January 14, 2013- This morning we woke up at the 120th Reception Battalion here at Fort Jackson and then were bussed over to the 165th Infantry Brigade Basic Training barracks. We were told to evacuate the bus in less than 90 seconds (about 120 soldiers per bus) and we were bear-hugging our laundry bags (which contained any personal bags as well) while running out to the PT Pit. The PT Pit is full of little corn flake-sized chunks of old tires and reeks of sweat and tears and feels like it's about 300 degrees! The drill sergeants introduced themselves at this time as well. We ran in place holding our bags 'till everyone formed, which took about 20 minutes at least. And we must have done about 100 push ups in that first half hour. In fact, the first thing that they taught us was the proper way to do push ups in cadence. I, sadly, can't jump from front leaning rest position (the one you do push ups in) to the position of attention in one fluid movement very well at all, and caused us to receive one additional set of push ups, at least. :( I will do my best to keep that from again in the future. After the pit, we got called to formation under our barracks and then, after a lot more push ups, we were given 90 seconds for 6 platoons to grab their duffel bags from a huge pile about half a mile away and return back to formation. We failed this the first time and had to repeat the whole thing over again because of just a couple of slow soldiers. One female recruit tried to quit within half an hour of getting off the bus!
The rest of the afternoon was spent learning facing movements and being in formation. We did our first marching to cadence and then ate MREs for lunch. Our drill sergeants seem pretty cool, as far as drill sergeants go. We have DS "Action Man", who is a short and self-admittedly quiet African American male. He looks like if Miles Austin from the Dallas Cowboys and Sgt. Slaughter from the WWF had a love child. We also have DS "Hood", who is an African American female, who seems like she grew up on the block, but the Army reformed her from possibly just being some hood rat. Finally, we have DS "Pain Bringer", who is our platoon sergeant. She is one to steer clear of, has a piercing scream and punishing way of talking. She is very fast to point out every way you're wrong in about 5 seconds flat. Overall, they are pretty decent though, as long as we don't screw anything up.
So, everyone got weighed and measured for height on the first night here. When I got up there, I knew I would be at least 15 to 20 pounds over my target weight of 194 (as I have been during this whole process.) But somehow, either due to a shitty scale (it was non digital) or DS Pain Bringer trying to read it in a dark corner, they got my weight down as 184 POUNDS!! Score! I felt so glad at escaping the tape test this time.
Well, first fire guard shift is over, so I'm gonna try to get some rest now.
Funny moments:
"You bump into me again and I will punch you in the fucking face!" ~DS Pain Bringer after a private accidentally backed off the scale and into her.
"How old are you? 30? Holy shit, you look like you're 50! And you look like my grandma! And you weigh about as much as her too!" ~DS Pain Bringer after a female recruit stepped up to get weighed on the scale. Admittedly, she DID look old as hell for her age.
"Come here, you ugly thing!!" One of the reception drill sergeants calling back a female recruit before she ran off as we were getting ready to leave to basic. It was just so shocking and unexpected, it was hilarious!
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