Week 9

03/07/10 Sunday
Once again, I am pulling fireguard. Of all the things about basic training I won’t miss, fireguard duty is in the pack at the top. Waking up for an hour really does suck. But I am almost done, just a couple more weeks.

Today was a “do nothing” day. The couple of days of doing nothing has gotten some soldiers in pissy moods. The kid who doesn’t shower (who is getting chaptered out of the Army by the way) was getting all pissed cause another soldier was singing a song about him. This other soldier is a big black guy and Chuckie (that’s what we call the kid who won’t shower) started walking up to him in an aggressive manner and cussing. We had to calm him down before he did something he would regret. Another soldier was taking a nap on the top bunk; his feet were taped to the bunk post. He was laughing about it. Another soldier was making dookie in the bathroom when two other soldiers threw some wet toilet paper at him. Well he wasn’t too happy about that and confronted who he thought did it and threw some of his clothes on the ground. Well the soldier he confronted had nothing to do with it and he himself became mad, so a fight almost broke out there. It was actually pretty comical to watch it unfold. Once things calmed down, the soldier who had TP thrown at him was still pissing and moaning about it. If it were me, I would wait till the guys who did it were dooking and I would dump a bucket of water on them, but that’s just me. Another soldier was showering and his clothes were taken away. He laughed about it, so a joke that turned out in a good manner. Yeah, we pretty much need to get out of this bay.

This week is going to be a busy brutal week. Tomorrow we have the Night Infiltration Course (NIC). We call it “NIC at night”. We high crawl a good distance while live machine guns are shooting overhead. Simulated explosions will be going off and flares shot in the sky. It should be pretty sweet. We will be in the field all day and should be make for a very long day cause we have to wait till it gets dark to do this training event.
I gotta say this cause it is very annoying. Some of you may find it strange hearing this from me, but it really does cause a lot of disruptions: Soldiers constantly farting in formation. It causes instant mayhem around the immediate surrounding area. Soldiers will be leaving formation to get away from the gaseous air. Why soldiers won’t hold it in is beyond me. And it isn’t just male soldiers either, it is females as well.

Sweet just woke up the next fireguard shift. That means I will soon be back in my bunk. I think wakeup is at 04:30, which is sleeping in for us. I guess they figure give us an extra half hour of sleep since we will be getting in late tomorrow night. Mostly I am thinking, one more day down. Good night all…

03/08/10 Monday

Well it is a nice day today, finally. The sun is out, it is warm, no need to wear extra clothing. Too bad the mood in the platoon isn’t the same. We are out in the field practicing buddy fire drills. After about four buddies, Lead DS stopped the training and had a little talk with us. He is annoyed about the people complaing about our leadership. So he fired everyone: PG, APG, and squad leaders. The replacements are people who don’t necessarily display the right qualities for leaders. They like to hang out behind the scenes. Anyways, his response was, “lets see how you like the leadership now”. So not only is it a slap in the face to us as a platoon, but also a slap in the face to the people he promoted. He also said it will stay like this through Victory Forge. That will suck some serious butt if that happens. A lot of us are thinking that the new leadership wont stay and we will be back to normal cause Lead DS is trying to make a point of how bad it can be and how good we had it. That is the consensus right now amongst the soldiers.

After my battle buddy and I did are our practice run, we were in the woodline relaxing cause it was very tiring. Well he fell asleep as did several other soldiers, me included. I woke up cause well I wasn’t very comfy and wanted to study for a potential first aid test coming up. While I sitting there, Lead DS walked up and busted my battle buddy sleeping. The punishment, the whole squad had to high crawl through this sand pit. Yes that sucked very much. Then we had to smooth out the tracks we made with a pull grater with someone sitting on it. That is no easy task either. Finally a day of sweating like crazy due to being smoked.

During lunch we were eating MRE’s and the new APG (who is the toothless female and walked on crutches for five weeks while the rest of us had to take accountability for her gear and weapon) wanted to take off the vest and body armor during chow. Well the minute that decision was made, Lead DS made sure that we all grounded our gear the same way. It was ridiculous how long that took. Once the few soldiers got their crap right, he gave us like two minutes to finish up our chow. Freaking retarded. You know, up to this point we have never taken off our gear while in the field to eat. Then the new APG, who fell out of the first ruck march cause her back hurt, makes the decision to remove our gear cause her back hurt which screwed all of us. Already this isn’t off to a good start with our new leaders. I was able to get most of mine down, but when we were told to stop, some soldiers tried to wolf down a bite or two more, that got us smoked pretty good too.

03/09/10 Tuesday
Well yesterday finally ended. We performed NIC at night. It wasn’t all that cool actually. For one we were sitting around waiting for a couple of hours till it got dark. Once it was dark we had to wait for the other three platoons before it was our turn. Once our turn came up, we walked down into this trench and waited for the work to begin. Once word came, we had to crawl out of the trench and commence in high crawl through the sand. It was pretty cool hearing the 249 SAW blasting overhead. The simulated mortar blasts were a trip as well. The flares lighting up the sky was something to behold as well, but still, it felt like a big letdown. I think I was expecting more of a live combat situation. Granted they cant do too much due to safety issues, but, well I don’t know. You would have to be there to know what I am talking about. The barb wire we had to crawl under was kind of trippy by the way. It was hard to see and as we were crawling under it, it slowly shrunk down so there wasn’t a whole lot of room to crawl. It was pretty easy to get caught in it if you didn’t crawl right. At the end of the crawl we performed some bounding techniques simulating overtaking a bunker. That was about it for NIC at night.

We got back to the company area about 21:45 and Lead DS promptly fired all the new leadership and reinstated all the old leadership. So yes, it was definitely a statement on his part about how sucky it could be. Everyone was pretty happy to get it back to the way it was, except for the few who were complaining. As much as I have complained about the PG on this blog, she really has come a long ways and has improved a lot. I do support her, even though I don’t agree with some things she does. Such is the life in the Army.

03/10/10 Wednesday
Yesterday we performed Omaha, which is more buddy fire drills. A team bounds forward behind cover and fires at pop-up targets. It was pretty cool when we actually got to do it. We had to do a blank fire run and then we did a live fire run. The thing that sucks is all the sitting around waiting to go. It was another warm so when my turn did come, sweat was rolling off me quite profusely. But it was still a good learning experience.

That was pretty much it for yesterday. We cleaned weapons, got mail, ate field chow again, showered and went to bed. Today is going to be a relaxing day. We have our final PT test tomorrow. So we aren’t gonna do a whole lot. Plus we will be preparing for Victory Forge. We have a First Aid test later on, supposedly. I say that cause they keep telling us we are going to be tested on it, but have to be tested. We have battalion pictures, a trip to the PX, and most importantly eating at the DFAC, finally!! The last two days has been nothing but field chow and MRE’s.

I think the first thing I am going to do when I get hour of here is hit up a sushi joint. There isn’t a whole lot of variation in the food here, especially in the field. It is starting to get old, but at the same time, chow is one of my favorite times in the day.

I definitely won’t miss fireguard shift, screw fireguard shift!!

It is gonna be hard avoiding energy drinks when I get out. Before I came in, I averaged one a day. When I first got here I didn’t really crave them, unless I saw a DS drinking one. Once I graduate, guess we will see if I can avoid them (as I type this, I did not succeed in this task. I have partaken in energy drinks again, oops).