"When it's your time to die, it's your time to die. Unless the
batteries in god's watch have died, then you may have afew minutes more while he
does a quick changeover"
"Rock Force"
[From the beginning of the "Book of Fire", on to the "AIT Dictionary" are all previous entries, being ammounted up to today. Most of these will not have dates on them because it was kinda hard
to think about writing dates on these entries when we spent most of our
time in the pushup position, or prone, firing a weapon, so please bare with me.
-Sayin]
"Welcome to Fort Jackson!" was the welcoming most of the civilians now wearing ACUs which I had come to know as my battle buddies not even three weeks before we were shipped off on this bus to tank hill from the 1-20th reception battalion which we'd all recived our medical records, shots, permenantly-issued TA50, and of course, our sets of ACUs. Although we had been more rudely welcomed to our reception battalion, people still didn't expect what was about to happen.
The welcome sounded more like "Get off my damn bus!, move, move, move!" among other loud comments sounding halfway like the movie-specific NCOs and Drill Sergeants we'd all come to know so well in movies like Saving Private Ryan, and other steriotypical movies of privates in basic training. After being hearded off the large white busses we'd come to know later as "Shuttles" with all of our stuff crammed into a green duffle bag, as well as one or two of our own personal bags (Bags we'd come from our hotels to 1-20th), we were "Instructed" (forced) to "off load" (rushingly dump) our bags in seperate piles by platoon number, then rush, rush, rush to a platoon-by-platoon formation (four column formations lined up beside each other, each formation representing the respective platoon, forming the later more familiar company formation.) There we stood while our drill sergeants gave their introductions, they sounded off with the seven Army Values, and the soldier's creed, then separating back to their respective platoons to commence to instructing us on a platoon level. At that time, the leadership was chosen based on prior experience with any training (JROTC, ROTC, playing army in your backyard, .ect). Due to the fact that I was one of three people who'd raised their hands when the drill sergeant asked who'd had any type of ROTC or JROTC before, I was given the role of 3 squad's squad leader.
From there, we were rushed out to get our bags out of the enormous cluster within the time limit of two minutes. Of course, it probably took longer than that, but they never told us, and to prevent getting smoked, we never asked. We all got put back in our neat little company formation, and told to drop our stuff where we stood. I stood between an interesting little chinese girl, and a black girl who looked more like she could give two shits about what was goin on at the moment, but was willing to follow along none the less. So we get something called a shakedown, more commonly known as dump-your-shit-so-we-can-make-sure-you-got-what-we-want-you-to-have-not-like-you'll-use-most-of-it-anyway. So, out of this formation, now turned dis-organized gaggle, we were re-situated with all our gear, with the exception of about fourty percent of us who were just as lost as shaggy and scooby before a commercial break, the shakedown not helping due to the fact that now certain things are missing because they got mixed in with someone else's stuff. Yet and still, we pressed on. We got familiar with our barracks, got assigned our bunks, the more fun part of the day because we actually sat down for more than two minutes, spending about fifteen there, talking to our senior drill sergeant, him showing us how to make and stockade our bunks, and re-hearding us outside for more introductions.
Everyone from the senior drill sergeants to the Lieutenant Colonel introduced themselves that day, and we got no sleep in between, so there wasn't one person who did not fall asleep during these onslaughts of instruction. Although, the most fun part about the introductions was when the CSM started ragging the drill sergeants, making most of us laugh the "I'm so fuckin tired, I could sleep on a bed of hot coals, oh and you're not funny" laugh, and start talking to us like he was a civilian, talking to civilians. Don't get me wrong, we were still civilians, ...kinda... but still, him being nice after hours of the drill sergeants ...it felt too wierd. Things easilly got back under control when we found ourselves back out on the drill pad, getting instructions on what to do next. We recived our linen, made our bunks, and then...
...went outside for more damn instructions. Here, they explained to us the phases, and why we may not make it out of red phase in the next three weeks like we were supposed to, which this, of course, we didn't take into accord untill the end of white phase, but that's another story.
So, by night, we were all too exhausted to even sleep, but tried anyway, getting ready for the next morning, where we'd wake up at about 03:45 in the moring to start all over again.
Till next time,
Sayin
