<$BlogRSDURL$>

You'd be surprised.

Sunday, May 30, 2004

I am in the army.

I shipped out on March 11th. I was very excited and a little unsure of what I should expect. Of course I had an idea of what would happen but you can never know for sure, especially with the Army.

When I arrived at the 120th Reception Battalion my eyes were wide, taking in as much as they could. It was about 4am on a Friday morning. Our bus from the Airport in Georgia broke down and we had to continuously put oil in it to keep it from grinding to a hault. The trip was uneventful. Many of us began forming friendships and some of us just slept as much as we could. I talked and listened, trying to form a repoir with the future soldiers I would serve with. When I wasn't socializing I was sleeping.

The 4am arrival did not make things any easier. The Drill Seargant that would be receiving us was pretty pissed off. As we RAN off the bus with all of our crap we were told to enter this particular building and line up a particular way. Then we were told to dump our bags, so they could clear out any contraband we might have had. Luckily, because we arrived at such a later hour we did not have to turn in our contraband. I ended up getting away with my cell and a camera.

The 6 day stay at reception was pretty uneventful. The real "fun" would start less than a week later. At reception we were issued all of our gear including our BDUs, combat boots, gloves, PT clothing and more. This all had to be stuffed into a duffle bag later. Until that time, we arranged everything neatly in our lockers. We slept in a bay of about 36, two soldiers to a bunk. Each bunk had an upper bed and lower. I slept on top to begin with and then ended up on the bottom. We had a very good platoon. Excellent communication and teamwork. Unfortunately we would be torn apart into 4 different platoons in just a few days.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -