#85 - Range time, hand-to-hand combat, and the usual drama

Today was a good mail day. I received 2 cards from my mom, and 2 letters and a package from my husband. Receiving mail here means a lot.

We are allegedly receiving a phone call today. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. We've been promised this before, but it doesn't always happen. Sometimes we are teased with the prospect of something good happening, but the reward is ruined because of other peoples' behavior.

Friday was spent on the range. At one point, our Drill Sergeant asked for "20 high-speed, highly motivated volunteers" for a detail. I jumped up, along with about nine others. He had to repeatedly ask another 10 folks to join us, and finally had to assign people to come, since folks were being lazy and didn't want to volunteer. I thought that was not a good sign. It was fortuitous that I did volunteer, as the DS decided to smoke the rest of the company for not doing so. It was a bad smoke session, with flutter kicks, rifle PT, mountain climbers (being in the front leaning rest/pushup position, with your legs running in place beneath you) - and everyone was smoked on two separate occasions while the rest of us were on a detail. Contrary to popular opinion, sometimes it is better to volunteer in basic training.

Yesterday morning we had more instruction in hand-to-hand combat. One of the moves we learned was "shrimping", which is basically turning and wriggling your body to get out of a hold. The Drill Sergeants teaching the class amused themselves by making the company "shrimp" back and forth across a large field. It was almost as tiring as the low crawl. Somehow I got out of participating in the hand-to-hand combat matches, but watching the others was very amusing. The best match, by far, was the female lightweight class. Two of the smallest girls in my platoon, Bucking ("Army Barbie") and Penny, went at it with incredible ferocity. They were rolling around so much that they went halfway across the field and into the area where another platoon was having their match. Another female bout involved one girl pulling another's hair (ouch!). During one of the male matches, one guy was choked so hard that he lost conciousness for several seconds. The DSs probably find this fairly entertaining, as we certainly did.

I am doing laundry right now, and there was just a confrontation between Bucking and White. The "c" word was used...lol. There was so much screaming that the Drill Sergeants came in to see what was going on. Ah, the drama...

I am unfortunately still sick, though I've been taking the cold medicine that I got from sick call faithfully. I wonder if it is even possible to get better here, as people just pass illness back and forth between them. There is also something of a pinkeye epidemic amongst the females. That is definately something I don't want to get!

Tomorrow is a five mile road march with full battle rattle - kevlar, LCE, IBA, rucksack, and M-16. I'm not really looking forward to it. If they just walked a little slower, I swear I could march all day, but it's hard for someone with short legs to keep up with the company commander's pace (he is an infantry guy, and is always in a big hurry). I may have to fall back in the formation while we are marching, but I won't fall out... no matter what.