March, Soldier, March

Well, it's been a couple weeks. I imagine it's time for an update. I left off right before our last Field Training Exercise, which was a ton of fun. Actually it wasn't at all and I'm just kidding. It was a lot of standing guard and freezing our tails off. This time though, we did some pretty cool squad-based exercises. We fired a lot of blanks and took part in many scenarios to prepare us for real world situations that may arise. But mostly, we were cold. The temperature was nice during the days but hovered around 25 degrees at night and, without fail, it was typical South Carolina windy. I swear I've never been somewhere so consistently windy except maybe Kansas. One night, which had temperatures in the teens, we were at a checkpoint taking turns on guard and, when it was our turn to sleep, we slept on the forest floor with our wet weather tops and bottoms as our only blanket of any kind. That's the equivalent of using a grocery bag to stay warm. Our sleeping bags and all the rest of our gear was back at our FOB (Forward Operating Base), so we really didn't have a choice. The cold was so frigid, we ended up forming rows of males (and about 25 meters away a separate formation for females) that pretty much spooned for body heat. We must have looked hilarious to our drill sergeants, but it was SERIOUSLY cold. I woke up and the water in my camelback was actually frozen solid! I couldn't feel my legs below shin level and my hands were numb even with three pairs of gloves on. It was the coldest I've ever been in my life and for the rest of my days on this planet I doubt I'll forget what feeling like you're freezing truly  means. Another unfortunate occurrence while at the FTX was that PVT Tactics and PVT Seducer were both fired from their positions as Platoon Guide and Assistant Platoon Guide for messing up our personnel and weapons counts one day. I could tell it was coming though, because DS Amazon had grown increasingly frustrated with PVT Tactics recently for the very same issue. I had hoped that it wouldn't happen, but when I asked Tactics, he said he was kind of relieved actually. He mentioned that he had been voluntold to take the position in the first place anyways. Being voluntold is pretty much the same as being picked out to do something. It was unfortunate, but Tactics said that he ended up enjoying the rest of his time in BCT a lot more without the responsibilities of student leadership weighing him down. PVT Maestro was my faithful battle buddy yet again and this time we were joined by PVT Sulu as well (I call him Sulu cause he's reminds me of George Takei, lol). We had many laughs watching each other make trips out to the woodline to use nature's latrine (taking a squat behind a tree, lol), digging a three-man hasty fighting position and setting up a mega-hooch comprised of three ponchos with room for all three of us. Of course, it rained at least one of the days we were out there because , hey, it's Bravo company and we had to be miserable of course. I had a personal battle throughout the week because my knees were getting progressively worse as the week went by. Carrying our full battle rattle with a loaded ruck sack was almost too much to handle at times. I'm not sure of the exact weight but I'd wager to say it was around 70 to 80 pounds altogether. By the time day 5 of the FTX rolled around, it hurt even just to walk normally and my right knee was popping every time I bent it more than 70 degrees from a straightened position. I think I probably would have been fine had I had an opportunity to use some Ibuprofen or something to that effect, but it wasn't an option. PVT Maestro knew I was hurting and did his best to help alleviate the pain when he could, which I am severely grateful for. Sometimes it's the littlest things that get you through a situation, like when a battle buddy reminds you how little time there is left till you get out of said situation or even just distracts you from your misery by talking about home and family. So, at the end of the week, we marched 16 kilometers (about 10 miles) back from the FTX as a battalion of some 1,200 or so soldiers led by our battalion commander, the very same officer who called me out for a chat in front of the company the day we didn't get to eat dinner. On the last day, including the training exercises we did earlier in the day, which involved carrying our battle buddies who had been deemed "casualties", we probably marched about 15 to 20 miles. I didn't complain about the pain, but some of my battle buddies knew I was hurtin'. I was the last soldier in line in my platoon on the battalion march back, but I never fell out of the march and made it back to the company HQ feeling relatively okay aside from my knees. When we got back to the barracks they had rock music playing and tiki torches lit up all around the battalion to welcome us back. This was the start of our Rites of Passage ceremony which was when we were given our black berets and had them adjusted by our drill sergeants. Then they shook our hands and congratulated us, which was actually pretty nice. We may be at the bottom of the totem pole, but for a brief moment, with bagpipes being played in the background and our battalion commander telling us we made it, we felt like soldiers in equal standing. I must admit I got a little misty-eyed after Drill Sergeants Amazon and Action came through and placed my beret and shook my hand. Graduation was for our families, our battalion commander said, but this was for us. The sense of pride swept up out of us and we went back up to our bays with huge smiles on our faces. We had done it. We had completed every graduation requirement for Army BCT. All that was left was Family Day and Graduation.