Down Range - Day 1

Post date: Nov 14, 2011 9:37:40 AM

The logo of the 3rd Battalion 47th Infantry Regiment that was was assigned to

(Original Date: Friday, April 16, 2010)

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.

So far today as we have been preparing to ship, two people have been caught using the cadre’s latrine. They both had to stand at attention and “guard” the cadres latrine. I was one of the lucky 15 on the end of a row to go clean two bays of barracks. I guess it wasn’t too bad because everyone is just sitting and sitting and waiting and waiting. Finally, we took off for lunch, while in line the DS saw a guy who didn’t even shave. He made the kid run back to the classroom where his stuff was, grab only a razor and come back to the formation. Then the kid had to dry shave in front of everyone. After that he had to hold the lunchroom door open for everyone. He was the last one to eat. Now we are sitting & waiting again. The moved our time from 15:30 to 13:00. Everyone is excited and nervous for the coming “shark attack”. Most, like me are just glad to get this started. It seems Ft. Benning has tried its best to try and stop germs. They have anti-bacterial dispensers everywhere you look. It seems though that almost everyone has a cough, stuffed nose, or sore throat. My nose is stuffed at the moment. One guy in the front even had to get in the famous “front leaning rest” position after coughing while at attention.

Finally the buses came and hauled us all off. Unfortunately none of the people I know very well are in my platoon. The shark attack was exactly like I expected. Drill Sergeants everywhere you looked, all screaming and yelling as we got off the bus. It was pretty crazy because we all had to run carrying everything we have. Everything we do here has to be at a fast pace. They did a shakedown to see if we had any contraband. The only problem is that we had to do it in the dirt. Dump everything out in the dirt for them to pick through. To make matters worst a bottle top of the foot powder I just bought came off, so there was white powder over everything. Going to bed now at 21:30 and I have CQ duty with my new battle buddy – a young kid who I don’t even know his name yet. I don’t even know exactly CQ entails we’ll see. We ate dinner outside and once everyone had their food we all started eating. We were given 3 minutes and then everyone had to stop and throw the rest away, We had to be in class a few times and all the DS were looking for anyone about to fall asleep. At night we went in groups of 8 to shower and brush our teeth. We had 1 1/2 minutes for each. This place is so different than reception. Everything is under total control. There is the DS office right in our barracks. The DSs here are much much worse than in reception. I’m on CQ duty right now. This is a one hour shift in the middle of the night (just like fireguard. 2 of us will answer any calls and also log any events. We also log the fireguard bed counts that they bring down to us. The desk is outside and we are not allowed to sit down.

Overheard Quote: “I wish I would keep my frog voice, it sounds more manly than my kid voice.” (Pvt. Home School)

Hew

damn brandon, this is awesome stuff...

Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 02:26 AM

Anonymous

Wow, I'm going there in Jan and this blog is really making me nervous.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - 10:39 PM

pfc halgat

Just grad at alpha 3/47 my parents have been reading this and they said it's very simulator to my experence, im going to read over it and see how alike our experences are

Friday, September 10, 2010 - 11:39 AM