Night Fire - Day 49

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.

We were able to sleep til 6:00am today! After we got ready to go, transport took us to a range where we had duty food breakfast. We then had a briefing from the 1^st Sergeant on the importance of drinking water and watching out for one another. (Because of the incident last night with the guy from 3^rd platoon…we heard he’s going to OK). We also heard that one of the DSs from another platoon got into a motorcycle accident.  He got a little road rash, but is doing OK, which is good, I think he’s a pretty cool DS.

We also found out that Private Home School actually did not qualify on the rifle. He was given another chance today, but missed it by two. If he is unable to qualify he will be recycled. He said if he gets recycled, he would quit.  I don’t blame him; I would not want to do all this again.

We did a bunch more shooting with our scopes. I used PFC Metal’s scope (& rifle) because mine suck’s butt.

The “gut truck” came and out of the blue and our senior DS said we could purchase a candy bar! That was big; I got skittles…mmmm a rainbow of flavors in my mouth. LOL. I’ve said before that our senior DS is like Jekyll and Hyde. He was being real cool…candy bars and all, smiling… then when 3^rd platoon didn’t move fast enough he flipped out. Started yelling at everyone. Had the whole company form up and yelled at us all…we suck, if he had his way we would all be in red phase…we are all weak. Then he made the whole company do some push-ups, a modified version of sit-ups called “the rower” and then V-ups.

The weather here is a little crazy. When it decides to rain it really comes down. Today it was sunny and warm, then all of a sudden it got dark and it just started pouring. Everyone got under cover for about an hour while it just poured and poured. Then as quickly as it started, it was done. It was sunny again. 

Everyone is just kind of hanging out waiting for it to get dark. PVT Home School is still trying to qualify. He has been shooting for an eternity and shortly before it got dark (20:00) PVT Home School finally qualified! The whole company let out a cheer.

Once it was dark enough we lined up for night firing. We wore the night vision lens and the rifle had a laser on it that would show up on the target (only visible with the night vision). It was basically all for fun. All the targets were up ad the DS told us to shoot controlled pairs bang bang – don’t call it a double tap though. Every fifth round was a tracer. It was cool, but our laser wasn’t zeroed, so it didn’t matter if it was on target or not. It was still fun to shoot off so many rounds so fast. I emptied my magazine in seconds. 

We also found out that the story they told us about the DS dying at NIC at Night was told just o heighten everyone’s anxiety about the event. A DS said it did happen but it was a long time ago. Finally made it back to the bay at 23:20 – shower, clean up a bit and lights out at 24:00. I took a “nap”, I had fireguard from 1-2am. Fun.

Random 1^st Sergeant Quote: “If you fall down and start doing the fucking kickin’ chicken and die, you will not graduate.” (The  1^st Sergeant trying to motivate everyone to hydrate and keep an eye on each other.)