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If you have a question please feel free to leave a comment or email me at thegoodthebadandthearmy@yahoo.com

The original inspiration for this blog was Brandon Mcguire's excellent account of his BCT and AIT experiences at mcguires5.com, which I highly suggest you check out.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Home Stretch......Or Lunge.

So the days leading up to graduation just flew by. We were so busy that I didn't have time to write during the last two weeks. A few days before graduation, we were taken to a community center on post for a class about sex. It was awkward at first hearing them talk so plainly about rape occurring even to people in the military, but the manner in which the class was portrayed (two improv actors portraying scenarios filled with humor and audience interaction) helped to get the message across without embarassment. I was glad to see the Army making efforts to educate young soldiers on how to protect themselves and their battle buddies from sexual assault and STDs. Also, when we got back from our last FTX, the deep cleaning began. The entire bay, top to bottom, had to be cleaned. Lockers had to be wiped down and emptied of their contents, bags had to be packed and all of our equipment as a platoon had to be counted, turned back in and stored away properly. Our weapons were the worst part because the drill sergeants wanted them cleaned to the highest degree. Family day came with so much anticipation that we couldn't barely contain ourselves.

 On the night before graduation, they made us go from a normal two-man CQ shift to a 15-man CQ which meant that no one was getting much sleep. Normally while on CQ, you and a battle buddy just help out with cleaning the drill sergeants CQ office and latrines, moving things around or into storage, filling water jugs or loading up trucks for the next day or, if you're lucky, sitting in a chair trying not to fall asleep. Thanks to a scheduling error, one of the privates didn't know he had a CQ shift and because he couldn't find three other soldiers willing to go down and work the CQ shift with him, the drill sergeant on duty called back every fifteen minutes and kept raising the amount of soldiers he needed to bring down with him. By the time thirty minutes passed by, he had to bring down thirty other guys with him. With fourteen soldiers on CQ already and two on fire guard duty, there wasn't even thirty soldiers available that had not just gotten off of CQ to pull duty. At one point I was told by our drill sergeant that I needed to pack my bags as fast as humanly possible. Then I was told that I would have to carry each of my fully packed bags all the way down the bay (about 150 feet at least) and back one at a time. I had left my locker open during Family Day and about ten of my battle buddies had forgotten to lock theirs as well. Since mine was left wide open, I had the worst punishment, but the catch was that while I was doing the lunges, my battle buddies would be subjected to some crazy strenuous PT. Eight-count pushups and stuff like that and then halfway through he made them do lunges down and if I beat them back we would start it all over again. It was crazy and the bags got really heavy cause I had to carry them over my head and they were packed full. By the time I finished, my legs were burning up and I was barely able to stand. In fact, I collapsed on top of the bags as I set the last one down and it took about ten minutes before I could drag myself back to my feet. Needless to say, a lesson was very effectively learned that night. Securing personal items is key in the military and I shall not forget it anytime soon. Lol. After our four-hour shifts we were supposed to pack and then that left us with about a half-hour to forty-five minutes to sleep. Graduation day started early and by eight o'clock in the morning we were on a bus headed to Hilton Field for graduation to begin.

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