Wrestle Mania (Basic Training) Day 66

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.

This morning we woke up and did the “The Raider Run” also known as “The Raider Fun Run”. I don’t mind going for a run, but I would never classify it as fun. There were a lot of rumors leading up to it. Was it an all out race? Was it 6 miles? It turned out to be a slow jog for about 3 miles all run in platoons. The DSs took turns doing cadence the entire time, so that was pretty cool (when we could understand them). The commander led it and even though it was at a jog, I worked up a pretty good sweat. 

After the run the commander gave a little speech and after the DS called us pieces of shit, then we took a shower and got ready for “Raider Breakfast”

Raider Breakfast included steak & eggs if you wanted. We all got our food and took it to classroom 2 to eat. While we were eating (and not being rushed) we enjoyed a slide show of a number of pictures that were taken during basic. When that was finished the soldiers from each platoon got up on stage and did their best impersonations of the DSs. There were some pretty funny ones and some really stupid ones. There were a number that made the DSs laugh. All in all pretty good time. 

After breakfast we had to lay out all the equipment we were issued for basic. A nice touch was that we were able to listen to some good music during this unpacking process… including some of my favorites Metallica & Lacuna Coil. Once everything was out the DS had to go over each item before we packed it.

Since our company is almost finished, all the other companies (and basically anyone who needs volunteers) come here. I think since we’re 1^st platoon they come here first.  We have had to send out “duty squads” all week. Today I got volunteered for a duty squad. We unloaded an entire semi truck full of ice blocks and crushed ice for Foxtrot Company… that’s some cold work.

Oh joy, guess what we got to do after lunch? Clean machine guns. We only have 6 assigned to our platoon and I think everyone has spent hours on every single piece of every single machine gun.

After dinner we got our custom platoon t-shirt. Now everyone is running around the bay wearing them and all the other t-shirts they bought. They seem worse than women at a shopping mall.

The main event tonight was wrestling in the bay… on the hard ass tile floor. The entire platoon (except for a door guard watching out for the DS on duty).  Guys would call each other out and if the other accepted they would wrestle. No punching… just a combination of wrestling and submission. There were some god matches. Most ended by a choke out, but PFC Metal actually won by an arm bar. Every fight had side bets going, which got everybody excited and really into it. Eventually 3^rd platoon ended up finding out about it and they even had a few people come down and wrestle. (1^st platoon won each of those).

Random DS Quote: “Did you brush your teeth with dick this morning?” (Our cool DS commenting on Lurch’s breath this morning).