the experience. I say initial because the whole thing happened so fast that the thoughts are still kind of settling in my mind and I very well may change my impression in the near future as I go through letters I sent home and talk to other guys who were with me.

Overall I think that basic training was essentially just what it was supposed to be. It was very challenging and I came out much more a soldier than I left. It wasn’t just a weapons proficiency course, a workout program, a crucible to weed out the weak or a rite of passage. Basic training contained elements of all of these things but it was a very dynamic experience with a very intricate set of lessons and tasks.

They told us at the beginning that the focus of basic training had changed. It used to be that basic training was mainly intended to break you down and discipline you so that you largely became a tool of your superiors. It was louder, harsher and more physically demanding. And, from what we were told, largely counterproductive for the type of war we fight now. Basic training created soldiers that were tough and capable but “risk averse.” The example we were given was that now the Army needs soldiers who are willing to think and respond on their own instead of soldiers who ignore warning signs of IEDs and suspicious behavior because of waiting for orders. We were also told that the main focus now is the “intangibles” which includes things like being disciplined, working as a team, etc. This to me seems like a much better system and far more productive but I didn’t feel like things really happened that way. We had a lot of guys who graduated that definitely did not seem to have those traits when they left.

That brings me to the only real issue I had with basic training. The way problems are dealt with at basic training creates a very bizarre version of justice. In the normal world we learn that incentives matter and that when you do what people want of you you’ll be rewarded and vice versa. In basic training it’s nearly the opposite. If you do what you’re told you end up being known better and your life is worse plus you end up doing more work in the process. Also, you learn that the drill sergeants’ mood is the biggest factor in your punishment for anything. If he’s in a good mood we had guys get away with smuggling cell phones into the bay where if he was in a bad mood you could get screwed for anything. Granted, our drill sergeants honestly were very professional and did a good job of tempering their reactions but it was still not evenhanded.

I found though that I learned a great deal just the same. I learned to appreciate rank, to act with the proper respect towards others, that God and men all have your back if you do what you’re supposed to and that I am far more capable in many ways than I realized before. I learned these lessons over and over again, which is good because I realized that I am also very hardheaded. Basic training helped prove to me that I often need to be told over and over again before I will stick to a life lesson. I also learned that your attitude is not a product of your environment like you would assume. Whether or not you’re happy is entirely up to you whether life sucks or not. We got to the point that we were able to laugh during smokings and I was able to maintain morale through CS attacks. For the most part this meant simply not hitting low points and not adding to all of your emotional sine wave. It was like I installed an emotional rectifier while I was at basic training which I find interesting.

I did learn one lesson that was disappointing though. Any organization that exists for the sake of battle is guaranteed to be pumped overly full of testosterone. This makes life interesting and generally fun but it also creates some problems. There is very little difference between the day to day behavior of many of our soldiers and our prison population. No matter how much I attempted to justify it and explain away the actions of my peers and cadre I couldn’t do it. There is a great deal of honor in the job that most of these people do, the cause they fight for, the things they accomplish and the regulations they are supposed to follow. If the Army actually operated according to its doctrine it would actually be the organization you hope it is. Unfortunately, too many people slip through and too many people break from what they’re meant to be doing and it has disgusting results. Many of the people I’ve been with and I have had this conversation over and over again. It drives them nuts as much as it does me. Now, it isn’t all of the members that this applies to, in fact it’s a somewhat small percentage but it is far more people than I would hope. We've found a different sort of people at the various bases my buddies and I are scattered over then we all spent our time with at the RSP back in Idaho. Maybe they simply take the honorable ones and stuff recruiting and retention with them but I sure hope it wasn’t simply an illusion. We’ll see how I feel when I get back to my unit.

Overall, I’m still proud of my decision to do this job with this organization. Through the US military I still believe one can have a greater impact for good then with any other organization. I also still believe that the Army as a whole is greatly good and has a value set as good as any other group out there. My only regret is that the Army has a sad little group of people to choose from. Unfortunately most of the people who would follow the rules and make the Army what it’s supposed to be are unwilling to be a part of it. One of the jokes that went around are platoon was that the real reason the Army’s uniform is green is that the only people willing to defend our country are potheads despite the fact that society in general frowns on the use of weed. Why is it that the people who could make a difference in the direction, actions, and overall maturity our armed forces are willing to do no more to support our troops then slap a magnet on their car telling others to do so? Why is it that all the people who could make a difference all have something better to do? Why is it that “support our troops” seems to mean nothing more than put a flag in your front yard while you cheat on your husband that just deployed? As much as the men and women I dealt with often disgusted me, the men and women I was cut off from often disgusted me even more. It is difficult to keep from becoming cynical about the country we live in and what goes on in our world every day. But, in the end it goes back to having a good attitude about things simply because you do. I know that I still love my country. I love the fact that I can come and learn these things. I love the opportunities that I have here whether the people I would like to take advantage with them with me do so or not. When I originally joined the Army it was essentially because of two things. Pride and a desire to do something I could be proud of. I held and still hold a great deal of pride in my country and its ideals and what it stands for. I held and still hold a great deal of pride in our armed forces as a whole and what they do every day. I held and still hold a great deal of pride in myself and what I’m able to accomplish when given the tools and the training to succeed. I wished and still wish to do something with myself that would make a positive difference in society and I believed and still believe that I can be of great worth with the help of the US Army. Nothing’s changed in those respects. What has changed is that all of my reasoning has become more self-centered. My pride in my country does not stem from a commonality with everyone else in it or a sense that everything is good. Instead it now stems from the knowledge that the basic tenants of our country match what I believe a nation should hold. It also stems from the fact that I am able to do those things that I feel are right because of the freedoms that our nation is built on. Simply because the final result deviates from the master plan doesn’t mean that the plan was bad to begin with. It simply means that we need to keep working to fix the problems that have arisen as the plan was carried out. And that’s what I’ve learned to deal with. The Soldiers’ Creed claims that a soldier is disciplined, physically and mentally tough. I certainly learned discipline and moved further down the road to physical toughness at basic training and I’m hoping the ability to cope with whatever is thrown at you is the mental toughness that is described. If so, I guess basic training was effective and the intangibles spoken of in the beginning were taught appropriately.

Mailing Address

I still have not posted all of PFC Goodale's letters from Basic Training - sorry. He has successfully completed Basic Training, and is now at Fort Eustis, Virginia for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT). He will be at AIT until at least April, 2010, and we now have his mailing address. He would LOVE to hear from you, so please send him mail at:

PFC Goodale Christopher J
A CO 1/222nd AVN REGT
BLDG 1002 PLT 3
Ft. Eustis, VA 23604

He has a lot more freedom at AIT, and though he does not yet have Internet access, he has been able to freely send text messages. He says that he actually misses the structure and discipline of boot camp, but the fact that he was able to have lemon meringue pie after dinner tonight will probably help ease him through that pain. :-)

Michelle and I were able to visit him in Georgia last week, and we had three really great days with him. Two blog updates on that visit are here and here ("Family Day" and "Graduation" respectively).

Gas Chamber

This posting is the last of Christopher's letters that we have retyped. Now we'll need to go retype some more so I can do more postings!
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July 25, 2009

Ok, now this is my last piece of normal paper and after that it’ll be weird (but cool) stuff from the PX. If it’s hard to read send me more normal paper. If not, sweet.

So yesterday (Friday) was a pretty good day to start. It was an extra stupid day for our platoon but other than that it was good.

Our training for the day was MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain). We started out the morning with PT as usual and got ourselves nice and sore which is good. My forearms look pretty good. After PT we walked out to the range where we conducted our training. At this point we march everywhere with our load-bearing-vests and our assault packs which is probably a 30 pound load and we just started filling the two, quart-sized canteens we carry with us so we can get used to carrying extra weight. It really wouldn’t have been bad though if we hadn’t gotten smoked with all of it because people weren’t sounding off while we were marching. As always it’s just basic simple crap but people don’t do it.

After our smoke session we started into our training. It began with a class on how to clear rooms and basically just reviewed the stuff I’d learned at drill. The new spent 3 hours running through “glass houses” which are just rooms outlined in the ground. While we were running our cobbled-together fireteams through the glass houses we listened to stories and advice from drill sergeant. He kind of reminds me of the old war vets that just spew out information constantly which is great for us. A lot of people don’t pay attention though and when he chews you out its rather frightening. I’m glad it hasn’t happened to me.

After the glass houses we had chow. We were going to treat it like an FTX with people pulling security for their battle buddies and guys going out on patrols but for some reason they changed their minds and we got to just sit and eat. It was a slightly maddening meal as always because some people that started out doing the right thing have falling in with the idiots. Probably 80% of the guys who got contraband in their MREs ate it. I told them it was a bad idea but the only response I got was that I’m the good guy and they’re the bad guys and I just need to deal with it. Of course, the drill sergeants got wind of our contraband problems and we got smoked for it and were told that next time it happens they’re going to just hand out AR-15s. An I-told-you-so ended up be unneeded.

After that we had a couple more classes then dinner. After dinner most of us went to a final class for the night on radio reporting during fireguard shifts. 2nd platoon was mysteriously missing though and we later found out that they were all getting smoked. Some moron had snuck his cell phone in and half the platoon was using it. Luckily the half that wasn’t turned him in and got to watch as the rest got smoked for multiple hours. The kid who sneaked it in got an AR-15 as well and got reduced two ranks as well as a loss of half a month’s pay (over $800). Stupid stuff.

Saturday was the really fun day though. We started out with a company run. We went about 2 miles but did it in over half an hour. Because the pace was so ridiculously slow we only had 3 fall outs out of over 180. It was weird though. By the time we stopped, despite having to call cadence and go up and down hills, my breathing was exactly the same as when we started but my calves killed. Our steps were close to the same pace as a real run but they were tiny so you were on the balls of your feet the whole time if you had long legs. It was great strength training but it was a very bizarre feeling to have after a run.

After our run was the gas chamber. We got all loaded up with our LBVs and Assault Packs as always and crammed onto a bus to go down to the range. I was rather surprised that I still wasn’t feeling nervous at this point. When we got there we got another quick briefing after we dripped off our assault packs. Then one of the drill sergeants and the first sergeant went through the gas chamber to show us it wasn’t that bad. They came out tearing and coughing a bit but that was it.

So we donned our masks and our helmets and started filing into the chamber in groups of 30. The first thing that I noticed was little shiny flecks floating through the air like little shards of glass. WE had our gas masks on so it didn’t hurt or anything yet but you could smell it. It kind of smelled like fireworks. I was shocked to see wasps flying around and a little group of baby birds sitting against the wall just chirping away. They looked fine to me which kinda gave me a false sense of security.

We continued to push into the room while the four drill sergeants in there yelled at us to get tighter. There was a table in the middle of the room with a little propane stove on it that had a little tin can being cooked over it. When I stopped against the wall I noticed a tingling sensation on the exposed skin on the back of my neck. They had us remove our helmets, place our rifles between our heels and put our helmets on the muzzles. As I did this the tingling increased to a very severe burning on the back of my neck. If you’re curious about what it felt like, go get a sunburn on the back of your neck and put Icy Hot on it. It was very unpleasant and now I was starting to get nervous.

I was about midpack when they started coming around and having us break the seal of our masks to give our name and the last four digits of our social. Personally I like knowing what I’m getting myself into before I do something so I kept my eyes open and took a small breath when I was finished before clearing and sealing my mask.

TO BE CONTINUED…

July 25, 2009

Saturday Part II

It wasn’t as bad as I expected but it did hit very quickly. My eyes burned in about the same manner as they do if you use too much beach while cleaning a bathroom and the feeling in my throat was like swallowing a sharp-edged potato chip too soon. I coughed a couple of times and was mostly better and went back to watching.

Then the drill sergeants dropped a few tables in the can and thick cloud of smoke rose out of it. After the room filled a bit the other side of the room was ordered to unmask. Then that line of 15 guys had to remove their masks, strap on their helmets and hold out their weapons in one hand and their masks in the other. After the drill sergeant checked them all they quickly evacuated the room.

Then they added more tabs, waited for the room to fill and told us to do the same. I had always heard that the worst thing you could do was panic so I decided to just breathe normally and deal with it. At first it wasn’t too bad, it was the same as the first time, painful but bearable. Then I inhaled more of it. The best way I can describe it is to put bleach in your eyes and stick a sparkler in the back of your mouth. It even smells and tastes like one.

Then I felt my nose fill with crud and I couldn’t breathe because it was running so bad. So I blew hard out of my nose and was greeted by a dark green ball literally bigger than a golf ball. As we started to clear out I noticed someone rush the drill sergeant and try to tackle him. Of course he just got knocked back into the wall and slowed the whole line down.

After a few more seconds though we were able to get out and start breathing good air again. In order to get all the pockets of gas off our uniform we walked around the range flapping our arms as we continued to cough, cry, dry heave, etc. While we did that the cadre members checked to make sure we had followed instructions properly. If we were holding our rifles wrong, had our helmets unbuckled or anything else was done wrong we got a COB – come on back. We had one guy in our platoon who had to do the chamber three times. He wasn’t too happy.

In the end though, it sucked for that 15 or 20 seconds you were in there with your mask off but as sono as you stepped out of the door to the outside everything started getting better. By the time we’d walked 100m or so you were pretty much back to normal. And we all agreed that looking back on it, it was fun experience overall in that cool sucky way you can only find in the Army.

After we all went through the chamber we had another quick class on NBC and broke for chow. At this point my platoon once again got to show that it’s retarded. As it often does when we go to ranges, lunch consisted of MREs. Of course some MREs taste better than others but they’re MREs. I know a few of the other guys and I have told our platoon that they need to stop being so picky and whiny about their MREs but it hasn’t stuck.

So we had 10 guys or so standing in front of the formation fighting over the MREs they wanted while the two that had been designated to pass them out tried to pass out what was left. Of course this was not what was supposed to happen so we got to do crawling and combat roll drills in the dirt for awhile before we ate. It was awesome.

After chow we returned to the barracks, showered, and changed into PTs so we could get rid of the CS smell. Then, since we all needed haircuts again, we got to go to the PX which was awesome. I was able to replace all of the clothing that I had taken from me (never leave your laundry, no matter what) and got a few other things I was running low on. I also got to have an OCD moment and got 4 new sponges of different colors for our bay so we can have different sponges for the shower, sink, toilets and all the other stuff we have to wipe down. I also marked them so the same side is always used to clean. This was rather satisfying because right now we just have two old sponges that are totally falling apart and have been used on everything every day. Things almost felt dirtier after cleaning. I could have just gotten new sponges from the supply guy but I didn’t find that out until later and they’re all the same color. The rest of the day just consisted of classes and anxiously waiting for Sunday.

Dear Family:

Well so much for Sunday being an easy day. This one certainly had some highs that made it a good day overall but my stupid platoon made sure it was peppered with lows.

I started out my morning with breakfast and church. Church was good as always even though we didn’t have any visitors. (The Jewish service has doughnuts and lemonade so it’s hard to compete). Our lesson was pretty good and sacrament meeting was very nice. It was cool too because one of the other guys in my platoon who I really like got the Melchizedek Priesthood last week and we sustained him as an Elder. There were also two guys that were baptized last week and we welcomed them in.

It was good too because I got a chance to talk with t he third Mormon in our platoon for awhile. He was a very stubborn atheist until he converted with his wife a year and a half ago supposedly which explains a lot. He says it makes the most sense and feels the best to him but he misunderstood a lot of things if nothing else. So it was good to get to know him a bit better and address some of his issues.

When we got back to the bay I moved straight downstairs to do the laundry I hadn’t been able to do for a week. I got called up about ¾ of the way through and everyone was on line upstairs. That always means they’re either smoking us or putting out new information.

This time we got smoked. It turns out when the other two Mormons got back one was missing his shoes. After looking around for awhile they found one in the fire extinguisher case and the other behind the weapons rack. It wouldn’t have been a big deal but we had a PT test the next day so it would have been a problem.

When he started asking who did it the drill sergeant got involved. He asked who did it and no one fessed up so it became an integrity. They put out that the punishment would be much lighter if they just came forward and that there would have been no punishment for people who knew who did it, still no one came forward so they made a few more threats. Still nothing so they smoked us then drill sergeant told us about his 3 strike rule. It was still quiet so we got smoked again and got another lecture. Still nothing, so we got smoked again and when no one came forward we were warned about the trouble that was ahead of us. Stupid kids.

After chow I was dumb enough to volunteer again. My platoon is against work and detail so work details really don’t fit. So when they call for a 10-man work detail every night it’s just a rotation of the same 20 or so guys. So I ended up on work-detail sweeping rocks back into our gravel pit. At 19:32 people came out and told us they were letting us make phone calls and we could take a break. So I sprinted upstairs and grabbed my cell phone within the minute.

It turns out he had handed out the phones at 19:20 and people hadn’t decided to come and get us until then even though we all had until 19:42 regardless (however the 10 minutes is an amazing privilege, we didn’t expect to see phones again for a couple more weeks). The phone call was greatly appreciated but those extra twelve minutes would have been awesome.

Now it turns out one of the main reasons they allowed us the phone call was to prove that we would take advantage of it and these idiots proved them right. We had two morons keep their cell phones. As though they weren’t going to check.

So we got smoked for a while for that but luckily they cut it short since we have to take our first official PT test tomorrow. They still certainly sent a message though and made it clear that they’re looking to start pulling the individuals that are causing the problems. They also made it clear that we won’t be seeing our phones again for awhile.

Of course, everyone who had been on work detail still had things to do because we hadn’t been able to get back to it. So when they gave us our personal time from 20:00 to 21:00 to fix ourselves the one other useful kid and I were out sweeping rocks until 20:52. So at 21:00 I got to go to bed tired, pissed off, and with my locker all messed up (I had it 90% empty to bleach it when the whole shoe thing started and never got to go back to it). The thing that really annoyed me though was that the drill sergeants really went easy on us and the only people to blame for a bad Sunday were me and my stupid platoon. And in the end you were better off if you did the wrong thing. Everyone got smoked just as hard; those who did the work detail lost phone time, those who sat around ended up with close to two hours of personal time and those who jacked their phones now had phones. And the whole platoon is now in jeopardy of not moving to white phase when this last week we have come together really well for the most part. I guess that’s just how it works I guess but it’s infuriating.

Well, it’s actually Wednesday now but I’m going to end this here because I’ nearing the end of my fireguard shift and I don’t know when I’ll have time to write again. The week’s been better than expected though. Lots of threats and a couple of bad smokings seem to work well enough. I’m sending a description of our drill sergeants too. I wrote it on a bus out to one of the ranges. Sorry if it’s hard to read. I love you guys. Be sure to write.

Short Runs and Pugil Sticks

I'm still catching up on these postings, and this letter is still from his pretty early days at Basic Training. He talks about their first run, and he called it "short" because it was only three miles. Yikes. I get tired driving in my CAR for three miles. :-) He speaks of their "Pugil Sticks," too - that actually sounds kind of fun!
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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!

Basic Training: First Impressions

Following is the third letter we received from Christopher, and it's quite a lengthy one!!! And even this is his Reader's Digest version. :-)

Based on earlier blog postings, I've had a few ask me what "smokings" are. If anybody in the group does something bad, the whole group gets "smoked" and this is a form of PT (physical training). A hundred pushups here, 200 squats there, 3 miles run here, and so on. A lot of the PT that happens at boot camp, apparently, comes through getting smoked (of course, they have regular PT every day, as well).

There are a lot of acronyms he lists, as well, and I think some of them are described in Christopher's Army Reserve National Guard blog, but one day perhaps I'll put definitions up here on this blog.

I've tried to make this post more interesting by including some photos; all of these taken from the base's newsletter, The Bayonet. I've linked the locations I got these photos from, if you are interested in seeing detail of each pic. These pics do NOT include pics of Christopher.

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July 19, 2009

OK, so I’m skipping everything else that happened at reception and giving a Reader’s Digest version of basic training so far due to lack of time and space.

So on Thursday (July 9) we finally shipped off to actual Basic Training which was good because my motivation and discipline levels had been dropping steadily since getting to the 30th.

At 0900 they took us out and we did final equipment checks, I even got my BCGs which is nice. It’s cool being able to see so far so clearly again but they really give me headaches for short distances. We then loaded our stuff into trucks and were waiting to get onto some busses there when a van full of drill sergeants showed up. Now we had all heard stories about the initial “shark attack.” Supposedly, when you first shop up it’s time for a major smoking. We had even heard stories of tear gassing the busses. So we were all a bit nervous.

To our surprise though, all the drill sergeants showed up very cheerful and we simply marched over to the training area where all our bags were waiting in piles. We were told (loudly and with plenty of expletives) to grab bags and form up on such and such a place. Luckily everyone had gotten the memo to grab any bag and not waste any time finding “our” bags and we all just started scrambling. Now our bags consisted of one duffle bag, one laundry bag, and one personal bag with everything we’d brought or had been issued. I honestly think it all totaled at least 100-200 pounds. It was heavy but doable.

This whole time the way they’re all yelling and cursing to the point that it’s just ridiculous and unreal and I was actually smiling as I ran thinking, “if this is all they’ve got, this will be fun.”

They then told us to line up our bags very specifically and gave us enough time to be guaranteed to fail and we had to do pushups. This happened three more times in a near ceremonial fashion. At this point I’m still laughing inside.

Then they told us to run upstairs. We’re on the third floor and we had to get up as fast as humanly possible. Also, no one’s working as a team yet so everyone was pushing and shoving and making things far more difficult. We finally got all our crap upstairs, huffing and puffing and sweating and I’m done laughing. When we got in there was a huge section in the center that was outlined in blue tile and very shiny. We were (loudly and fully emphasized still) ordered to stay out of this “kill zone.” Then they ordered us to get our bags off their floor and over our heads. Obviously despite ten minutes of struggling and yelling and bags opening and dumping their contents, no one was able to do it. So since we couldn’t accomplish that “simple task” we had to do other exercises instead. I can’t remember exactly what since it’s been six days now (we finally have personal time), but it involved lots of pushups, flutter kicks, font-back-goes and other such excitement. At one point one buy vomited in the “kill zone.” This didn’t earn him a break. Instead he got viciously berated and told he would be the perfect guide-or for the mysteriously absent 1st platoon that was supposedly going to be the “retarded platoon.” I don’t know how long this all lasted but at the end the senior drill sergeant (there’s three per platoon) started yelling about how if this was a mistake that we’d made and we didn’t really belong here we needed to raise our hands and get out and go home. After a week and a half at reception being disgusted by what was around me and hating the way things were I’ve never been so close to folding and quitting as I was for that five minute or so tirade. Luckily I spent that time in the RSP and was able to look back and remember who the cadre were there and keep my hand pinned to my side. I’ve had to rely on that (especially drill sergeant Stace) quite a bit since then but things are finally getting better and I know I would have been making a huge mistake if I’d raised my hand and folded.

The rest of the day was about 80% calmer and involved setting up the bay, touring the base, introducing ourselves a bit and several more smoke sessions.

The second day we were issued all of our other equipment (IBAs, LBVs, Kevlar helmets, rucksacks, etc.) and our M16A4s. Now we won’t be firing them until the third or fourth week but we have to carry them everywhere. We did some other minor things and got smoked a lot too.

(Editor's Note: Speaking of accidental discharges, you wouldn't want on here! Pic on the left here of trainees on the road clearing a "neighborhood"). Our third day we had classes on our weapons, accidental discharges, and we had briefs from the company commander and the company 1st sergeant. We then got smoked a few more times, were told again that we’re the worst group yet, got yelled at for not being a team, etc. The cool thing about day three though, was our call home. It’s mandatory that everyone get at least a couple minutes on the phone in the first 72 hours. As far as drill sergeants go, mine are actually pretty cool. They really could be a lot meaner and smoke us a lot more. They also let us have five minutes and we could use our cell phones. After they passed out the cell phones they actually left and just said that the phones had to be back in their boxes in 20 minutes. That was good because I accidently went over and took eight minutes instead of five and I really don’t want to make life difficult for myself here. I could have used up more time but another kid wanted to borrow my cell phone and I wanted to at least be close to be able to claim I have some integrity.

On Sunday we had a quasi day off. We still had a lot to do but we got to go to church and didn’t have any training and went the whole day without the whole platoon being smoked. Some of the things we had to do were: laundry, arrange our lockers the way they like them, weed and cut the grass (big job for an area this size) and put 4 coats of wax on the kill zone after cleaning the bay. So, we started out the morning cleaning then went to church from 0830-1030 (yes mom I’m going to church). It’s kinda funny, we have a company of 180+ guys. In the company, there are three Mormons. All three are in my platoon. So we all went to church together and two of our bunkmates came with us – mine and PVT Lima’s. My bunkmate attends a nondenominational church called the Church of God and he seemed to really like it. He even sent the program home to his mom. The other guy is Catholic and he seemed fairly apathetic towards it. I don’t know if they’re coming this week but I know we have two other guys coming.

Church here is interesting though. They now have the rec center on post. It’s really close. You just walk over a path through a little wooded area with an irrigation ditch through it for a couple hundred feet and you’re there. It’s actually pretty cool. With it only being two hours I was wondering how it’d work but it’s not too different. For the first hour the members and visitors actually split. The members have priesthood meeting while the nonmembers have lessons. They have 3 lessons to go to before joining us. I don’t remember the second and third but the first was essentially just the first discussion and they give out B of Ms. Priesthood was interesting though. We talked about baptisms for the dead and went over the missionary work in the spirit world stuff in 1st Peter. It was good. And church with a southern accent is entertaining.

The second hour was sacrament meeting which was odd but it worked. It was actually high council Sunday which made me nervous at first but the guy was actually good. He gave an analogy between humans and horses related to his wife’s horse-boarding business. It was good and they liked it all right.

It’s funny, my disgust with the actions of the people here has made me adamant about doing the stuff I’m supposed to. I have honestly only sworn out loud once since getting here and that was to tell a kid here to stop being a * when he was yelling at a kid for not doing a favor for him the way he wanted him to. It was ridiculous. Of course, I’ve brutally cussed people out in my head and mentally beaten people with my rifle but I’ve become incredibly stubborn about discipline in that way. People have been totally shocked when they find out that I don’t swear, drink, smoke and I’m a virgin. I’m known as one of those weird self-control people. I’m finding that here I love the idea of being a Mormon just because it separates me from some of the scum here. It’s hard not to become incredible jaded. The thought of “support our troops” banners now makes me think of people buying drinks for soldiers and then cheering them on while they take advantage of their daughters. For too many people slip through the cracks in the enlistment rules.

We are very frequently described as the worst group to come through (or at least one of the worst) and I hope it’s not just part of the mind game because this group is retarded. It’s kind of ironic because the biggest goal here is to prepare you to kill the enemy and 80% of the time the kid standing right there is really your enemy. Half the group here is worse than the worst 5% of the kids in RSP and we have a few who don’t have the maturity to flip burgers much less be deployed. I really hope the drill sergeants follow through on their threats to kick them out because they’re dragging everyone down. The biggest thing that bothers me is that we spend so much time getting yelled at or smoked that we aren’t’ learning as much as we could. This is not what I came here for.

That’s really the only hard thing through. It’s psychologically difficult because you want to kill your “battle buddies” all the time and it adds to the fact that you’re away from home. Right now me and three other guys are actually sitting around talking about how much we hate some of the guys in this group. We’ve even got people getting high off of medicine from the sick hall (who knew that you could trip on Robotussin and cough drops).

(Editor's Note: Pic at right from a Ft. Benning "After Action Review"). Anyways, on Monday we started our real training. We’ve been doing all the stuff you imagine as “army stuff.” On Monday we did our first obstacle course deemed “The Obstacle Course.” We did it as a platoon then each platoon picked four guys to go through it with a fifth guy picked by the drill sergeants as a “super squad.” The Obstacle Course started out with a small low crawl section through sand. Then we got to some wooden fence type things arranged in a lightning bolt shape that we had to run through with our hands behind our head on the way to a rope we had to climb. It was probably 15-20 feet of rope suspended from a beam and we had to climb up, hit the beam, and climb down. Then was fifty or so feet of monkey bars followed by a couple of walls we had to jump down using a certain form. Then there was a pit of muddy water that smelled like feces about 2 feet deep that we had to dive into, roll onto our backs and slither on our backs under a hundred feet or so of barbed wire. Then we had to climb over a short wall (4 or 5 feet) keeping a low silhouette, low crawl a hundred feet, roll into and out of a little ditch, bear crawl another hundred feet or so then crawl through a pipe to the finish line. It took about 10-15 minutes for the average guy and you came out tired and ridiculously dirty. The “super squad” thing was cool because the four we picked were obviously our fastest and the one the drill sergeants picked was whoever they felt could use the extra exercise. Our slow guy was a nice big boy from Alabama. He’s the biggest guy in the whole company but he’s a nice guy and a hard worker. After that we got a quick rinse under a big hose and came back. It was a good time but it destroyed that set of ACUs. We all have one set of off-color ACUs now. Luckily they refit and reissue your uniforms at the end of basic. That was the only thing Monday though.

On Tuesday our big event was “The Confidence Course.” The Confidence Course consisted of a set of 15 or so small obstacles and 3 larger ones. The first set was all kind of Indiana Jones type stuff like swinging onto a beam from a rope. There was one in that set though that was pretty hard. It was called The Weaver and was a big triangle with beams going across every two or three feet. There were probably 30 beams in all and you had to alternate going over one and under the next. That one was difficult.

(Editors Note: Pic here to the left is of a soldier doing a water survival skills drill at Ft. Benning). The three big obstacles were mainly to deal with fears of heights. The first was the Ladder. You simply climbed up some beams, went under one that was painted yellow and climbed down the other side. The second was The Skyscraper. This consisted of a tower with four floors. You jumped onto a big pad, beat the sand off your boots and then you and three other guys had to get up on to the second floor. My drawing’s flipped but it was about 5 feet to the second floor and then about 7 to the third. Once you got to the third floor you had to come down. Not too difficult. Mainly just a team building thing.

The third big obstacle was called the Tough One. This one you climbed up a 30 foot rope to a little platform. Then you walked 50 feet or so across a cat walk of 20-30 4x4s. You then climbed a ladder to a cargo net and used that to climb down. The climb down was between 60 and 70 feet. If you couldn’t make it up to the first rope there were notches cut into the leg next to it that you used to climb up. I didn’t make it all the way up the rope (though I made it at the obstacle course) so I had to use that. The rest was pretty easy though.

It was kinda sad though. Some people did really badly on that one. We have one guy here who’s forth and he fell off the ladder-beam thing at the beginning. He was only about 6 feet up but from the way he was screaming and yelling when they moved him and touched him we thought he had a broken back or something. Luckily this base is big enough to have its own hospital and highway so they took him to the hospital really soon after. He ended up being find by the way, he was back after two days.

Another guy froze up on the catwalk and it took fully fifteen minutes of the whole company cheering him on to get across. One other kid froze up there too and started crying but no one feels bad for him. He’s ridiculously disrespectful and has gotten two Article 15s since getting to reception. There’s no way he’ll make it through.

After those we had one more team building exercise where we had to move five guys across two beams by moving 5 logs we were laying on. Pretty easy if you were smart about it.

To end we had a competition where we had to have a team of five jump over 7 walls ranging from 5 to 12 feet. We were the second team to go and while we were doing it we found out the hard way that there was a wasp nest in a tree above one of the walls and had to call it off.

Wednesday was a bog day. We did what’s called Eagle Tower. First was another little obstacle course that came off the side of the tower. You went back and forth over a hundred foot span with a net under it using different rope things. First was a two rope bridge that you side-stepped across, then one rope that you commando crawled across, then a 3 rope bridge that you just walked across. The 2 rope was actually the hardest because you were looking out over the edge of the net and it seemed like you would just fall 40 feet if you fell off forward even though the bridge made that pretty much impossible. Then we got back down by another cargo net.

After that little course we learned how to tie our own Swiss Seats which is a rappelling harness made purely out of rope. Those were checked a couple of times then we repelled down Eagle Tower which is 70 feet tall. That was really fun.

Thursday was death by PowerPoint. We had classes the entire day with breaks to eat and that’s it. Lots of people got smoked that day for falling asleep. Our first class was called “Every Soldier a Sensor, Shooter and Ambassador” and was mostly on proper escalation of force and identifying suspects and their vehicles. Then we had a class on the warrior ethos and Army Values and why they’re important in modern warfare. Then we had a class on Military Customs and Courtesies, the UCMJ, culture stuff and personal hygiene. The personally hygiene class was actually very important. Some people around here are gross.

(Editors Note: Pic here to the right of soldiers on the Leadership Reaction Course, where basic trainees have to work together to make makeshift bridges, help each other with tasks, etc.). Friday we had our first FTX (field training exercises). We road marched out to a training area and had classes on formations, security, patrol bases, movement tactics and military hand signals. Then we did drills on low crawling, high crawling, and the proper way to do a 3 to 5 second rush from one area of cover to the next. Then each platoon went out and formed a patrol base and we formed L-man teams and one guy ate while the other pulled security. Then we road marched back. On the way back I ate it randomly in a pile of rocks. I felt pretty dumb because it was just random rocks but they slid and between my pack and helmet I couldn’t keep my balance. No one really noticed though and all my cuts are pretty much on one hand and I keep cleaning them out with alcohol which hurts but I don’t want an infection.

(Editor's Note: Pic to the left here of combatives exercises). On Saturday we started out with combatives. We just did basic stuff like dominant body positions but it was just our intro and we’ll do it every Saturday. When we got back we had a class on communication signals and equipment that was pretty good. The drill sergeant from 4th platoon taught it and he’s really cool. He had some stories that were really good but depressing. I won’t tell those though.

It was pretty funny though, at first it was impossible to hear him due to what has been deemed “the plague.” They’ve talked about disease moving fast around here but I didn’t realize how bad it was. A few days ago the big kid from Alabama got this nasty cough. It sounds terrible. By no 70% of my platoon has it and probably 25% of the rest of the company. I’m being really careful with my nutrition and hygiene though so even though the guy it started with is only two bunks down I’m still feeling great.

OK, so I’m finally caught up. Today is Sunday. We started out with breakfast and then went to church. Church was good today. One of the guys who had wanted to come to church didn’t come but the Catholic kid that came last week came again. He seems to be enjoying it which is good. Other than that we just had to clean the bay and do some stuff on our equipment and I’ve spent the rest of the time writing this letter. I was updated up to last Sunday morning when I started today so it’s been kinda crazy. I’m sure my spelling and everything’s gotten terrible by now. I love Sundays though. It’s kind of our incentive day. Right now we pretty much have it to ourselves but they’ve made it clear that life will suck on Sundays if we don’t do what we’re supposed to. It’s great to have a day to rest though. Even though it may not sound like we’ve done a whole lot we’ve had a ton of little things happen as well as the main events I’ve put. Lots of briefings, smokings, PT, cleaning, etc. There’s a ton of cleaning to do around here and a lot of people never work. I know one kid had sent out twenty letters by yesterday. So I could write you more but I refuse to be that kid so it may just be a long one on Sundays if our week doesn’t calm down.

I’ve got some more time though so I’ll put some stuff you might find funny. The first thing you’ll find funny is the way our showers work. It’s called a 15-second shower drill. We have 61 guys and everyone just lines up in underwear and flip-flops and when we get into our shower room you have usually eight guys standing around butt naked trying not to slip on the wet tile while waiting for one of the eight showers. It takes less than ten minutes to get everyone showered but if I ever do anything gayer I hope someone kills me. You know that scene in The Proposal? That very nearly happens to every guy every night. It hasn’t yet but we’re just all hoping it isn’t us when it does.

Another thing that’s kind of funny is that I’m so set into calling people drill sergeant if they’re above me I keep accidentally ending sentences with drill sergeant when I pray at night. I hope He doesn’t mind.

It’s not too bad here though; it’s busy during the week but Sunday makes up for it. And people here are dumb but our drill sergeants are actually really cool. Plus there’s another group starting up next Thursday and the drill sergeants will have a chance to recycle people that are being stupid. I hope things are going well for all of you at home. I haven’t gotten anything from you yet but I’m guessing that’s just because mail is slow. I did get Norah’s letters though which was really nice. Be sure to write me though. Send me a family picture too. And tell Brianna to be careful. Guys are retarded. I’ve had a recurring dream that she flirted with a guy that took it wrong and I get a Red Cross message that she got raped. Love you guys. Talk to you when I get another chance.

Reception Winding Down

Below is the second letter we received from Christopher. This seems SO long ago, because we've now received more than a dozen from him. I'm just way behind on posting these. Today we got a letter from him that was so positive that it really touched all of us. He wrote, "There are a lot of lessons to learn at Basic Training but many of the lessons I've learned are ones that I didn't expect." He went on to then share quite a bit with us that was very uplifting and encouraging but also very private, so I won't be posting that in this public forum. Just suffice to say that he is doing great!
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July 7, 2009

Today was Tuesday and it was certainly a mixed bag. The morning had me hating the regular army and for the first time believing that reception could be the worst part of basic. Up to this point I've been completely ignoring all the whining and it's just seemed totally retarded. I'm pretty laid back and easygoing with this kind of stuff but we started processing again and I almost started moaning and groaning right along with them.

We started out waking up at 0300 so we could get enough stuff done to ship on Thursday. Well actually I'll talk about the night first. Despite everything that happened the night before and despite the early wakeup the same group of idiots was being just so loud as before. That same group is being stupid again though of course. But last night we got to sleep by 10 only to be woken up at 0115 by drill sergeant because a fireguard crew didn’t wake up their replacements and send down drill sergeants cleaning detail. He came in and there was only 1 of 4 fireguards and he was asleep. Luckily he was too busy to smoke us so he just yelled at us for half an hour and we got another hour of sleep.

In the morning though we were supposed to be done eating breakfast by 0520 but because of drill sergeant wandering around doing who knows what for half an hour, we didn't even get there until 0518. They extended our time but some people still didn't get anything to eat and they acted as though it was our fault. This place is so unorganized.

Today we were finally getting the penicillin shots in our butts that we've been hearing about. First we waited in line for an hour (20 minutes of it with our pants undone) and never got in because they kept putting other guys ahead of us. So we ended up not actually getting anything done until after lunch. The shot ended up not being that bad though. Everyone talked about how big the needle was but it was only an 18 gauge. After they shot us in the butt which took about 15 seconds behind a little booth btw) we walked over to two women for more shots. One stood on each side of us and they gave us a total of 4 shots and TB test. I know one was tetanus because my arm’s as sore as my butt but I have no idea what the other three were. We then had 4 vials of blood drawn and we were done. Once we got there it was actually very quick, merciless and efficient.

From the blood place we went and got our eyes tested. The lady who tested mine was actually a Major and she had ACU scrubs on. She was very refreshingly friendly and, whether it was entirely appropriate or not, I had to thank her for it.

When we finished there we had a quick briefing for our insurance combined with being smoked a few times for talking too much which we certainly deserved. Our unit has a massive discipline problem. It was cool though because we actually helped each other out. Our sgt's favorite exercise is the squat and we found that if you sit on the knee of the man behind you, you can take the load off you without adding to theirs. It was cheating but it was team building so I felt OK with it. This part of the day was pretty ridiculous anyways. Because of miscommunication among the drill sergeants we ended up waiting an hour and a half for dinner because the DFAC wasn’t open when we showed up. We finally got our boots after dinner though which was cool. It was the third time we stood in line for them, but we did finally get them. It was a good thing too because shortly thereafter a kid stepped on a lizard while we were marching. That was pretty gross.

I'm feeling pretty good though because we're finally feeling close to getting out of here and going downrange. We had our shipping briefing today and we packed up all but a couple days worth of basic stuff, locked it up and handed it over to the drill sergeant. It's been kinda crazy getting everything together during the times that these guys actually get us to do something but it’s been good. I'm excited to finally get out and start doing what I came here to do.