I am currently in quarters right now. Quarters is kind of like sick bay. They separated me from my platoon for 72 hours. I have pink eye. As often as I wipe sweat from my eyes daily, I'm not surprised really. There are lots of people here for pink eye. More males than females. All I do throughout the day is rest & eat. I have to stay in my bunk & sleep/rest. I don't have to do P.T. (personal training), make my bed, or clean. I get to take nice long showers ;) It's like a vacation. Oh, and the best thing, no drill Sgt's! Although it's a nice break, I'm bummed because I am missing some really important training. We have BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) all this week & next week. We qualify end of next week, so I could really use the training this week. Thgey are 'zeroing' the weapons today. I hope one of the Drill Sgt's will get with me on that when I return. Also, I can not receive my mail here. They hold it until I return to my platoon. That sucks. So, I'm just sleeping and writing letters. All this time to think makes me realize how much I miss everyone! I'm a little homesick. But, with all I have endured the past 4 weeks, I'm staying put. Everytime I'm down, I just remind myself of that. Everyone says basic is so much easier than years ago but not lie, it is still hard. The main thing that is different is Drill Sgt's can't physically touch you now, and when the temperature hits about 90, we are able to unblouse our boots (my personal opinion, it looks ridiculous) and if they 'smoke' us they can only give us 3 exercies (ex: 10 pushups, plus 10 prone rows, puls 10 squat benders) then rest for 10 minutes and so on. That's not what I call easy, it's just smart. Train smarter, not harder. On really hot days of training and we are out in the field, it's hard to stay hydrated enough & people start falling out from heat exhaustion or dehydration. There was one girl inches from death. She fell out in the cafeteria after the Land Navigation and they stripped her down, wrapped her in ice sheets & carried her out on a litter. EVERYWHERE we train, we take coolers of water that duty platoon always keeps full. There are always litters, medical bags, & coolers of ice sheets. You always know when someone has fallen out because you will see 2 soldiers sprint to the box coolers, dig out ice sheets & take off. You have to drink water through the day AND night to keep hydrated. We exert way too much energy not to.
We were supposed to go to the Toby Keith concert Friday of July 4th but rumor is they won't let us since we will still be in red phase. I hope that's a false rumor. That's been one thing we were looking forward to.
Well, I'm gonna cut it off here. Thanks again for all the letters. The best time of the day is mail call & it's a bad feeling when you don't get anything. Fortunately, I have people that miss me ;) LOL.
Until next time...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment