February 9th, 2009

So, ok, back to the journal. I don't actually get much time to write at this point and given the phone situations, the last two times I wrote I sent letters to Mom and Morgan just cause I needed to. They should hopefully post those letters on the blog as part of the journal.

What what is new: We're in week three still red phase pt 2 (eventually we go through blue, black and gold). I passed my basic combat training 1 test and my combat medic test. Not too hard. We've also completed basic rifle bayonet course and had our first pugil battles. I got put against some big, ole, dumb, 20 year old guy. He got a few good licks in, but over all I kicked his ass, till he actually tried to run off while I was chasing him and beating him in the back of the head. Drill Sergeants jumped his shit pretty hard for being a quitter, but I had a good time. He did crack my eyebrow ope a bit. I don't know why, but that always happens to me.

Tonight we got sent to the pit. That was some fun shit. Well I thought so. You have to low crawl about fifty yards on your belly in sand and mud shit. Then get up and sprint up a hill then sprint back down and low crawl through it (this means you're face down in it). I got road rash all over my forehead. Then you repeat two more times doing back crawl. I thought it was great; most others didn't.

This morning we did our run. Oh shit, I screwed that up. The other day we did our PT test. I was feeling good so I ran what I thought should about a 7+ minute mile putting me in the Bravo PT group for running. That's the slow fuckers. Well, I ran a 6:30 putting me in Alpha. Oh crap! So today we ran about 3 miles. I am beat to shit. Especially after everything else. Tomorrow we go to the real gas chamber. We'll go through it, the last time was just getting us familiar with the shit. Then we go to some bayonet obstacle course and the a 3 mile road march. In what order, I don't know. Everything we do we have to pass. It's not an option - pass or fail - failure is not a good option.

I gotta get up at 0400 to get the barrack in order. It's 11pm now. I just got off fire guard. The barracks were a shit hole after the pit. I'm in a room with 7 other guys. Most rooms have 8 people. There are 35 of us in 2st platoon. Same thing with 2-3-4 platoons, all are Charlie Company. They all live on the upper floor. We have 3 toilets and 2 showers. What a disaster. I did pretty goof for a while flying under the radar, but now it's getting hard to not cause I'm a fuck up because I'm twice most everyone's age. There are a few older guys, but they're pretty broken. I keep up and actually do physically well. I'd say I do physically better than 80% of the guys here. Which after a while draws attention when they know I'm 37 and everyone else is 17-25. I still get left alone a lot. Shit I do that other guys might get 100 push ups for, I'll get 10-20. I think cause a lot of the younger guys are really squirrely. They also know that the old guys just do what they're supposed to be doing. It's still rough. The constant yelling and degradation gets old. It's not directed at me much, but it's still hard to listen to all day and night.

Well, I gotta go to bed. There's going to be lots of interesting things to come, I think. Things way more interesting than what I've been writing about. The good stuff is just getting going. It is tough we don't have regular basic. Our basic is geared specifically for us and about one of the hardest trainings the Army has to offer. It's supposed to get real bad with a bout 50% attrition rate.

Week three and we're down to 30 from 35. I don't know about the other platoons and companies. Well, like I said, there will be fun stuff coming later this week. I think we start our marksmanship stuff. Everyone is looking forward to that. Well I'll write again in a day or so.

Scouts Out!

- Some other little things

I should start writing down some of the cadences.
Another thing we do is in all classes we can't stil till told to do so. So the DS will say "TAKE SEATS" and we reply with, "Scouts in the backwoods, scouts in the hills, scouts on the war path stacks up the kill, to sets of track tearin' up the sod. I'm a bad ass scout, I'm a devil by god. We are the cavalry" then we stomp our feet twice and yell "mount up" Then we get to sit. And you realize that all this is sounded off at a deafening yell.

SCOUTS OUT