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[Kagus]

Uhh...  Hi.


Just a little blip for now, seeing as I'm working off of a truly, fabulously horrid public computer.  Basically just a quick mention to keep this thing alive.

Right around three weeks of boot camp, with another three (or so) weeks to go.  First three days were hell, everything else has been a lighter shade thereof.  I have no idea what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this.

We'r constantly hounded for being tragically sluggish and outright slow, due to our frequent failures to conform to military-standard timeplans.  Military-standard timeplans being, of course, hilarious.  30 minutes to eat (and all that entails...  only certain uniforms are allowed into the mess, and improperly-shined shoes or an unbuttoned pocket can earn you a place at the back of the line to try again.  And that's not even mentioning the many different methods of paying respect to the king's picture and the personal preferences of the innspecting officers regarding such), clean both your personal room and your public cleaning assignment to a godly standard, and change into a different set of equipment (before running outside to your assigned spot in the formation and making sure everyone is where they should be, standing ready for the sergeant well before those 30 minutes are up.  That, as sarge says, is damned good time to do all that.  Now, everyone do push-ups until the last man shows up.


I've been doing relatively well.  Aside from the severe lack of sleep caused by military-themed nightmares that are so realistic that I scare myself away from sleep for fear of dozing in front of an officer.  Oh, yeah, and the frequent stress-induced cold sweats that soak the bed.  Now I understand why they use rubber-lined mattresses...

I've also spent a fair amount of time out of commission thanks to extreme, bloody sores thanks to marching for hours in boots that aren't really the right shape/size (and, I just realized, happened to be the pair I forgot to put soles into.  Hmm...), not to mention the skyhigh fever I got shortly thereafter which landed me a hospital bed for three days, and now the atypical lung infection I've apparently had for a while now which will keep me out of physical exertion (and away from the chilly outdoors) until the 20th/21st.  Just in time to start  up with the really tough exercizes we'll have that'll build off of the physical and mental training we've had up to that point.

...wonderful as it is to take a break, I really have to wonder how hard this relaxation is going to bite me in the butt.


Ah well...  Such is life.  Speaking of which, the troop I'm in has apparently adopted "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life" as its personal ballad.  Whistling has become very popular on longer marches.


Oh, yeah, and we all had to sign a confidentiality agreement regarding what we come into contact with during service.  Whee.


So yeah...  Slight chance I'll pop in again tomorrow, but not huge. Computers are still contraband for recruits, and this public terminal is likely to drive me insane. 

Cheers.

[sonerohi]

I'd like to see a troop with Mulan songs as their ballad. They'd be the best troop.

[Jackrabbit]

Jesus, I read through that entire thing thinking you were Strife. There's too many military peoples on this here board.

Anyway, sounds super fun. Hope they ease off a bit soon.

[olemars]

Ahh, this brings back memories.

Sounds like they didn't upgrade their public computers after 2002 after all.

Have you had "skifteleken" (roughly: the changing game) yet? That's where you line up in formation, get told to change to another uniform in, say 3 minutes and some severe punishment if you're late. Repeat 5-6 times. That one's fun. There will be other fun things too but I don't want to spoil them all. It's better that way.

If it's any consolation the discipline is usually relaxed down to human bearable levels after the recruit weeks. We didn't even clean the room every day the last 6 months.

I've been doing relatively well.  Aside from the severe lack of sleep caused by military-themed nightmares that are so realistic that I scare myself away from sleep for fear of dozing in front of an officer.  Oh, yeah, and the frequent stress-induced cold sweats that soak the bed.  Now I understand why they use rubber-lined mattresses...

We pulled a couple of cruel pranks in that regard. On my room we had one dude who was a bit of a drinker, so one sunday morning around five we put on full battle dress and started shaking him and yelling "GET UP! IT'S WAR! IT'S WAR!". He was a bit jittery for a while after that. Guess I should point out that this was probably a month, maybe two, after 9/11/2001.

The other was an MP who had top bunk and used to get in by vaulting over the foot end. That's why we removed the mattress, removed the wooden ribs, then put the matress back in (it fit snugly enough to not fall out even without the bottom support). I don't think he hurt himself badly after he vaulted up that evening, but he wasn't happy.

[Kagus]

Yeah, we've had the changing game.  Just the one round though, from full combat gear to standard uniform and back.  No particularly dire threats though, just yelled at us for being so unimaginably slow. 

We also played the Tent Game, where you march for two hours out into the woods, tramp down the snow so it becomes relatively flat, take out seven tiny scraps of fabric, button them together, tie the resulting abomination to four trees, push it down and attempt to pin your new hovel securely into three feet of snow...

...and then take the whole thing apart again because you didn't manage to do it in under 45 (we were lucky, another sergeant decided upon 16 minutes as the baseline.  His group had the honor of setting and resetting their tent 7 times before he let them off the hook).  We were easily he slowest group, but we only had to take the thing down once due to our getting paired up with a damn cool sergeant.  Still slightly demoralizing, since we found out that we had to take the tent down before we'd set it all the way up.  And, of course, we had to set it all the way up before we could try again.


Since it's the weekend, we got to have a shorter workday.  Put on and adjusted the military interpretation of a ski, but apparently didn't have time to learn how to use them.  Instead, we got to try our hand at repairing the haphazard burning lunchboxes that are the central component of surviving a camping trip.  As the lieutenant said, these things are the most dangerous items we'll ever have to deal with during our service period, assault rifles included.

I got saddled with a sub-group of the group I'm assigned to, and we got to repair one of our team's malfunctioning inferno-contraptions.  Unfortunately, I was the only one who had a smidgen of technical savvy.  Also unfortunately, I had a doctor's appointment during the lection on friday where we learned about the different parts and how to repair or replace them.

This resulted in one person focusing intently and getting nothing done, while several others tried to figure out if they were cats or dogs.


After a fair amount of time and an even fairer amount of help, we managed to assemble something of such extreme usefulness and efficiency that the sergeant said "Good job.  Now clean it". 

I was momentarily thrown into a state of shock.

[olemars]

The standard issue kerosene primus. Using it is like defusing a live bomb in the dark. Oddly enough it's not at the most dangerous when it's burning. Then it's just a potential fuel-air bomb. If the flame goes out however it will kill you if you don't get it out of the tent quickly (don't throw it though, it's government property and you'll have to fill out a TS report). Somehow it emits huge amounts of CO when it flames out and the "sjuduker" tent is an efficient death chamber (also a firetrap since the fabric is waterproofed with something extremely flammable).

[Kagus]

waterproofed

This joke is hilarious.

On the first tent exercise we took along the standard two lunchboxes-of-death.  One to use, and one for reserve.  We knew before taking off that the reserve was buggered, but the other one worked like a charm, so we figured it would be fine.

Well, yeah...  It worked just fine until 3:00AM.  Then it decided to go into a pattern of displaying a beautiful, perfect blue flame for two seconds, then dying utterly.  I started it back up a couple times, then the sergeant started it back up a couple times, then another sergeant came along and smugly watched our sergeant fumble with the primus for a while, then everyone declared the primus FUBAR and went back to sleep out the next three hours in a cold tent.

We woke up to cold breakfast and a layer of ice on the inside of the canvas.  Good times.

[olemars]

Yeah, those "tents" have the ability to always be colder and wetter inside than the outside under all circumstances. They were probably waterproof back in 1960 when they were new though. Now they're just flammable. There's a reason you're told to keep the combat knife within reach when sleeping.

[Kashyyk]

And to think I was considering joining the military... Sounds like fun! (I honestly don't know whether that is the DF definition or not.)

I'm from the UK btw, despite that, I will be following this avidly.

[Kagus]

Yeah, despite my griping, we've actually had a remarkably laid-back run of things in comparison to the other troops and divisions, and most certainly in comparison to the military forces of other countries (Britain in particular being the proud owner of a right bastard of an armed forces training program).

We've got the great big ski trip ahead of us (winging in right after my doctor's order runs out), and the possibility of the beret race rearing its ugly head just around the corner (the beret race being a big ol' nasty test of your physical and mental reserves, the completion of which earns you the honorable distinction of finally being a real soldier.  Plus a floppy hat).

In other news, we got our dogtags today.  They're unwieldy, ugly, and don't serve any real purpose since most of us almost certainly won't see active combat.  At least now I know what my blood type is...


Anyways, here's hoping I manage to rest up and recuperate sufficiently before too long...  I'm getting better just as the rest of my troop is getting sick.  Again, good times.  Stress, constipation and heavy coughing are running rampant.


That'll be it for now, I'm sick and tired of this console.  Gonna go put my feet up.  Cheers.

[Urist is dead tome]

Yeah, despite my griping, we've actually had a remarkably laid-back run of things in comparison to the other troops and divisions, and most certainly in comparison to the military forces of other countries (Britain in particular being the proud owner of a right bastard of an armed forces training program).

That's something that bothers me right there. The way people say it's easy. That's about it.

[/quote]
 (the beret race being a big ol' nasty test of your physical and mental reserves, the completion of which earns you the honorable distinction of finally being a real soldier.  Plus a floppy hat).
[/quote]

In the end, isn't that the true reward?

[Sowelu]

In the end, isn't that the true reward?

The floppy hat?

Obviously.

[Siquo]

It's not TF2.

[olemars]

The floppy hat must be shaped and maintained properly though. It can be a bit of a pain. Ideally it should look like it crawled on top of your head from your right shoulder, then died there.

[Urist is dead tome]

Ideally it should look like it crawled on top of your head from your right shoulder, then died there.

Guess I got a new signature.