New Sharpie letter…

29 March 2007 , Thursday

The night before shipping out to basic: I’ve decided to chronicle my experiences in this short diary/letter format. Every night I will write a very short paragraph or two about the days -activities. Then, at the end of the week I will have a full letter to send off with a bunch of nitty gritty details about a basic training experience. (I decided to go back on my decision to preserve the mystique of bct.)

I decided to pass the weeks in basic by counting pies. Yep, nine pies to be exact. Every Sunday, and only Sundays, I will allow myself some dessert for dinner. This will give me something to look forward to and I can count down the number of pies until the end! Whoohoo! So every week look forward to a new update on the pie countdown!

Today during one of our day-room stints we had trouble keeping quiet. Not me, mind you. You’d be surprised how hard it is for some people to just not talk. The drill Sgts. gave us a speech about learning to shut up when we‘re supposed. But as soon as they leave us for a few minutes quite a few of the group start talking. It’s really frustrating. Today the group singled out one particular pvt. (Casleberry from Tennessee) and threatened to best the crap out of him if he didn’t shape up (they dole out “mass instruction� in bct – if one guy screws up everyone gets smoked). When he got back to his bunk tonight some privates had torn it up. He later apologized after a bunch of guys visited his bunk with a few words of “encouragement.� Well, I think that’s it for today. Tomorrow we have our first real day of bct. It’s going to be a real big wake-up call for a lot of these guys but I think I can handle it.

I think I’m going to send this letter on Monday to start the schedule correctly. Start my letter diary the same Monday. That means you should get my basic training the same day as the weekly Bungie updates!! Cool…

Later everyone…

PFC Nathan Christensen

30 March 2007, Friday

Uh—yeah. It’s just as bad as everyone thinks it is. I’ll just start off with that. It would be quite a shocke3r to anyone not prepared for basic training to get a dose of a first day with real drill sgts. Yeah, so you think you know what a drill sergeant is like by watching TV or movies?? Pfffft… These guys at Delta Company 2-81 Armor Brigade are 100% more intense than anything you’ve every heard or seen before (unless you’ve been in the military and seen it first hand). But in all fairness (if it can be called fairness) these armor brigade serpents are supposed to be the best they have at Ft. Knox since Ft. Knox’s specialty is armor (tanks, mechanized infantry, etc.)

So to give you a little taste of what the first day was like, check this out… Our first task after getting off the bus that transported us form reception was to form up, “meet� our drill sergeants and then retrieve our duffle bags that had been transported over on another truck. To a civilian this sounds like a rather simple, unassuming task. Enter the untied States Army. The drill sergeants all had their “A� game on which meant the y yelled, screamed, cussed, cursed, bellowed, and shouted louder, longer, angrier, and more intimidating then civilians even think its humanly possible. You think you’ve ever yelled when you’re mad? No… You were whispering compared to what these guys do. Anyway so the duffle bags are all thrown onto a huge pile at one end of the parking lot where we formed up (there are 200 pvts. in our company so that’s a lot of duffle bags). We had to run to the duffle bags and try to find ours and then run back to formation. Ha! Pure and utter chaos. We did it a few times till l everyone got their duffel. Longs story short - it was a killer first day. I’ve got to end this cu I’m running out of time here…

31 March 2007, Saturday

I’ve been appointed “tag man� of the platoon. It’s supposed to be like really important or something but all it consists of is hauling around a little tripod sign and plastic signs that hang on it that designate what unit we are and what we’re doing when we have to do stuff outside. Anyway I’m in 1st platoon of Delta Company 2-81 Armor. We’re the “bandits�. It’s pretty cool so far, our platoon seems to get along ok and not have too many screw ups in its ranks. But we did get thrown in the “pit� today because some of the pvts in our platoon couldn’t fill out some freakin’ paperwork the right way. The pit is just a huge sand box/pit that can fit about 20- people at once. They make you do push-ups, running in place, a while bunch of things when you’re in there. Our two drill sergeants for 1st platoon are Drill Sergeant Twocrow (he looks Hispanic but his name almost sounds Native American doesn’t it?) and Diediker. Twocrow is the toughest by far. He’s the senior drill Sgt. Of our platoon.

1 April 2007, Sunday

Hey, I’m really not at basic training I’m at a Disney world resort for the next 8 weeks. Ha… Ha… Ha… Sometimes April fool’s day is cruel. The two big things that happened today were church and weapon issue. Church was absolutely awesome. I really needed the boost. We had fast and testimony meeting and watched some pre-recorded priesthood session talks. It was all I could do to not start crying quite a few times because the spirit was so strong. I also volunteered to lead the music since I think I was the only one there that knew how (out of soldiers.) The meeting took place in a small little building on the base and a lot of the leadership was handled primarily by two senior missionaries, Elder and Sister Jones.

We were issued our weapons today! I wasn’t expecting to get them until next week but we got them before the first week officially started! Yay! We got M4 carbines instead of the bulky M16s. We have to go everywhere with theses babies. I mean everywhere except the shower. And even then a battle buddy has to take charge of. Well it’s getting late again so I’ll end it here… This is getting long anyway.

Oh yeah! Almost forgot. This weeks pie was … Lemon marangue (or however you spell that)

PFC Christensen

P.S. - sorry Ben, I’ll try and keep the letters shorter from now on.