Hate is a Strong Word (Basic Training) Day 65

These entries are from the remaining letters that Brandon has mailed to me - the next several days up until Day 62 are letters that didn’t make it to me before I left to Georgia. 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 we slept in a little (5:15am) and had duty food in the CTA. As we were in formation we had a guy (I’ll call him PVT Ironic) ask the PG if he could sit down, he wasn’t feeling well. (Our APG had a fever the other day and has been in the infirmary since).  So PVT Ironic sat down and our senior DS took his temp. He had a 99 point something temp,  so our DS told him to go up and take a cold shower. Two guys were helping him get back to the bay when all of sudden PVT Ironic passes out. Our senior DS came back over to him and slap him in the face… he wakes up. LOL. So he goes up and before we left formation he was back in line with us and said he didn’t remember any of it… strange.

We then walked over to reception, that place we arrived so so long ago. It’s funny that we can walk there from our CTA, but the bus ride from reception to the real boot camp took much longer… all to build up the anticipation for the recruits. Anyways, we took any clothing items we had that were damaged or stained and exchanged them. I was able to exchange all my pants (4 pairs) and 1 top all because of stains this Georgia clay gives your clothes. 

Oh My God! We had to clean those damn machine guns yet again. I basically sat with one piece and a Q-tip trying to find dirt. I rubbed all over that thing for hours all the way until lunch. 

Lunch was MREs and near the end our cool DS said if anyone can eat a packet of crackers that came in an MRE in 2 minutes (without any drink), then that person will get a 30 minute phone call & the platoon will get a 15 minute call. We had two people try, but the crackers are so dry nobody got even close. Our DS said the whole time he’s been the army he’s never seen anyone able to eat the crackers in two minutes.

After lunch… guess what? Cleaning our machine guns more. I think I may never want to shoot one of these again. At least we get to listen to music. 

A number of other side businesses have sprung up at the end of our cycle. Guys are making peoples beds and a new one… cleaning other’s equipment for turn in. One thing I would have considered is paying someone to clean these machine guns.  They were turned in, but the supply sergeant took about 6 people to go down and clean spots he found. Not too long after the entire platoon had to go down and clean those machine guns. I hate machine guns!

Before the end of the night the entire company was forced to stay in their bay. I guess guys from the 3 other companies were down in the CTA gawking at Alpha Company female family members. I guess they didn’t have to clean their machine guns as long as we did!

Random DS Quote: “If your wife gains weight while you’re deployed she doesn’t love you” (Our cool DS giving us some of his wisdom)