BCT Day 47
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 9th, 2002
It’s another ITT day. That means crawling on the dirt. One of the platoons is wearing knee and elbow pads. Lucky bastards. I wish we had them.
There are only two days of hard training this week. ITT today and tomorrow. Wednesday we get our class As back with our rank patch on and individual size adjustments. Thursday we just prepare for our end of cycle test and Friday is our final PT test. Next week is our final training event. The mighty Field Training Exercise (FTX). We’ll march 10K to the field, stay there for three nights, I think, and march 15K back. We’ll be eating MREs (Yes!) And using everything we learned in the past 7 weeks. In the middle of next week we’ll be done with training. The last 7 days we’ll be recovering from FTX and getting ready to bounce out of here. Wow. Only 5 days of actual training left. I’m not in pain anymore. I recuperated during the weekend. I will be after today and tomorrow.
All right! I just found out we’re taking turns sharing the knee and elbow pads. The ITT course is not bad at all. It’s all rush! Get down in your next position! Bang Bang! Fire at the enemy! High crawl to your next position! Bang Bang! Low crawl! Bang! Keep your head down! Throw grenade to enemy’s position! Boom! It takes 5-10 minutes to complete. I really liked it. It’s supposed to be longer, but it’s one of those wicked hot black flag days, so they cut it short so we don’t get a heat injury. Damn, I thought these black flag days went away in early August.
I’m sitting at the bleachers now. Man, the boring metal bleachers and the immense amount of time I have to spend on them are one of the things I hate most about BCT. We sit here for HOURS either waiting our turn or waiting for everyone else after we finish. Every shooting range here has the same damn bleachers. If I was allowed to go to sleep I’d be fine. I would not even have to write to keep my sanity. Instead you get to read my bitching. I should drink that new German beer. It’s called Quityurbitchin.
I guess that’s it for today. We’ll go back to the barracks and not do much. Four days of real training left.