Basic Training
Journal: Saturday, October 4th
I haven't had time to write for a long time. Here's a breakdown
of what we did the past week in FTX.
Monday: Got transportation to a location
3 miles from the FTX site. We grounded our rucks and ate breakfast.
We then marched to a repel site, it was just a small cliff.
The path back to our rucks was pretty cool, it was through
the woods and following the river. We ate an MRE for lunch
on the way to the repel site.
When we got back to our rucks, we put them on and marched
3 miled mostly uphill to our FTX site. We setup a wedge formation
and dug foxholes and put our tents up. After dinner MREs we
improved our foxholes...they have to be deep enough for the
length and width of your body to fit inside. After we got
that done we went to bed. 50% of our platoon had to be up
at all times..you and your battle buddy switch off every hour
to pull guard.
It was really cold at night but our sleeping bags are nice
and warm. The DS said the best way is to take off as much
clothes as possible while in the sleeping bag...the reason
was something about sweating all day..I forget. It's not really
worth it though since you have to be up every hour.
Tuesday: We got up for breakfast, then we
started doing missions. Clearing land mines, recon an area,
do an ambush, it was pretty fun. We also were ambushed. The
DS threw smoke grenades at us but we still put on our PRO
masks because it might be gas.
At night we had a mission to find a downed pilot in the woods.
There was no path we followed, the DS led the way and someone
had a compass to lead him through the woods. Our compass guy
really messed up and held the compass right next to his M16.
We ended up not finding the pilot and we got lost. Another
DS had to honk the horn of a deuce at the FTX site so we could
get our bearings and find our way back. We basically just
found the road and followed it back. Our DS was pissed off
of course.
Everyone thought we were going to get gassed while we slept,
but nothing happened. Everyone says you better stay awake,
but I fell asleep both nights and we weren't messed with by
the drill sergeants.
Wednesday: After breakfast we filled our
foxholes and packed our stuff. That took quite a while. We
then had a recon mission. All the missions we had during FTX
were easy. After the recon mission we ate, then marched 2
miles back to the paved road and got transport to the night
infiltration course. We ate dinner and did a lot of waiting
for it to get dark outside.
M60s fired over your head while you high crawled what they
say was 100 meters but I think it wa farther. We had 4 obstacles
to pass, 2 logs and 2 barbed wire obstacles. It wasn't hard
but it was tiring and it hurt since the ground was rock hard..they
did give us elbow and knee pads though. We also had to wear
flap jackets and carry rubber ducky weapons so we didn't get
our real M16s dirty crawling around. The whole platoon goes
at the same time and all 4 platoons in the company compete
for the best time. We got 2nd place and were 4 seconds from
being first place.
We waited for the other platoons to finish, then we started
the 10 mile(15K) road march back. We had to go up a hill called
the "stairway to heaven". We started at a quick
pace but slowed down before the stairway. The road march was
pretty grueling but not as hard as I thought it would be.
It was cool outside and we had 2 stops for rest and water.
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