BCT Day 44

The following information is a portion of “Marck’s Boot Camp Diary”. The information contains a straight-forward look at Basic Training Life on a daily basis. The information contained within this page is used with the express written permission of the author. For more information about the author view the “Author’s Information” at the bottom of the page. Some choice phrases have been censored.

September 6th, 2002

Today should be awesome. It’s US Weapons day. Hopefully, I’ll get to fire a grenade launcher. Hey, less than 3 weeks left.

We finally got our blue phase flag yesterday. White phase was 3 weeks, not two like I said. See? That’s what I get for listening to another private. This is the ceremonial speech we got from our D.S.: “Don’t think I wanted to give this to y’all. Y’all don’t deserve it.” A heartwarming speech, don’t you think?

I just finished firing a machine gun. I shot 50 rounds. Ta-Ta-Ta-Ta. Oh my God, it’s awesome. Such power. ******* sweet. Next is a grenade launcher. We also have two rockets. Some lucky person will get to fire them. I wish we all had rockets, but it’s too much money. I got to unload them off the truck though. The launcher and rocket is one time use. It’s like 3 FT high. We also installed and recovered a claymore mine (a dummy). We saw a demonstration of the real one though. It spits out metal pellets that destroy everything within 50 FT. All that’s left is bone fragments. The explosion of grenades from a few days ain’t **** compared to a claymore mine.

It’s been an explosive day (Ha Ha Ha) and it’s not even lunch time yet. I mean damn, I looked like straight up Rambo with my belt of bullets on me. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I’m sitting at the boring bleachers. We got a haircut two nights ago in the barracks, even though it’s illegal. Our DS got us two hair trimmers and an hour or two later, we all had nearly shaved heads again. Yeah, we did a crappy job, but we saved $4.75 each. I had to return to the barber’s bucket, not chair, to complain. He missed a huge spot, but he fixed it right away. Our DS said to tell anyone who asks that we went to the barber shop. That’s fine by me.

Oh. The rocket the lucky private shot costs $6000. No wonder we only get one. The rest of us shot a stupid little tracer bullet out of the rocket launcher. That was disappointing. That’s ok. We’re shooting a grenade filled with orange paint at a tank next.

Daaamn. That was sweet. I hit the tank dead center from 150 meters. A puff of orange smoke raised into the air as soon as the round connected.