Army Life Part 3

Basic Training

When most people think of basic training, they think of a bunch of new soldiers dressed in their brand new uniforms getting off of a bus and immediately being yelled at by a bunch of drill sergeants. All of us had thought that would be our fate, in fact, some of us hoped for it. I knew I was looking forward to trying to keep a straight face while a drill sergeant acted his best to look pissed off at the new group of privates he would have to lead. I was so hoping that it would be like the movies. It wasn’t. Talk about boring. We piled on to a bus first thing Monday morning and nervously waited for it to arrive at our basic training area. When the bus arrived, there weren’t even any drill sergeants around. No one was yelling at us to get off the bus, no one was there to make us feel dumb. I was disappointed. Instead, they were all lined up in the area where the company was supposed to form up. We ran over to our spot thinking that if we didn’t that we would get dropped and have to do pushups. Instead of getting dropped and yelled at, we were told to take off all our patches (name tag, US ARMY tag, American flag, etc.) and remove any watches and dog tags we had. After removing all those items we placed them in our patrol caps on top of our duffel bags that we removed from the bus. After doing all of this, we were told to follow the drill sergeants. I started to look around me, and it turned out that we were standing outside of a big obstacle course. The drill sergeants started running and we followed them. We jumped over hurdles, and walked on balance beams. We even had to go across monkey bars. That was an experience all in its own. I got to go first at least. It took me a few seconds to cross all of them. Some people couldn’t make it all the way and had to start again. Some people couldn’t even hang from the monkey bars. What a joke! We also had to climb a rather large cargo net and then climb down the other side. It was a fairly simple task yet it took some people a long time to do it. One person even cried when she got to the top. It wouldn’t have killed her if she had fallen. There was shredded rubber underneath incase she fell, and it was only about 20 feet high. By the time we finished, most people were out of breath. It was pathetic. After we got done we had to put all our patches and dog tags back on and grab our duffel bags. In addition to having duffel bags, we had backpacks and a laundry bag filled with all of our stuff. If the backpack was black or green then we could wear it on our back. If it wasn’t black or green, we had to carry it in our right hand and hold our duffel bag in our left. My bags were heavy but it wasn’t that bad. We marched about a mile while carrying all our stuff. There was one person there that was dying all the way to the company area. I rolled my eyes most of the time when she came into my view. Her name was Specialist Eversole. Eversole only had to carry a duffel bag because she had a green backpack she could wear. She would constantly drop her bag as she walked down the hill to the company area. She was sweating like crazy and looked like she was going to pass out. The drill sergeants found their target.

Eversole is one of those people that one might ask God why he allowed her to live for such a long time on this earth. She supposedly had a master degree in some type of science, and was apparently very smart. Unfortunately for her, she lacked everything else vital to life. I am still wondering to this day how she arrived at MEPS to get processed and then somehow survived the plane ride to South Carolina. If a butterfly flew past, she would stare at it and watch it like a 4 year old might do. Simple commands confused her. If a drill sergeant would give a command that was slightly more than simple, she would look at him the way a cow might look at an oncoming train.

We did eventually arrive at the company area. We formed up and checked to make sure everyone arrived alive. We were then told to quickly find our official army green duffel bag. We brought it back to our formation area and were then told to dump it out. Once again we were having a shake-down. They sorted out anything that they considered contraband and threw it away. Anything that was not considered contraband, but was not basic training approved, went into a personal belonging pile. We then put all our personal belongings into our personal bag and locked it into a storage closet. During this same time, we were allowed to make one call on our cell phone to anyone we wanted. The call would be 3 minutes long. I called home but no one answered. Oh well, I’ll just write them later, I thought. We were then handed a plastic sandwich bag and told to write our name on it. We then put our cell phone into the bag and it went into a locked office. We wouldn’t see that again until family day after 10 weeks of training.