An official blog posting
So up till now I've been posting letters that I've recieved from Matt (edited of course for public consumption) Here is Matt's first "offical" blog post. ahh and let me know apologize for any past, present or future typos and spelling mistakes
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Hello and greetings from sunny FT Jackson SC. Im now about 3 weeks inot this 10 or so week process. i say "or so" because apparently we were supposed to start a week later than we did, even though all or our paper work says otherwise. Once again, Welcome to the Army. So far, as Stacy may have already written here, I have done more sitting and waiting aroun than at any other time in my life. they say that all of that will change starting thsi week. I guess I should back up to five you a frame of reference. I'm sitting here writing this in the early am hours of Monday, July 17th. Its about 0120. Why am I up at 120 in the morning? Druing basic training, we are responsible for different types of guard duties. For the most part there are 2 main types, Fire gurad duty and weapons gurad duty. There are also CQ runners and staff runners, but we won't talk much about them. the guard duties are what they sound like, fire guard is primarily responsible for personel accountability. They run in 2 hour shifts from lights out (approx. 2100 (( thats 9pm for you civilians-sw)) until wake up, 0515 for example. They walk through tthe barracks counting sleeping soliders. Since tis is a co-ed training facility, there is a floor of males and a floor of females. Counts are mde every hour on the hour to ake sure that no one slipped out. All of the maindoors have alarms on them anyway. As for weapons gurad, of which I am one this early (I mean really early)morning, we sit in the room with the platoons weapons, 60 in all. They are locked and inracks, but we guard them none the less to ensure that they don't walkoff. If one does, they lock the entire barracks down until its found. Not a good thing to have happen. The best part about being on weapons guard is tha you are allowed to sit and write. Enough about guard duties. As for the training, this week we start require dtraining segments. Basically, if you miss them for any reason, you don't graduate. today we are doing PT in the morning, consisting of a run in our ability groups. Those groups are based on times from our PT assesment of 2 miles. I have been running relatively well and now find myself in th A group. There are only about 13-14 (our of 230) inthat group. Its pretty painful honor because we will be pushed to our limits by the Drill Sergants. Just for a base of comparison, I ran my 2 miles for the test in 13:18 (6:40/mile average). The A group will probably end basic training running below 6 min pace during certain periods. We do a fast run then while we wait for the other groups (B,C,D) to return we do other exercises. Tuesday we do our first required segment. They call it Victory Tower. I call it an adult jungle gym. It is a large platform with different rope obstacles on it. There we will learn reppeling, how to move across different rope obstacles (cargo nets, slack lines etc) it looks like a blast. We will spen a majority of the day there. Wednesday we will be taught a very essential class on battelfield first aid. Thurdsay we will get a long class on map reading and navigation. then Friday we will dod day and night navigation exercises. A lot of the navigation is a cabon copy of the adventure racing orienterring that Ive been doing for the alst 3 years. there are some terms that are different, but the point plotting and compass use is the same. The DSs keep saying that the train is about to leave the station and when it doses, last stop is graduation. Last night, one said that it doesn't get more difficult than what we've been doing, just that it goes by so much faster. I hope that the case. ill keep you all posted on as weekley a basis as possible fro here out. I didn't before because there wasn't mcuh to report. I do want to take the opportunity to thank all of yo for the letters and well wishes. It helps to know that I have the support and love of my family and friends. Keep the mail coming. We get it pretty much everyday and it helps keep us connected. you can't send any food though, unfortunately. I look forward to seeing all of you in December. Take care for now.
Matt
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Hello and greetings from sunny FT Jackson SC. Im now about 3 weeks inot this 10 or so week process. i say "or so" because apparently we were supposed to start a week later than we did, even though all or our paper work says otherwise. Once again, Welcome to the Army. So far, as Stacy may have already written here, I have done more sitting and waiting aroun than at any other time in my life. they say that all of that will change starting thsi week. I guess I should back up to five you a frame of reference. I'm sitting here writing this in the early am hours of Monday, July 17th. Its about 0120. Why am I up at 120 in the morning? Druing basic training, we are responsible for different types of guard duties. For the most part there are 2 main types, Fire gurad duty and weapons gurad duty. There are also CQ runners and staff runners, but we won't talk much about them. the guard duties are what they sound like, fire guard is primarily responsible for personel accountability. They run in 2 hour shifts from lights out (approx. 2100 (( thats 9pm for you civilians-sw)) until wake up, 0515 for example. They walk through tthe barracks counting sleeping soliders. Since tis is a co-ed training facility, there is a floor of males and a floor of females. Counts are mde every hour on the hour to ake sure that no one slipped out. All of the maindoors have alarms on them anyway. As for weapons gurad, of which I am one this early (I mean really early)morning, we sit in the room with the platoons weapons, 60 in all. They are locked and inracks, but we guard them none the less to ensure that they don't walkoff. If one does, they lock the entire barracks down until its found. Not a good thing to have happen. The best part about being on weapons guard is tha you are allowed to sit and write. Enough about guard duties. As for the training, this week we start require dtraining segments. Basically, if you miss them for any reason, you don't graduate. today we are doing PT in the morning, consisting of a run in our ability groups. Those groups are based on times from our PT assesment of 2 miles. I have been running relatively well and now find myself in th A group. There are only about 13-14 (our of 230) inthat group. Its pretty painful honor because we will be pushed to our limits by the Drill Sergants. Just for a base of comparison, I ran my 2 miles for the test in 13:18 (6:40/mile average). The A group will probably end basic training running below 6 min pace during certain periods. We do a fast run then while we wait for the other groups (B,C,D) to return we do other exercises. Tuesday we do our first required segment. They call it Victory Tower. I call it an adult jungle gym. It is a large platform with different rope obstacles on it. There we will learn reppeling, how to move across different rope obstacles (cargo nets, slack lines etc) it looks like a blast. We will spen a majority of the day there. Wednesday we will be taught a very essential class on battelfield first aid. Thurdsay we will get a long class on map reading and navigation. then Friday we will dod day and night navigation exercises. A lot of the navigation is a cabon copy of the adventure racing orienterring that Ive been doing for the alst 3 years. there are some terms that are different, but the point plotting and compass use is the same. The DSs keep saying that the train is about to leave the station and when it doses, last stop is graduation. Last night, one said that it doesn't get more difficult than what we've been doing, just that it goes by so much faster. I hope that the case. ill keep you all posted on as weekley a basis as possible fro here out. I didn't before because there wasn't mcuh to report. I do want to take the opportunity to thank all of yo for the letters and well wishes. It helps to know that I have the support and love of my family and friends. Keep the mail coming. We get it pretty much everyday and it helps keep us connected. you can't send any food though, unfortunately. I look forward to seeing all of you in December. Take care for now.
Matt
posted by stacy @ 8:47 AM
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