This is undoubtedly one of the craziest ventures I have embarked upon in my entire life. I look on it with humor, though. So far things are not at all bad- interesting, in fact. Upon reception last night at about 10:30 P.M., we were sat on long benches in a big, open room with flags all around, protruding from the walls at angles no doubt intended to be intimidating. They passed us snacks "Jimmy Deans" I believe they called them- consisted of cold, dense deli sandwiches. The problem with me was my sandwich was dry, mouth was even drier, and I had to urinate. They allowed us to take in some water finally. We then learned our Company (A-4) and formed a line down a hallway to drop off our contraband items- called "Amnesty boothes". the Drill Sergeant told us to proceed by the garbage pails (for our meals) and Amnesty boothes, stopping at the mannequin depicting George Washington. (The mannequin did not, however, even remotely resemble George Washington, though they attempted wrinkle painting "spruce-ups" on his hellenistic, perfectly formed mannequin face). We then took our 5 minute march to our WWII-era reception battalion barracks, in absolute silence. That was interesting- everyone must have been too tired, too scared, too smart, or all three. Now, we are preparing to form ("formation"- I guess form is the word) at 0900 down by the AT bldg. That's crazy.
I guess I should mention that I was appointed group leader yesterday, suddenly and unexpectedly charged with the task of complete responsibility for getting all 10 of my new recruits (including myself) from the KC Meps to St. Louis. It worked out, though the last 2 cabfuls forgot what airline I said (Southwest) and ended up running frantically across the "horseshoes". All is well here, though. It's even kind of fun.
May 21st Continued, 1830 hours
See, I even broke down and used the military time. The first day was really kind of shocking, I guess, but in a not too serious kind of interesting way. They lined us up at 9 A.M., woke us up at 8 A.M. That's luxury for the Army, I guess. We were taught the basics of marching/attention etc. We were also informed of the rules.
The rules went something like this:
I guess basically I rollercoasted from confidence to panic to weariness to "this is kind of fun, in a really sadistic, sick sort of way". To top off this first day in the Army, by the way, rain was pouring down when we attempted (2 times) to make formation to march back to the barracks. Got soaked of course, but the Corporal in charge of our group was fun about it. He joked with us about the Army commercial with the guy sitting in the rain. Just took a shower crammed in with 4 others, and now I'm wearing the last of my "civies" that are 100% totally clean- at least tommorrow we get our uniforms.
Well, we ship on to Basic on Tuesday. Hope this finds you all well until next time.
Dan
P.S. Here's our cadence- not P.C. at all.
Left Left Left- "43rd!"
Left Left Left- "43rd AG- hooah!"
One Two Three Four- "Shoot to kill!"
One Two Three Four- "Shoot to kill, drive on! Hooah!"
(*Hooah is pronounced "Hoo-uh"- sort of.)