Saturday, February 14, 2009

February 14th, 2009

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, EVERYONE!

So, what's new? Not too much. Today we went into white phase. Doesn't mean a whole lot. The drills are still mostly mean, but they also are showing their real sides. most likely we'll fuck something up and go back into red, then the drills will go nuts again. Whatever. Blue is in 3.5 weeks from now. If we make it.

We were at the range all day practicing for rifle qualification. We shot at 75-175 and 300 meter targets. I did above average, but we'll see. We qualify Tuesday. It was cold as hell today. We still march everywhere we go. Sometimes, we take old school buses, but mostly march. Everywhere we go we have to wear what they call FULL BATTLE RATTLE. That includes our IBA (Industrial Body Armor and plates) that is about 20 pounds, our kevlar helmet, glasses, pads and M-16 rifle, and about a 25 pound rucksack. Doesn't sound like too much but after all day it gets heavy. One of the first things I'm doing when I get out of here getting a back massage.

I think we'll be training most next week with our M-16 at the range. We do have a bunch of other weapons we have to qualify with. I think that up next might bethe 249 (5.56 belt-fed rifle), the 240B (7.62 belt-fed) and the .50 cal belt-fed rifles. I'll tell you all about the stuff as we qualify. There's not much to the M-16 other than to say they're total hunks of shit, that would go for about 20K on the black market. I would like to have the trigger group out of one for the three round burst, but that ain't happening.

Had to go to the PX again and get a hair cut. $5 and I swear nothing comes off. What a rip. :-) Got some stamps, a pencil, paper and few razors. Yeehaw! Everyone else had mountains of shit. You have to understand - this sounds normal, but what you don't know is that to do it we have to form up a platoon, march across "Disneyland" (our living area) over to the shopette. We then stand in an hour long line for the ATM, move 2 steps at a time, going from "attention" and moving then stopping and going to "at ease" then attention and move and over and over and over. Then we travel in pairs to get our haircut. We stand in line for about 1 hour, then sit in chairs in order for about 20 minutes, moving like robots skipping chair to chair. Finally, we get in the chair. They shave our heads, we hold the money up, they take it, push our change in our hand and we move off to the store. Where there is all kinds of stuff to buy, but you can only have authorized items, and if you get caught trying to buy a non-authorized item, you're screwed. The whole time you do all of this, you walk like a robot - head and eyes straight forward - you listen to everything and watch only where your peripheral vision which is hard cause there is all kinds of craziness going on all around and if you get caught looking at something that's none of your business - which is everything - you'll get smoked, or sometimes they'll smoke the whole platoon on your behalf. The whole time screaming, "Buddy fucker. Don't be a buddy fucker." instead of counting.

Man going to the firing rangs is a whole gigantic process that would take a manual to explain.

1) you get off the bus and form up - then you ground your ruck, then move to the bleachers for briefing, then you file out - move down the firing line, well anyhow, I'm not going to explain this. It will take forever. Just let me say: It takes all day long.

Everyone here, well the privates I mean, are slowly being worn down - Lights out - talk to you later.

scouts out
~Justin :-)

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