Obstacle Course - Day 9

Post date: Nov 17, 2011 12:58:20 PM

Me on the first stage of “The German Wall”. This is the only one with a rope

(Original Date: Saturday, April 24, 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.

Last night I had Staff duty at the battalion headquarters from 23:00-24:00. Staff duty is basically sitting in a chair with your battle buddy waiting for someone to call on the phone or radio. It was uneventful until the end of the shift. Someone actually called and my battle buddy (I’ll call him PFC Metal, cause he likes metal music) answered the phone. The paper with the script of what we are supposed to say got mixed up with the radio script and he said the wrong thing. The DS was there and got pissed off. The problem is that we weren’t shown anything except the radio script. Just and hour out of my sleep schedule, but wake up was at 6am - that is really sleeping in!

After breakfast we went to obstacle course as a company and broke into our platoons to do each of the obstacles, The first one we id had a long rope we had to climb up and then we had to cross a number of 4x4s that were spread about 2 feet or so across. After that we had to climb a ladder up even higher to get over a beam and then climb down. It was way up there, so it was a bit scary! I would say about 1/3 of our platoon were able to make it up the rope. (I was one of them). If you didn’t make it, then you would have to do 10 push-ups and climb a ladder shortcut to the top.

After all platoons finished the course, each platoon picked their best team of four people to compete against each other on “the German Wall”. This event has your team of four first climb a slanted wall with a rope. After that you have to get up and over 4 other walls the progressively get taller and there are no ropes, you can only use each other to get up and over. Our platoon’s team came in second, only 3 seconds behind 1st. It was a fun time, they had toned down the course a little, not letting us go to the top on some of the obstacles, but all in all I had a good time.

The rest of the day consist of marching down to another training area where we had 4 outside classes. These classes ranged to handling captured enemy to escalation of force. It was hot so everyone had to hydrate as much as possible. Every break there would be a mad dash to the woods where everyone would go pee. That was a pretty crazy sight. I would be standing there peeing and everywhere I looked there was a person peeing in the woods.

When we got back we showered. I got mine done fast, my reward was getting a “special” duty assignment. Me and PFC Metal had to assist a supply sergeant with returning all of Pvt. Jacket’s gear. We had to sit and wait and wait, then finally carry all the stuff to a big warehouse. They checked everything back in and then we were free to get back with our platoon. We are having the 2-2-2 PT test tomorrow morning.

Random DS Quote: “Stop grabbing your nuts! Do you get poison ivy down there or something?” (this was said while we were “towing the line” – standing at attention at the end of our bunks while the DS is talking to us. My battle buddy for reasons unknown cannot keep his hands off his junk)

4th platoon managing one of the obstacles on the course (Use 4 people and get up each stage only using each other)

4th platoon on “The German Wall” (Use 4 people to get over each wall only using each other)

A clip from the DVD I purchased from basic training. It shows most of the challenges we did through the course. There is a lot of 1st platoon shown going over the German Wall portion, the rest is a mix of the rest of the company.