Day 22

Day 17 of BCT

     I ended up with fireguard from 0300-0400. NOt a fun shift cine you have to wake up for you shift 30 minutes early to change into ACU's and then everyone wakes up by 0430 to be ready in time for morning formation at  0530. So you spend the whole day feeling like you've been awake since 0230. But in a war zone, sleep isn't a guarantee, so it's good practice.
     I'm off profile, so I can do PT. Today was muscle strengthening day. Pull-ups, core exercises, pushups, sit-ups and lots of other strengthening exercises. Some exercises are harder for me than others, but I strive to do my best on each one.
     After breakfast, we spent some time in the classroom. About a 1/3 of our company went back to the range. Basically, anyone who had not yet grouped and zeroed. So the rest of us were left with 2 DS's to start learning about transverses, or changing from one target to another. They also gave out military ID's to those who had not already gotten one, like I had.
      After lunch, we then went outside on the asphalt to practice our transversing. Not very comfortable. They the had us clean our weapons before the rest of the company returned from the range. Our platoon had not yet been shown how to clean our weapons, so most of us were feeling unsure of what to do. And our cleaning kits were missing a lot of pieces. The worst part was that they were rushing us to finish so we could get chow and one girl in my platoon forgot to release her magazine of blanks before completing a weapons check and had a negligent discharge. So she will automatically get an Article 15 and will probably will lose her Family Day privileges. She is a good soldier, and was really upset about it. Honestly, it would have happened to a lot of us because we were all feeling so unsure about what we were doing.
      We then had chow and platoon time. And we finally had mail again! This time I got 10 letters/cards! I was so excited when she finally let us go on personal time so I could read them. The encouragement and random news from home was a good morale booster as well as a reminder of how many people I have back home who believe in me and are praying for me.
      As usual, the day ended with Hydration Formation and off to bed. During Hydration Formation (HF), we always recite the The Soldier Creed and then take a knee and drink water while they fill us in on the details of the next day. Sometimes, there is a little bit of fine between platoons as they see who can sound off the loudest. The DS's like to have bragging rights. Our platoon is usually competing with 4th platoon. Sometimes the DS's really get into being competitive and it cam be pretty funny.