Post date: Nov 19, 2011 11:22:44 AM
(Original Date: Wednesday, June 9, 2010)
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.
Today we woke up and had a pretty good PT session. While we were doing PT, the people who didn’t pass the previous test were retested. We only had 3 left in our platoon that did not pass yet. 2 of them passed this time, leaving only the hold over guy who joined our platoon late in the cycle. I guess we’ll call him Pvt. Holdover. He had pneumonia last cycle and is still complaining about not being able to breathe when he runs. Also Pvt. Diesel went to sick call yesterday and cam back with a big foot brace on. They did x-rays and found he has stress fractures in his foot. Not sure how that is going to play out. He finished all the requirements for basic already so I don’t know if they’ll let him stay and graduate with us or not. We’ll see.
Breakfast ran about 15 minutes late because Alpha Company was still trying to get through. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but for every meal we have to get 2 glasses of powerade and 1 glass of water. Some people have found interesting ways not to drink the water. One guy grabs a bowl of cereal and dumps his glass of water in it, but doesn’t eat it. Another guy actually pours it in his tray. He says, “you can actually fit an entire glass of water in the tray and it will not overflow.” LOL. As uncomfortable as it is, I just down them all.
Got a notice all married guys have to report to classroom 1 in ½ hour. Ok, so I get down there and everyone gets filed in and takes their seat. We wait… and wait… and wait. Ok, then we got notified the briefing is cancelled. That was a waste of time. The DS gave us some of his wisdom, and then we filed out.
We then started cleaning out equipment again. Lots of warnings about missing family day if our stuff isn’t clean. Not sure if they are using scare tactics or not, but nobody wants to find out.… Oh yay, we were then informed the machine guns will be turned in at 13:00, so we have to clean those again.
Lunch was a speedy process. The DSs yelling at everyone to hurry up. I really hate that. I’m so looking forward to family day with my wife. The thing I’m most looking forward to (besides things that grown-ups do) is having a nice meal with her. Taking our time enjoying a meal and having a conversation.
The rest of the day consisted of cleaning the machine guns for another hour and then our rifles for the rest of the night with a break for dinner.
Random DS Quote: “If the chubby lunch lady with the grease stains on her shirt starts looking good to you after you’ve been deployed for a while, remember your family and why you joined.” (A DS form another platoon giving us some of his own words of wisdom while we were waiting on the marriage briefing).