Basic Training Journal: Wednesday, August 27th

We are now off total control!! We got to pick ten people from our platoon to be tested by the senior drill sergeant. The test was over DnC, general orders, rank structure, and customs and courtesies. Every platoon in Echo company passed the test.

Now that we're off total control we won't have a drill sergeant around us all the time. Our platoon guide now marches us to chow instead of the DS.

Anyway, we had a last man run today before breakfast. After breakfast we had platoon pictures in BDUs. We all piled on to bleachers according to our height and had a picture with our drill sergeants standing in the front of the bleachers. They also took a picture of all the drill sergeants in the company(cadre picture).

After the pictures we had a brief on buying the pictures, history book, and video of BT. Off the top of my head, the platoon picture was ~$8 and so was the cadre picture. The history book was ~$15, and the video is around ~$30.

After that brief, we had a class on our protective(PRO) masks since we're going to the gas chamber tomorrow. We basically just checked the mask to make sure it was serviceable and sealed on your face correctly. These masks are pretty old and used because they are used each BT cycle.

After lunch we got our M16s and had a class on disassembling and reassembling the M16. It wasn't too difficult to get the hang of. I thought it would be a lot more work but it doesn't take long to take apart and put together. After that we went back to the bay and DS Sibal talked to us about the gas chamber...he gave us a walk through of what will happen tomorrow.