Sleep Deprivation (Basic Training) Day 30

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 really sucked for a lot of people. Since my battle buddy went AWOL during his laundry guard shift. We now have to staff it with two people instead of one. Last night we had to staff fire guard, CQ desk and laundry guard. So every hour 6 people had to get up. I had to do two shifts, which really sucked.  Fire guard shift at 22:00 (10pm) with PVT Cock and CQ desk at 3:00am with PFC Metal. So not a whole lot of sleep last night. To make matters worse we still have to be in full uniform with helmet and body armor. What a pain in the ass! 

There was a bit of good news though! After I sealed my last journal entry about 22:30 our lone cool DS came up with mail. He thought nobody would mind getting out of bed for that. It was awesome because I got five letters from my wife, kids & grandma. 

This morning PT was actually stepped up a bit. Until now it has been a complete joke, but today we did quite a few more sit-ups, pull-ups & push-ups. That with an individual smoking I received shortly after PT. You see the first person to see a DS come into our bay has to sound off. Depending on the circumstances it’s different. If there are no DSs already in the bay or their office, we have to say “At Ease”. If there are already one or more we say “Drill Sergeant on the floor”. Anytime either is said everyone has to go to parade rest position. Most of the time we have a DS in the office, so it’s usually Drill Sergeant on the floor. I screwed up when they came walking in and started to say “Drill Sergeant …” then corrected myself and said “At Ease”. They told me to get down and push. Then they weren’t happy that I wasn’t sounding off. Then I wasn’t sounding off loud enough. I had DS A-Hole telling me louder…louder…louder etc. Finally, they let me up to finish getting ready.

We headed out to the big sand pit and worked on buddy movement again. “Cover me while I move…got you covered…moving” then we would tactfully move to the next cover while the buddy would lay out suppressive fire (he would do this by saying “bang” every few seconds...lol). This would repeat as we bunny hop down the course.  

When we got back from that we had lunch and then some outside classes. (First aid and other miscellaneous items) We then were released to take showers. At least today we got hot showers and we didn’t have a DS timing us. Yesterday the senior DS said we had to take a heat dump. (not the thing that happens after you eat  spicy food) It was basically a very cold shower that he made us stay in for 2 minutes. When I first stepped in it took my breath away. 

It seems that since we have 35 guys all on the schedule (waking up, working out, eating) that everyone has to take a dump at  the same time, problem is there are only 6 toilets. So when it’s time to go there is mad rush to the latrine. 

Today has been tough.…real tough…only because of the lack of sleep last night has made it very hard not to nod off in the classrooms. I almost fell asleep standing up today! Also my battle buddy is not allowed to have his rifle again… so guess what? I get to carry the damn thing around all day long, for who knows how long. They should just turn it in already. 

PVT Brown Noser saw that we were going to the sand pit for the buddy movement earlier and promptly volunteered to stay with my battle buddy all day. I heard they just hung out and somehow got some skittles (forbidden) and ate them. He is always getting out of stuff.

Funny how small privileges prove to be so huge now. Our company was allowed to purchase Gatorade tonight, as long as they drank it all before coming back to the bay. There was a mad rush, I think 90% of our platoon left. I volunteered to stay and be weapons guard. If it was candy, then maybe. LOL.

Overheard Quote: “I’ve been in here 20 minutes. They just keep dropping, I don’t have to do anything!” (A private in the stall next to me…interesting bathroom conversations.)