Post date: Nov 18, 2011 12:18:12 AM
(Original Date: Tuesday, April 27, 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.
We started of the day with an “ability group run”. Depending on the time we got on our one mile run we were split up into 4 groups. A group, is all the fast folks (7:15 and faster); B group, a little slower folks (8:15 or faster); C group, which I was in, (10:15 or faster); D group, are all the slow pokes that had any longer time then 10:15. Each group ran at different paces and ran for about 20 minutes. I was able to stay in my group for the entire run. There were a number of people who fell out. There was a van driving a ways behind D group that picked up all the people who couldn’t make it. We need to do a lot more running if I’m going to get a better score on my run time.
After breakfast we were hanging in our bay and the DS came in and saw a lot of people sitting, he asked if we didn’t have anything to do? Then he started tossing beds that weren’t tight. Throwing boots off lockers that weren’t set-up correctly and also emptying out peoples lockers all over the floor if they weren’t locked. Luckily nothing happened to mine, but my battle buddy had his bed tossed. Then we had to move out and worry about cleaning it all up later.
Since my battle buddy had the pink eye, he had to go to sick call first thing in the morning. Since he was gone (and you can’t take your rifle to sick call) I got stuck carrying it around all day long. I would have two rifles slung on my back during chow trying not to hit stuff or people with them. A pain in he butt! Speaking of chow, there was a guy walking with his tray of food and drink and our DS started screaming at him for something. It made him jump and he spilled his drinks all over a guy in our platoon. It was pretty funny, but we weren’t allowed to laugh.
When we got back from lunch our bay was even more trashed. Cleaning supplies in the bathroom thrown all over, the trash knocked over, etc. Still had no time to clean because we were off for another field assessment. We went out in squads (7 or 8 people) and had to perform first aid, evaluate casualties, transport casualties and such. We were graded at each station. Carrying the people around was pretty tough. Since I was the heaviest, I was not carried. I was always the carrier. That’s a good workout carrying a dude around a track. Our squad did the second best in our platoon, so that was good.
There was a number of new DSs around today. I think they are new and getting the feel of how everything works. The one assigned to our platoon is a borderline midget. He’s so small it’s hard to take him seriously. It will be interesting to see how he works out. They are supposed to be here for just a couple of weeks.
Today it seemed we were smoked randomly here and there all day long. At the end of the day, while still in full ACU uniform our DS smoked us pretty bad. He said we seem to be going backwards as a platoon. Everyone keeps messing up all the time... I wonder if we will be able to pull it together.
We got long showers again tonight which was awesome. After showers, Pvt. Spiderman ended up going to the hospital again. His bite seemed to getting worse. He grossed out a few people by showing them the bite (on his butt). I didn’t feel like taking a look at that, but I heard everyone getting grossed out by it. Tomorrow we will go out in the field and try to practice what we learned about LandNav in class today. It will be interesting to see how lost we get. LOL.
Hew
i hope DS Midget doesnt see your blog heheh
Sunday, May 2, 2010 - 12:18 AM