Anyhow...

[SoaringUSAEagle]

Well well well, it sure has been a while since I posted much in here.  I figure I better catch ya'll up on some stuff that happened at basic training.  I will just tell basically everything that I remember.

I left on June 22 to process through MEPS and get my plane tickets to fly to Columbia, SC, and then get on the bus to go to the 120th Reception thing.  I don't remember the exact name.  But anyhow I made it to the 120th and it was about 8pm when I arrived.  We got there and went through shakedown so they knew what items we had packed and what items we hadn't packed.  I took a lot of personal hygiene items and underwear just so I didn't have to go to the PX (Post Exchange) and buy a crap load of stuff.  After that we went down by out barracks and sat outside and received a few items... a poncho, canteen, and filled out a paper.  (Like they didn't have all the paperwork on me in the world.)

We finally rolled into bed at 1:30am and was up by 5:30am to start our usual day at the 120th... Eat breakfast, and then get clothing and crap like that issued, sit around outside the barracks, get "smoked" (10 pushups max) for not calling "At Ease" for an NCO... pretty ridiculous.  They were easy on us.

Ok, enough of reception... it sucked.  Basically we got clothing issued so we could move down range to the actual basic training.  So, there it was, July 1st, time for us to move down range.  The busses were waiting for us at about 2pm that day.  We loaded up.  I had my green duffle bag on my back, my black duffle bag on my front and my personal bag in my right hand.  We were moving down range... Thank goodness!!

The busses came to a slow stop and I knew it was time to move fast as hell.  The door opened and Drill Sergeant Cosey was the one to "greet" us with, "You have 30 seconds to get off my f—ing bus!!  I was moving as fast as I could... made it out the door and hit the ground running.  Drill Sergeants were allllll over the place... Screaming, throwing bags because people were running slow or because it was a male carrying a bag with flowers on it, LOL!!  I tripped on the street and got right back up and lined up with the rest of everyone on the hill.  We stood on the hill for about 30 minutes.  Sweat was just pouring down my face, and since we were standing at attention, we couldn't move, and when someone did, 3 or 4 Drill Sergeants were right there in their face. 

So they finally counted off the lines in groups of 4, and all the groups that were 1 were now part of 1st platoon.  I was a 4 so I was 4th platoon, along with Drill Sergeant Cosey, the DS I did not want because he was big and scary lol.

So we march down to the company area and get in our designated platoon areas and ground all our bags.  We were given 10 seconds to get it all neat and stuff.  We got about 5 or 6 10 seconds.  But in between each came about 10-15 pushups and screaming and all sorts of crap.  Well we finally got that done and moved on to the mess hall to eat some chow.

Later, we took our bags upstairs and dumped everything out of them so they could yet again see what we had... made sure we had all the clothing we needed.  Our stuff was all mixed together and all I lost was my winter BDU cap and some sock liners.

Ok, moving out of the detailed days because I cant remember what happened the second and third days lol...  But I can tell you what happened in general throughout the 9 weeks of training.

The first 3 weeks were "Red Phase" which is basically the break down phase.  Whatever went wrong, and I mean whateverrrrrr went wrong; we dropped and got smoked to crap.  There were several forms of corrective training... We ran up and down a big hill with our 7.9lb M16 over our head.  We got smoked up in the bay with a 10lb weight in each hand... that really sucked holding the weights right out in front, but it was only for our good.  Red phase was a lot of learning.  We went out in the woods for a day and night land navigation course.  We did an obstacle course as well.

White Phase had nothing but Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM) teaching.  We went to ranges day after day.  Some were 4 miles out, and we marched to them.  We did eventually get motor movement (Usually called bus rides to us normal folks.) to and from some of the ranges which was nice.  My platoon had a 91.5% first time qualification rate when we qualified with out M16s.  We needed 23 of 40 targets.  I hit 27 of them.  Our company shot the highest out of the entire BRIGADE.  We shot an 88% first time go rate for the company (4 platoons).

Then we moved on into Blue Phase.  This was by far the best phase.  We received more privileges, but along with the privileges came more responsibilities so there was no room for error.  The first week of blue phase was rather boring.  We did a night infiltration course... had live rounds flying above our heads as we low crawled through a sand pit with barbed wire and all sorts of crazy stuff.  Had artillery simulators going off close by... it was really neat.

Throughout all the phases we did a lot of team development and confidence courses... just to basically help us all work together as a team to accomplish one goal.  During blue phase we did the actual confidence course and it took 4 hours to do.  We started off by crawling through a trench under barbed wire with 6 inches of muddy water... sound like fun huh??  I never had more fun in my life than that day.  We were all pumped up.  We did this course by squads, 15 members each.  We all just went around the course and completed everything we came across.

And it was finally time for Victory Forge!!  We spent 4 days and 4 nights out in the woods.  Our company set up a perimeter and a gate so no one could get through.  The perimeter was us soldiers, set up in a big circle facing outward.  We dug our hasty fighting position the first day.  We marched 6 miles out to this point as well with our M16 and my rucksack weighed about 35lbs.  Others weighed 20lbs.  I just brought extra stuff.  Anyhow, our hasty fighting positions were the length of ourselves, so 69 inches plus 24 inches so we could have our rucksack at our feet.

We only slept in our hasty fighting positions one night and that was the second night because we had 3 other companies doing Victory Forge as well, and they were messing with people at the gate... throwing CS gas and flares and all sorts of stuff at them.  I worked the gate 3 times that day, and never got gassed.  It always seemed that the shift before mine got all the excitement. 

The 3 actual nights we were at Victory Forge, we set up our hooches.  We partnered up and used 2 ponchos... snapped them together.  We each had tent poles so we got them stuck in the ground and put the part where the ponchos connected on the tent poles and then pulled the ponchos tight and used our stakes to secure them to the ground.  It was pretty fun sleeping out in the woods.  My hands got bit up by several creatures... had many marks of different shapes and sizes lol.  I didn't sleep in my sleeping bag... it was rather old and nasty so I laid my mat out, and put my sleeping bag out too and just slept on top.  I slept on my M16 so it wouldn't get stolen because there were sneaky people that were put on duty to just go out and steal weapons that were not secured.

On the 4th night, we headed home at 9pm.  We had a 10 mile march back to the barracks.  We had 3 stops for water along the way.  I drank 7 quarts of water just on the way back, lol.  We finally reached the company area at 1am.  We then had to go around to the front of the battalion as they had a ceremony for us, the Rights of Passage.  That lasted about an hour.  We stood tall and proud with all our gear still on.  My rucksack was killing my right shoulder because the night before I did something to it and it was just messed up.

I finally got into bed at 4:07am.  We were able to sleep until 10:30am but I was up at 9am because I was put on fireguard.  I had fireguard duty there for about 3 weeks straight, every night for an hour.  We all had fireguard a lot tho because one night, while 2 people were doing their fireguard shift, they decided it would be fun to break into the drill sergeant's office, use the phone, and eat candy.  So we had 6 man shifts for about 2 weeks.  I was so tired of my sleep getting interrupted it wasn't even funny.  The 2 confessed to breaking in and were dealt with.  Fireguard wasn't punishment... it is used to get the bay clean during the night.  It's dirty 5 minutes later anyhow lol.

I left some things out... Yes, we went through the gas chamber.  Yes it sucked.  That CS gas just burns more than anything.  Kinda smells like metal burning... kinda hard to explain.  And we learned bayonet assault drills.  Then we completed a course with dummies throughout the course and we got to stab the hell out of them lol.

Anyhow... if you have any questions, feel free to ask.  I will try to check this frequently.  I am still kinda busy with everything.  I'm trying to get laundry done, BDU's pressed so they are ready to go, and getting myself ready for school on Tuesday.

I am so glad to be back.  You will see me as frequent as you did before I left. 

- Jeff