I am Gladiator! - Day 2

Post date: Nov 14, 2011 12:59:08 PM

My new home for the next 9 weeks or so. I had the top bunk

(Original Date: Saturday, April 17, 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.

Yesterday was pretty crazy once we arrived, non-stop activities until late in the night. Today was just the same. I am in 1st Platoon Bravo Company and we are “the Gladiators”. There are four platoons that make up all the people that shipped at the same time as us from reception. The others are “the Outlaws”, “the Terminators”, & “the Warriors”. There is a ton of yelling and screaming going on it seems at all times. Everything we do something as easy as preparing to take off our hat, the DS will callout the instructions and we sound off with the Army values. Lunch time is the craziest (and the noisiest). We stand in formation and the DS will have all us yell a bunch of stuff. When it’s time to enter he’ll say next 10 and we count off the next ten and we run ti the doors screaming a battle cry, LOL. It gets pretty noisy there,Speaking of food, something a little strange happened at dinner. A dude was sitting and eating and I guess he looked at the DS wrong. Before he knew it there were four DS around him screaming at him. He just stood there and didn’t say anything. Finally they got tired of yelling and told him to sit down and finish his food. (There was also a dude on the first day who almost got into a fight with the DS. Not sure what happened, but he stood up and actually pushed the DS and said “come on”. A bunch of DSs ran over and the senior DS took him away from everyone and they had a talk. I guess his grandmother passed and his temper got the best of him. I thought for sure he would be gone, but they just gave him a warning). We had two guys in my old bay that didn’t make it here. One is getting out because of high blood pressure, the other had his appendix removed while at reception - he’ll be out for a while, then be able to start back up.

Back to today – This place is really like a prison. Everything you do is planned and monitored. I haven’t even gotten to know anyone yet because we’ve been so busy. No time to even talk to each other. We had to get up at 4:45am and then we went out for morning PT (exercise) That was pretty easy. We had MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for lunch. They are pretty good! I had chicken and dumplings. They come with a little bag that you put a little water in and through some sort of chemical reaction it starts heating your bag of food. The damn thing got so hot, I burned my fingers on it when I was throwing it away. We had to turn in any “contraband” (aka candy) that came with them. We then got issued a whole butt load of more gear. Then we had to carry all that crap on our own backs and fronts on a hot Georgia day. I was sweating like a pig. We also got issued our rifles, an M16A4. Pretty cool, except now we have to carry the damn thing everywhere (lunch, the classroom). I got smoked later on with three other guys because I couldn’t get all my crap fast enough. We haven’t even had any time to organize our lockers, so I have crap everywhere. After lights out tonight I took some time (with the help of my flashlight) and organized it a bit. Tonight because everyone was too slow we got a 45 second shower & a 45 second time to brush our teeth. Crazy!

One way..haha

It still pumps me up when i say " I am a Gladiator"..miss it man !!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 10:45 AM

Brandon

LOL...those were some crazy days indeed!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 09:30 PM