Cleaned barracks in morning.
Pass for 4 hours in afternoon.
Bought science fiction book. Read and BS'd
in evening. Easy day and 9
hours of sleep expected. No guard duty.
The first hint of normality returning! Sure, they kept us busy in the morning. But they let us loose on the base in the afternoon. I actually had time to go to the PX and buy a book to read. I don't remember what I bought.
And at night we had time to just joke around and talk like it was a college dorm. Which is what the barracks really are like. Sure, in basic training we had giant bays. But in AIT (advanced individual training, which for me was 31Q signal school) the next summer, even though there were some smaller bays, many of us had double rooms with a single room mate. Then, but for the sand bags used as lawn edgings, you'd be hard pressed not to think "dorm" when looking at the barracks.
Without exercise and work, my still-injured leg wasn't even worth mentioning. I was limping for weeks after I got out, so I know it wasn't healed. But now it didn't matter since it wouldn't keep me from graduating. Nor was my cold a big deal since an easy day with a cold beat a tough training day while healthy any day of the week.
The idea of getting 9 hours of sleep was positively un-Army. What with no guard duty to interrupt sleep, it really was like college. Well, babes and booze were absent. But baby steps, people, baby steps.
Looking back on it, it would have been nice to have been single and unattached when I went to signal school the next summer.
