FTX Cancelled (Basic Training) Day 27

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 a pretty crappy day. It started off with the senior DS yelling at and then firing “the cop” (He is the one who locks and unlocks the rifles each day). Evidently a lock got put on backwards and had to be cut off. The DS was screaming just a few inches from the guys face. The poor guy had to stand there very still at parade rest the whole time while the DS is screaming inches from his face with spit flying and everything. Started the day off wrong and it went down hill from there.

We were all prepared to go camping army style. A “Field Training Exercise”. We were supposed to grab our rucksacks full of all our gear and go for a 5K march to the site. Problem is that a big storm rolled in. Thunder, lightning, and a ton of rain. So the FTX was cancelled. Instead we ended up just attending a bunch of classes... “death by power point”.

We came back to our bay and it was tossed. One of the Junior DS (I think I’ll start calling him DS A-Hole from now on, he’s always just an ass).  DS A-Hole tossed all the bunks and also all our shoes and boots from the lockers. There were one or two that had their lockers tossed as well because they didn’t lock them.

We then had MREs for lunch. We are not suppose to eat any commercial candy (aka skittles, m&ms and such) but we are allowed to eat anything that comes in the generic army baggies. PFC Metal got some chocolate nuggets and shared a few with me. Closest thing to candy I’ve had in a long time. Cool guy!

Back in class we had to go over evaluating a casualty again. (We do this almost daily so it become second nature). The DS called a few guys from different platoons up on stage. One guy was a “ casualty” the other was suppose to evaluate. The guy knelt down to him and just froze. He didn’t say anything… he didn’t move. If he was bronze we would have thought he was a statue! After a long silence the DS finally asked him what he was doing. The guy said he forgot. So he had to stand there and watch about 3 or 4 other people go through the process. As a class we did it too.  It got to be so boring that a few people started writing letters and were caught. Let me tell you that in those classrooms, the DSs are just circling like vultures waiting for someone to do something wrong. Keep your heels together, hands on your lap, don’t fall asleep…and so on. Lots of people end up doing push-ups. 

We had another guy get pink eye yesterday. They are now quarantining them for 24 hours. So he got to come back and enjoy this day of hell with us. 

My battle buddy is getting very home sick and depressed. He wants to go home really bad. We’ve all had that feeling at some point I think. He saw the Chaplin a few days ago and saw him again today. The Chaplin isn’t going to help him get out, but he tries to help him out spiritually and emotionally. I just hope he doesn’t do anything drastic. I talked to him a bit, let him know we all feel the same and we’re all here for him. When we got back to our bay it was really messed up. About 6 people didn’t lock their lockers. How hard is it that? There was a message on our door that read “Doo Doo” all in shaving cream. Once we came in there were clothes everywhere, beds tossed again, shoes tossed again, a couple of people's drawers were out, and another message (in shaving cream) on the floor “Good Job Guys!” Oh yeah, the garbage was dumped and the bathroom…excuse me the "latrine" was trashed. Fun times!

We then had to do the “Gladiator 500”, some call it “iron mikes”. We had to do a forward lunge one step after another bringing our knees 4-6” off the floor. We ended up doing 7 laps. I was sweating all over like crazy. To top it off they said no showers tonight. I got to try out my new field cleansing kits (aka big baby wipes).

Now with fire guard duties we have to wear our helmets and our body armor as well as our full ACU uniforms…that sucks!

Random 1^st Sergeant Quote: “Bravo Company you sound like a bag of dicks” (Made after sounding off in the morning. We all ended up doing push-ups as a company)