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.