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.
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