Monday, November 17, 2008

Annotations of a Soldier #5


November 4th 2008

"...Lets see... Sunday was a fairly slow day. Lots of being sad at being back here, then happy about the weekend, then happy about Exodus. Church was pretty nice, and chow was hard to get down. Yesterday as the ten (actually 11) mile ruck march, which hurt. Not sure how much weight we had, but estimates are around 60-70, plus the heavy weapons( one of which I had) Talk about rough. y calves are still sore, haha. Once we got to the area, we ate breakfast(it was about 7:30) and then went to set up our camp (or "hooch" as it is called) I made a nice little lean-to, with Tobin sharing some space, but then we got moved, so I broke it down and moved to a new space and set it up again. There were MREs in there somewhere, and at around 1300-1400 we started training in squad tactics. Mainly in crossing roads and ambushing, kinda fun. Did that until dinner, then we went back to camp and basically hung out until 8 and went to bed. Woke up around 5, broke down my hooch, and hung around until breakfast, finally moved on to more training. That ended around 1400 and we came back.

And now I'm on fireguard, bleh. It's 4 right now, and the shift after mine is only 30 minutes, so its hardly worth it to even try to sleep some more. Oh well. Today we do the confidence course again and the obstacle course..."

November 6th-9th 2008

"...And for this past few days events: Wednesday saw Hepatitis A/B shots and a flu nasal spray thing. Good stuff. Then we went and did the obstacle course the rest of the day. Today consisted of a nice morning run, some fabulous chow, and then a land navigation paper test and field test. Was pretty easy and made for a relaxing day. Tomorrow we have testing on weapons and medical stuff..."

November 10th 2008


"...We packed for the FTX today and we also got the awesome surprise of our Class A jackets! They are fitted and fabulous and I love them. We're also getting our Class A pictures taken today, so I'm super excited for that, too. I can't wait to get some ribbons to put on it, infantry cord, airborne tab...Mmmm...

The drill sergeants have been saying that the FTX goes until next Wednesday, but the PNN continues to get reports of the big schedule in the command station saying Sunday. So we'll see if they're just messing with us or not. We also had the final PT test this morning and I"m so happy to say that the Lord helped me achieve a 274/300! A respectable score that I of course wish I had pushed beyond, but I am exceptionally grateful to have passed(a 180 is all you need to pass) and with a good score. Now just one week and all the training portion is done and no more stressful worrying.

And back after chow and pictures. So the pictures look awesome and you should be getting a little postcard with info to find it on the website. The site is: prophototogo.com, go to Ft. Benning, then find my graduating class, which will be something like FC, 2-58, 2008 DEC 5 or something. They might just be sorted by number or name or something.

It's Tuesday morning now and we do indeed have another day of preparation. For PT this morning we had Battalion PT, which is a competition between all the companies, and each platoon competes in a different event. Today we had the deuce push wich is pushing a big truck around the mile track, and we won by like, a 30 second lead. Good stuff, first time we had heard Drill Sergeant Wedoski say "Good job, second." and we was grinning quite a bit. He even ran alongside us, very cool to see him involved with something like that...."