Reception

 Though Christopher has been a member of the Army National Guard for nearly a year and has received extensive training there through their monthly weekend drills, he started his U.S. Army Basic Training last month. The letter below is the first that we received from him at boot camp.
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July 4, 2009

Dear Family,

I hope everything's going well at home. I hope Mark had a good time at scout camp and y’all enjoyed the family reunion (yes, they all say "y'all" and yes most southern accents sound stupid).

Well I'm doing pretty well. My new name is 821CB-012 meaning I'm the 12th man of eight two one Charlie bravo. It's not really squads, they're lines and they're divided by who we are. For example, my line (821CB) is non split-ops, non-infantry MOS's that arrived on the first bus load on Wednesday. There are 60 of us out of hundreds here. At one point I'm sure there were a thousand in our column but drill sergeant said there are 600 of us right now.

I'll end up being here over a week and not leaving until next Thursday at the earliest because of the 4th. It's a four day weekend so most of the base is empty. There's a couple of drill sergeants to try to keep us busy from 0430-2100 but not enough to process us so we're in a sort of holding pattern until Monday (I'm writing this on the night of Saturday the 4th by the way). It's kinda funny, since there's essentially nothing to do they're having to fill time and today we spent a good 4 hours watching movies that "demonstrated the Army values." A lot of people have been complaining about it since it means we'll be here longer but it seems like easy pay and acclimation to me.

So I guess I'll go over what we've done so far. On Tuesday (6/30) I woke up at 0420 to go to MEPS and I was there until about 1230 and went home. I had the opportunity to hang out with you guys until about midnight and went to bed. At 0425 I was up again and started flying across to Georgia. I had very good flights and probably got close to 3 hours of quasi-sleep on my flights. We landed about 1530 in Atlanta and waited around until about 1730 (if I remember right) for our bus to Ft. Benning to come. It was a nice casual bus ride and we arrived at Benning around 1930 and started processing. We first got a little spiel about what's going on here then went through the "amnesty" process where you can get rid of stuff you shouldn't have brought without a penalty. One kid brought a leatherman after they said no knives of any kind asked if he could keep it. Kinda stupid, but that's kinda the norm here. We then went in and did our paperwork and were put in our groups. We then went over to a barracks where we were issued PT uniforms, a duffel bag and a laundry bag and put away our personal bags with our cell

phones and stuff to be locked away. After a few more little things we were put into a barracks where we were given an hour and a half to try to sleep. It didn't work since the beds were just unlinened plastic and it was surprisingly cold and we kept being woken up by new people coming in but it was a nice gesture. At 0330 we were up again to continue processing. We got our haircuts, got dental x-rays, got IDs, were issued uniforms, went to the PX, did a lot of paperwork and did a ton of sitting, standing and waiting around. Well that actually all happened over Tuesday and Wednesday, but whatever. Both of those days we hit the bunks at 2100 and other than that first morning we’ve been up at 0430 each day. Actually that was Wednesday and Thursday. It’s hard to keep track of time.

Friday (7/3) we pretty much didn't do anything but drill and ceremony (D & C) and answered questions which was nice. There were a couple of split ops groups that came and went over some D & C stuff and gave advice on basic. They also had some entertaining tricks for us that I can go over later.

Today we just did D & C, took care of some little stuff and watched those movies to fill time. We also got smoked a couple of times because people were being dumb.

And I guess I'll talk about the people now. There are 60 people in my line and the last count the drill sergeants gave us was 600+ although when we were marching one time I'm sure we had at least 1000. It's insane. 70% of the people here are complete idiots. They never shut up no matter how often you tell them to (we literally yelled at one group 20+ times in 

Well I've got more but I need to get this out before I run out of time for tonight. Love you guys.

-Christopher

The following letter was written Thursday, July 3, 2009 but I guess this letter got misplaced for a time so the one above was written and mailed. We didn't receive this letter until July 27. It is mostly a repeat of the letter above so I'm only going to include the parts that are different.

So they had us buy these notebook things at the PX today and it was more accessible than the other paper I brought. This sharpie was also easier to get to then my pens so hopefully this is legible. I took a fireguard shift that starts in half an hour so that I have nothing to do but read/write.

It hasn't been bad though (referring to reception). It's just boring and we're all wiped. We had kids falling asleep standing up. Pretty entertaining. I like my new unit though. For this time at reception I’m the number 12 man for 91821CB, our line (kind of like a big squad). It’s all the non-infantry guys. Well my shift's starting. I'll add more.

I've decided you cannot be bald if you have bizarre growths on your head. The majority of the guys here are perverted, lazy, rude, and generally seem plain stupid.

So far that's been my only issue though, people here bother me. Nothing's been very difficult, in fact we're doing nothing about half of the time. But everyone whines about how much they hate this place. We had a guy decide he was going to quit within 24 hours of getting here. I wonder what they were expecting to happen if not this stuff. Kinda ridiculous, luckily all the black guys are cool and Stock and I are in the same line. (My new name is 91821CB-012 and his is 91821CB-011, so we go everywhere one behind the other). We've gotten along pretty well and are also bunkmates and combine for laundry.

Today we accomplished even less than usual since we had to halt processing because no one’s here over the 4-day weekend. We pretty much just did drill and ceremony and questions about training all day. There was a group of guys here for AIT that did BCT last year that were really funny. They sound like they were a couple of screw ups when they started basic but got their stuff together in the end. They had some pretty entertaining little tricks and anecdotes though. We've spent a decent amount of time laughing at each other though which is good. Let's see, what else has happened? We got some really sweet camelbacks issued to us. They’re great for us because you never have to stop for water. Overall, it’s been good so far, we're all just kinda bored and ready to ship out. Because of the long weekend though that'll be Friday at least. Talk to you then. Love you guys.

-Christopher