Phase II PT test 46 PU, 64 SU
and 15:24 run. Disappointed over
SU but expected decline in run
from leg. Still it is good enough
for Army standards. Also,
ran the confidence course. OK
but hurt my leg on it. Reinforcement
training with Van Loben Sels and other
assorted brass looking on.
Final cleaning of weapon. Inspection
coming up Saturday.
Only 14 more days to go.
I'm basically tired. I never thought
we'd get our blue banners.
I wish I could call [fiance] but
weekdays she's at class in evening
and that's the only time I get to call.
Push ups and sit ups were as many as you could do in 2 minutes. The run was for 2 miles. I thought I'd do better in sit ups. At the time, for whatever reason, I could do a lot. I recall once when we sick, lame, and lazy were doing PT on our own, one guy was holding my leg and I did 100 sit ups. He called BS on me, so I said, fine, you count them this time. And I did 100 more. Not in two minutes, but I did them. Considering how badly my leg hurt, I wasn't disappointed with the run time. This wasn't the final PT test, of course.
And of course, I injured my leg on the confidence course. It was interesting at first because we had a family watching our progress on the course for a while. Our drill instructors warned us to keep our language clean while we had guests. We succeeded. Thankfully, the family didn't stay that long.
The post commander, one Major General Van Loben Sels, watched us go over training tasks. I'm sure that was something more tense for our drill sergeants and company officers who would have Hell to pay if we screwed up at that moment in time.
Final weapons cleaning was really a sign we were wrapping up. I remember sitting around with a bunch of guys--some you like and some you don't--and one of the guys I didn't like was mouthing off to someone else about kicking their butt at some point in the near future for past transgressions against said guy. So I turned to another guy in the unit--a good guy--and said, "Private [Golf], you've been pissing me off. Two weeks from this Saturday, I'm going to kick your ass." He chuckled, and returned the favor with equal precision about the point in time he'd kick my ass. We kept going a bit as others laughed and the one guy kept muttering, "You think I'm kidding. But I'm going to kick his ass." I'm unaware of any ass kickings. I know I missed my scheduled kicks and kicking.
Of course, that was one of the problems of basic training. A bunch of civilians get in shape and go through major pain and misery and think they are Rambo--and promptly get their asses kicked when they try to use new muscles on someone who quite possibly is Rambo. The funny thing is, basic training standards aren't as high as the standards of the Army once you are past that point. But for new soldiers, the jump from civilian standards seemed quite high.
But we had our blue banner showing we were in the final stage of training.
