Phase Up (AIT - Fort Gordon) Day 30

Today we have a half day of school. I guess every first Friday of the month we have a half day of school and the other half is used for company training. I can only imagine what that will consist of…perhaps the best way to clean a toilet, or how to pick up trash in half the time, perhaps even how to landscape the perfect yard. We'll see….

School was short and I ended up skipping lunch with two other guys who took the test with me last night. We all headed over to the company area to ask if our tests have been graded yet. We found the sergeant and he said we had to wait until after training. Grrrr…I don't like waiting. So I headed over to the little PX to pick up something to eat for lunch real quick before training.

The company training consisted of breaking us all up into four groups and doing land navigation. One group would go over how to read a map, the next would go over the terrain features on a map, the next watched a power point presentation, and the last group did pace counts. I'm not sure about the others, but everyone from Ft. Benning went through pretty much all of this before. It was pretty boring to be honest. We actually did a lot more in basic training, we went over map reading and actually did land-nav through the woods.

After we did three of the stations, they called it quits and had mail call. I got the package I've been waiting for…my iPhone! Finally. I should be able to get up some more pics now. There is a lot of stuff I've been wanting to put up, but just never had the means. Now there is no excuses. We also had a safety briefing because it's Friday once again. The lead sergeant went through the normal stuff, then said he was leaving and turning over his responsibilities to another one of the sergeants. Everyone was a little surprised because the head sergeant is well liked. We then heard more safety briefing from the soon-to-be head sergeant. He got pretty emotional because he said one of his good buddies from high school just died in the war effort. You could tell the emotions he was showing was pretty raw, it choked me up a bit. His message was basically look out for your friends and battle buddies all the time and remember that no matter what, it could always be worse. The commander came up and gave her speech as well, then another platoon sergeant came up and asked for 25 volunteers to go to a briefing tonight and tomorrow…something to do with high speed soldiers and special ops, nothing that really interested me (at least now…I'm too old for that stuff, many years ago perhaps I would have checked it out). By this time I think we had been in formation for almost two hours. Holy Cow!! I want to find out if I passed my test and if I'll be getting phased up.

Finally they released us, myself and the other guys who took the test last night stood in line to talk with our platoon sergeant. After about 30 minutes of waiting we finally were called back and found out that we all passed. Woohoo. He said he didn't have our badges ready, but he would have them ready in an hour or two. He also gave us the talk about going off base and getting in trouble, but then asked how old I was and said he's not too worried about me…LOL

We went to dinner and then came back to check on our badges. When we were called back into the sergeants office again he said here are your badges, oh and by the way you're all moving to RBK…no ifs ands or buts. I was in a little shock as I stood there for a moment letting it all sink in. The three of us standing there along with a number of others had to move to the RBK housing tonight. Unfortunately PFC Metal was not on the list. We have heard good things about RBK, but it is a ways away and we've never actually seen it. PFC Metal then went down and asked if he could go to RBK as well (there was a lot of people that didn't want to go and he asked if he could switch with one of them). The sergeant said yes and PFC Metal actually went to the highest bidder and made some money off the deal. We then packed up all our crap and grabbed one of our bags and headed to the taxi stand before anyone else from Charlie company headed over to RBK. We arrived and we were able to get a room together. We then walked back (about a 15 minute walk) and waited for the duty van to arrive to take the rest of our stuff there with everyone else.

We arrived again and unloaded everything in our room. The place is very nice and new. The rooms are 4 person rooms in about the size of our old room that held up to 12…and there are no top bunks.

I'll have to give more details later, I'm going to bed now…it's been a long day.