...and justice for all (Basic Training) Day 33

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.

Last night I had the first fire guard duty, that is probably the best one. It’s from 21:00-22:00 (9pm-10pm). After that you can sleep through the night. To make it better we slept in to 5:45am because it’s Sunday.

They are finally handing out the punishments from the shakedown that happened a few days ago.  Most of the people that had minor contraband are getting a negative counseling statements. That is basically a slap on the wrist. The cracker boy (PVT Brown Noser who got caught with the crackers) will get an article 15 and will actually lose some of his pay. Those ended up being some expensive crackers!! There was a guy who had an empty shell casing who will get an article 15 as well. 

Our cool DS is here right now and he’s playing some good music in his office with the door open… Metallica, Sound Garden etc. It sounds good. We haven’t had the chance to hear any music since we’ve been here. (Unless you count guys singing in the shower).  About a half hour after trying to hear the music through the doorway of the DSs office, he decided to start playing it through the  bay speakers. A wide mix of metal, punk, and rap. I think everyone enjoyed it. A nice benefit with white phase. When you have everything taken away, it’s the little things that make all the difference. 

Went to church again today. Now that we’re in white phase we could go without a DS. We just had to get a count before and after to make sure we had everyone. It’s those little things that make life better here. Not having a DS up your butt even on the way to church is nice. 

We were given the chance to make almost a 45-minute phone call today. That was very awesome! It was awesome to talk to my wife. The last time it was only 5 minutes, so this was much better. I am happy man!

They posted the official PT results. Our platoon is number one in the company. We had 69% pass, the next platoon had 52%, so our DS is excited about that. I was able to knock out 50 push-ups, 42 sit-ups, and a 15:19 2-mile run for a total score of 215. (My previous score was a 207.) After looking at the results I also see that I dropped from 8^th place to 11^th place. I expected this though, as more kids get into shape. I’m just excited I was able to improve in every area. 

Not a whole lot happened for the rest of the day. Get our lockers squared away and get our laundry done. At 19:00 anyone who wanted could go buy a $2.00 Gatorade and drink it downstairs out of the bay (no food or drink is allowed in the bay). 

Random DS Quote: “He said squeezing the trigger is like having sex. You can be premature and inaccurate, or you can last longer and be accurate.” (PVT Cock explaining how the company commander taught him how to shoot.)