BOOM! (Basic Training) Day 44

These entries are from the letters that Brandon has mailed to me. His writing at times can be a bit difficult to determine his words... bare with me, I do my best, especially with army terms.

Today was grenade day. We took off after breakfast to the grenade range. After safety training and a few practice throws we were all given a “go” or “no go” by going through the motions and tossing a dummy grenade in front of an instructor. They were looking to make sure we did everything correctly and that we threw it far enough. I got a “go”, so after everyone finished, all the “GOs” walked to the live range. I was a little nervous while standing in line. We were behind a wall with a roof, so we couldn’t see the range. We could just hear the loud BOOM, BOOM. All my nerves went away when it was my turn. They gave me a live grenade and I ran out to my assigned bunker. The instructor was there told me to prepare and then throw. I hucked that thing as far as I could and ducked behind the concrete wall…BOOM!!! It’s pretty impressive! We then had to take off and get back to the original cover. After that we got to watch the next person throw through a window and see the blast. Pretty cool! Once about half of us finished, they paused for a bit and had us run up the road back to our gear. When they resumed I was amazed that I could feel the blast even though we were about 400 meters away and there were trees between us. Pretty powerful stuff.

We had MREs for lunch along with a Powerade & power bar from the gut truck. It’s funny as soon as people start opening their MREs the bartering process starts “Hey, I’ll trade you a poppy seed cake for your pretzels” or “I got this…anyone want to trade…what you got?”

We then went on to actually qualify with hand grenades. To do this we had to go to 7 different stations and throw dummy grenades (using the proper technique) at various targets and from various positions. (standing, kneeling, prone). The last station had us identify 5 variety of grenades by looking at samples. I was able to get  “go” on all the stations, so I’ll get an expert pin. Woohoo!

After transport back we took a heat dump and ate dinner, then cleaned the bay. We have staff duty as well as fireguard, so almost everyone has a shift. I can’t remember the last time I had uninterrupted sleep. It’s getting very annoying.

Overheard Quote: “Why are you so consistently fucked up?” (the 1st Sergeant yelling at PVT Home School today).

Pvt. Cock

Is Pvt. Home School who I think it is?

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - 08:04 AM