Notes From Basic Training

December 1, 2004
Reception

"So far I am enjoying things. The SGT assigned to process us is cool but he doesn't discipline the goof-offs in our line. I expect we will pay for it soon. We have stayed really busy from 0400-1800 everyday. Lots of standing in lines waiting to be fitted, pictures taken, finance, shots, etc. I am already dressing like a soldier. It makes the adjustment exciting. My hair is cut to 1/16" all over, so I look like a bald inmate. (The look for basic) The line I am assigned to is as expected, 14 people (4 OCS, 10 enlisted --> 4 are goof-offs). Everyone is pretty cool though, just immature and trying to push the limits. I hope when we ship downrange to basic they straighten up.
So story time now: We have gotten 6 shots and blood drawn twice and flu mist nasal vaccine in a day and a half. All of this fun combined has left me with a low grade fever and a headache to make this enjoyable. The first shots were the worst. After your blood is drawn, they walk you behind a petition, ask you to pull down your pants and proceed to inject peanut butter in your left butt cheek. At least it felt like peanut butter. Shortly after, the soreness begins to set in, leaving you with a feeling like you have a bruised charlie horse. The bad thing is 2 days later it still hurts. Every time I roll over in my bunk it reminds me that I had a shot there. The next day of shots was much better. We lined up, sleeves rolled up, arms relaxed; preparing for the shot. The good part was the medic was fast and stealth-like. I only felt it after he threw away the needle. The shots were really the most interesting story. Clothing issue was only neat when we were issued class A uniforms. The barracks are crazy at night. Goofing off, yelling, arguments. Etc."
-Dale

December 3-5, 2004

"Basic Day One:
0900 lined up at reception to be ready to ship. We stood and repeated the soldiers creed - yelling as loud as we can. It was actually pretty neat to hear 150 soldiers in a small area. It lost its appeal when we had to hold a 40lb laundry bag over our head and repeat the creed. We then loaded buses to ship down range to basic. Crammed in a school bus w/ full duffel bas & laundry bags was not my idea of a nice ride. Upon arriving we unloaded the buses, merrily greeted by 9 drill sergeants yelling at the top of their lungs. Our introduction included holding our laundry bag over our heads for 10 mins. Every time you dropped the bag the drill sergeants (DS) were in your face yelling. From there, we moved into platoon formations and were introduced to our DS for the next 9 weeks. DS Nettler, Shearing & Williams. The rest of the day was introduction to life for the next 3 weeks. TOTAL CONTROL! We do nothing, go nowhere and say nothing unless instructed to do so. We had to remove our watched, also. Total control and time deprivation combined makes normal tasks stressful. Eating meals in the D-Fac is stressful b/c of rules on how to walk, sit and how long you have to eat (usually less than 10 mins.) showering was stressful. 47 men, 4 showers in 25 minutes. It amounted to about 45 secs/person of actual shower time. Total Control is what weeks 1-3 are about.
If we make a mistake, the DS give us corrective reinforcement training or better known as smoking the whole platoon. This happens almost every time we are in formation and sometimes in the barracks. If you do something wrong and stand out or if you address the DS incorrectly you will get dropped. Luckily, this has not happened to me yet. I am sure eventually it will, but for now I have been safe. The corrective training is designed for muscle failure and torture to remind you that attention to detail and teamwork will lead to success. So far, we have done pushups in cadence, yelling teamwork. We have done overhead claps long enough to make for sore shoulders. We have held our 12lb out in front until you can't hold it anymore. These are just a few of the exercises for corrective training.
Overall, the 1st day & now the 2nd day have been difficult but not as hard as I thought. We have a lot of phrases we yell on command while marching in formation. That is fun when done correctly. It really is a neat sound, 47 men yelling in unison. We march everywhere we go in formation and count cadence.
I really am doing well at training. I have lots of friends and we always travel and work with a battle buddy, who is your bunkmate. The crazy thing is, his name is also Wyrick. Who would have ever guessed 2 people with a rare name like that get put in the same BCT and platoon."

December 8, 2004

"We haven't had a lot of personal time. The schedule is rigorous and busy. We wake up every morning at 0400 hrs with lights out at 2100 hrs, but we usually still are working by flashlight after lights out. So right now we are getting about 5-6 hrs of sleep; sometimes it gets interrupted with guard duty at night. Needless to say the 17-18 hrs a day are filled with training, classes, marching & PT exercises. A lot of the classes right now are introductions to the army, regulations and policy information.
Today we had a training activity that was a initiation to soldier life and warrior ways. We ran our first trip through the obstacle course as platoons. The course was about 700 yds long. After the DS's demonstrated each obstacle, we ran in squads of 17. The first obstacle was 20 ft rope climb, followed by a short wall, monkey bars, tires, log cross, two short walls, rope slide using hands and feet upside-down, low crawl on our backs through mud, water & sand and under barbed-wire, next was a 7ft cinder-block wall, high crawl through sand, crab walk through sand and finish climbing thru a pipe. The course was tough but a lot of fun.
Those are the highlights of training. Classes are full of info but when you only sleep 6 hrs a night it can be hard to stay awake. So the DS's find ways to keep people awake. They encourage you to drink water from canteens or stand. If you don't take the initiative to do it yourself, you get smoked. The classroom is usually the 'electric chair' squats holding out your weapon. But if too many people are looking tired, they smoke us all. That corrective training always involves holding your chair by the bottom of the legs straight out in front of you. After about a minute the chair weight seems to increase. The other favorite for classroom wake up is the overhead clap. It sounds easy but at repetition # 125 or so it really starts to hurt. I generally think the point of corrective training is to hit muscle failure.
As for me, I have only been dropped twice. Once for asking a question about shaving profiles (a medical permission to have some facial hair) and the other time I was adjusting my field hat in formation. Usually, the punishment is just pushups. If you are really a screw up they get creative. Today someone in our platoon was playing in the sand with his boot, the DS made him slide around the platoon (all 47 of us) on his stomach. He was covered in sand, head to toe, b/c they made him slide on his stomach. That is basically how the corrective training works. You mess up or get out of line, they use physical training to remind you to straighten up."

December 10, 2004

Our platoon just got smoked tonight. I am not really sure why, but we did a ton of pushups. We spent time today practicing formation for the long road marches we will do with our rucksacks. It was neat, we were all decked out. Kevlar helmets, flack jackets, LCE belts (w/ ammo holders and canteens) our rucksack & weapons. It's a lot of weight to carry and we march in tactical maneuvers. So every time we stop, each person will kneel in battle buddy teams and set security by aiming the weapon. If you stop for a long time, each person goes into the prone position, takes off the rucksack & uses it for cover. It's fun for me. It feels like playing war games again. Oh yeah, we also learned to camo our faces today. So while we did it our faces were painted green.
Well, as for the normal daily routine; its all pretty easy. It's just hard to find time, so we do some things early in the morning by flashlight. We have to clean the barracks everyday, make out bunks, straighten our wall lockers, shine our boots and personal hygiene and they only give us an hour a day to do all of it which is not really possible, so we either stay up late or get up early with the lights out."