Greetings Ladies and Gentlefolks,

Today’s installment touches on graduation from BCT and my first couple of weeks at AIT. Graduation at Ft. Knox took place in a theater just down the street that’s also used to show movies and host other formal ceremonies and functions. I always thought that BCT graduations took place outside on parade grounds with lots of marching and bands and pomp and circumstance. But our graduation was inside of an air conditioned theater with multimedia presentations and just a little bit of marching…

Amy and I had a great time at the graduation and the few hours we had to spend afterwards. It was rather disappointing that Amy couldn’t rent a car at the airport. Apparently car rental businesses only take major credit cards, not debit cards. Of course, being the debt conscious individuals that we are, Amy wasn’t carrying a credit card. In the end it turned out alright because we spent less money on cabs that day than the price it would have cost us to rent a car. Of course we missed out on seeing all of the ranges and other highlights from around Ft. Knox and we pretty much could only go to the PX for entertainment (it’s a good thing I was starved for fast food and cany….yum).

At the end of the day we had to load up into big charter buses and I had to say goodbye to Amy….again. The bus ride to Ft. Jackson South Carolina was roughly 12 hours long and it was full of sleeping, eating junk, drinking junk, watching movies (on the TVs they had in the buses), reading, talking on my cell phone, playing my Gameboy and eating more junk. By the time we arrived at Ft Jackson I was ready to swear off junk food for good (but of course that didn’t happen). There were two other soldiers that were 42A (read “forty two alpha”) like myself, the rest were 63B (light wheeled vehicle mechanics) that were also stationed at Ft Jackson for AIT but at a different location. So the three of us chairborne rangers unloaded at Delta Company, 369th Adjutant General Battalion — our new home for the next 8 weeks.

I was lucky enough to be put in the same bay with the rest of my Ft Knox buddies and also be roommates with a bunch of cool guys that I clicked with right away. Coyne, Christensen, Amato, John (yes that’s his last name), Tenny, Gilispie (we call him “Gypsy”), Kennedy, Arvin, and Domingo. All of us get along really well and it’s these guys that are probably going to be the ones that help me through AIT without going crazy.

Because, let me tell you, there are plenty of things here that could drive you crazy. First of all, the discipline here compared to Knox is like night and day. With the Death Dealers we were being trained at an all male post with combat arms MOS drill sergeants that all had combat experience. At Ft Jackson we’re training to be paper pushers, our drill sergeants are also paper pushers so they aren’t as intense as I’m used to. Half of the soldiers in our company are female (not to mention the female drill sergeants) and everyone here has a much more laid back attitude toward training and the Army in general. It’s almost like being in summer camp rather than training with the Army.

However, all of the new privileges that we get at AIT make the frustrating things a little more worth it. We are allowed to use our cell phones and pretty much any other electronic device (laptops included) during personal time. Personal time, by the way, is after dinner chow (around 1800) until lights out. One the weekends we are allowed varying levels of passes depending on our status. For instance, if you pass the PT test you can eventually get an off-post pass that allows you to leave Ft Jackson for a specified amount of time (either overnight or same-day). Otherwise you can get post-passes that allow you to go anywhere on post. Finally, if you for some stupid reason screw up during the week you might only get a battalion-pass or no-pass, which allow you to go anywhere in the battalion area or nowhere at all respectively. I’ve been getting post passes since I’ve been here. I passed the PT test the other day which is good for me but I still don’t get an off-post pass until I’ve been here for a couple more weeks.

Let’s see…what else. The work of a 42A is pretty interesting and actually very important in the Army. After all, the military runs on paperwork and bureaucracy so there’s no place better to be than a 42A if you want to have real power to get things done. It may not be the most glorious job in the Army but, hey, I’m only doing this until I graduate from OSU. Then I’ll be going into super-duper-secret Military Intelligence. Which is glorious in my book.

The training that we do as 42As, on the other hand, is extremely boring and tedious. Not for everybody, I’m sure, but for someone who has had 3 years of university level classes under their belt and 3 years at a job where I wrote technical documents constantly–this stuff is a cake walk. I could take and pass this whole training cycle in 3-4 weeks, easy. But at the Army’s pace it’ll take a full 8 weeks….sigh.

We still have to do field training while we’re at AIT. We have one 3 day FTX starting this weekend and then after that we’re done with soldier skill training for good. We’ve gone out to the field for the last two Saturdays to practice such things as MOUT, reflexive fire, first aid, reaction to IEDs, patrolling, etc. It’s all been pretty easy and straightforward stuff because we’ve all been to BCT and know everything already. Instead of learning new stuff we’re just reviewing and refreshing. Which is a good thing actually. I didn’t want my rifle skills to go dull while I was at AIT so I have welcomed the opportunity to work with an M16 once in a while. But I still pine for my trusty M4 from basic.

To tell you the honest truth, the only thing that’s going to be worth writing about for the next six weeks is the FTX that we’re going on in a few days. After that, all I have to write about is boring class work, shopping at the PX, and going to the gym to workout every day. Sooooo….it might be kinda sparse here until I get home.

Hmmmm….I can’t think of anything else aside from a new habit that I’ve picked up: sunflower seeds. Mmmmm. I can thank my wonderful Drill Sergeants at Ft. Knox for that one. They used to eat sunflower seeds all the time. I have to admit that it looked satisfying and very macho cool so I’ve picked it up since I’ve been here at Ft Jackson. Yay for me! I’m macho cool!

A very big Army HOOAH to all of you out there! Now that I’m in Advanced Individual Training (AIT) I have access to a LOT more priviledges and free time than I did in Basic Training. I’ll be posting my weekly letters directly to Ben’s website now so there won’t be any delay at all. Although, I have to admit…Human Resources Specialist training is really not as exciting as Basic Combat training. So letters from Ft. Jackson might be more bland then they were from Ft. Knox.

But regardless I will be online now and relieving the Brewster family from having to type my extremely long letters (which I thank them very much for doing). The following is my last letter from Basic Training. I will write another post about my first experiences at AIT later (mainly because this next letter is so long)

—

Saturday, 26 May 2007 (the 26th is the start date of this letter, it was written over the course of several days)

Well this is it everyone. I can’t believe this will be my last letter written from the School of Hard Knox. If you get this little correspondence by Thursday (like I expect) I will be having a family day with Amy here on Post [Of course this didn’t happen, hence you getting this letter on the internet instead of by mail]. I plan on taking her to some of the locations where hightlites from Basic Training occured (BRM, gas chamber, road march routes, barracks, chow hall, etc) [This didn’t happen either because Amy was unable to rent a car and we had to take a taxi everywhere we went]. And in addition to that I’m going to take the opportunity to eat whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want. I plan on hitting up junk food or fast food every couple of hours during the whole day. Yeah, all that good junk food and candy and fast food you guys take for granted and probably try to avoid most of the tim? It’s like yearning for the promised land to a private in Basic Training. A little bit like what missionaries feel when they’re in the field and lead restrictive lifestyles…on like fifty times more intense.

First off, before I get into my updates for this week (which are awesome by the way because we had our blue phase FTX) I need to respond directly to some letters that I received [Obviously these are old letters and I’m about to write answers to some questions that people asked a while ago].

My parents asked how I did on my PT test. Not too shabby would be an appropriate answer. The APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) is composed of 2 minutes of push-ups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and a 2 mile run. For my final PT test I did 46 push-ups, 58 sit-ups, and ran my 2 mile in 13:48. I was actually kind of disapointed in the results because for my previous PT test I managed to get 52 push-ups (grrr…). But I’m very happy with my run time. I have been consistently improving my time the entire time I’ve been here. When I first got here my 2 mile run time was something like 15:54. While I’m in AIT I’m to going to shoot for the Army PT badge. It’s a little nifty patch on my PT uniform that signifies I’ve scored at least a 270 on my PT test with at least 90 in each category. That doesn’t mean 90 push-ups though. Each raw score (exact number of repetitions) is assigned a number score. These are added for an arbitrary indicator of how Army Strong I am. My final APFT score for BCT was 238 (the max is 300). I’m really going to shoot for that 270 at AIT. A high PT score looks really good in a personnel file being reviewed for approval in branch application, and I really want to get into military inteligence as an officer…really, really, really.

Let’s see…Amy asked what time we wake up in the morning. On average we wake up at 4Am. Some days are different, like Sundays when we wake up at 5am or so. Lights off is usually 10pm but on weeks where we were doing tough training we went to bed at 9pm. Amy also asked if my battle buddies have thick accents. Uh…yeah. Like you would not believe. I mean not all of them but I have heard accents so thick (especially the southern ones) that I have to ask them to repeat what they said two or three times. There’s also some really thick Eastern accents (from New York City for example) that I’ve been around too. And of course there’s the midwestern accents that are occaisonally a cross between southern and western accents. You have to remember though that pretty much ALL the civilians here have really thick southern accents because they’re all from Kentucky. And no, fortunately, I am not picking up a southern accent but occaisonally I catch myself speaking with one if I’m talking to someone with a thick accent themselves.

Mom Murdock wrote me a great letter about visiting Amy and the kids a while back. I am SO glad that we have such awesome extended family support and such great Grandparents for Marcus and Emma. Both sets are the best any kid could ask for. Thank you all for keeping me abrest of what the kids are doing–it is so hard to be away from them while they’re in the middle of growing up so fast. I can’t believe how much older Marcus sounds on the phone–wow!

Alright, now to the part where a lot of you tune out…my gamer buddies. Nate, thanks for the update on the Halo 3 beta. How many of you were ultimately able to get into it anyway? Does it dynamically update in response to feedback? Or is Bungie making a laundry list of changes and doing it all later? Hey, any update on the single player game yet? New trailers? Media campaigns? Sinch this is the final Halo installment I expect Microsoft to get in on the marketing of this one big time but I guess we’ll wait and see.

Any other games out there right now perking everyone’s interest? Did ya’ll get GRAW2? Has ther been any updates or new content for RS:V yet (like the M4 Carbine)? You know what’s kind of strange? With all of this tactical Army combat training and indoctrination, you konw what game I’ve been craving the most lately? Oblivion. Go figure eh? That game has such a strong replay value and addiction factor. Any word on new RPGs coming out soon for the 360?

Alright, alright, alright…Let’s get down to business–the Blue Phase FTX. This FTX was a culmination of all skills and training that we had done up to that point. It was as close to being actually deployed in the field under combat conditions as one can get. We started the week out (yes the FTX was 3 days and 3 nights long) by marching from the barracks to the FOB (Forward Operating Base) with loaded rucksacks. Our rucksacks weighed about 50 lbs. The road march to the FOB was approximately 10 km. The US uses FOBs all over Iraq and Afghanistan as semi-permanent bases and staging areas for company or battalion size forces. It usually consists of a seven or eight foot wall of some solid material (ours was made of stacked railroad ties) surrounded by Concertina wire on the outside with intermitent guard towers and watch stations. Inside the walls are large tents or prefab buildings set up for different purposes - barracks, TOC (tactical operations center), aid station (sometimes a full field hospital in larger FOBs), ammunition point, mess hall, classroom, etc). There was also a front gate and checkpoint facilities right outside that. Thingks like road barriers, holding areas, guardhouse, machine gun nest, etc. Our FOB was set up by the 146th Infantry Battalion and is used by all BCT soldiers during their final phase of training at Ft. Knox. Once we arrived at the FOB we set up camp and assigned duties and tasks among the 4 different platoons including 24 hour guards posted in the towers, at the gate, and around the walls, a quick reaction force, and a detail that worked in the TOC and at the ammo point. While I was there I pulled duty as guard in the towers, around the walls, and manning the radio in the TOC.

Everything was realistically played out while we stayed at the FOB. We carried our weapons at the low ready 24/7. We were all issued 70 rounds of blank 5.56 mm ammunition for our M4s (and we had M249s and M240Bs with blank ammo in the guard towers) which I was actually put in charge of distributing. Every night we were there we experienced enemy contact of one kind or another. The role of the OPFORs was played by our Drill SGTs and cadre. Everything was very Iraq and/or Afghanistan in feel and flavor. Right down to the OPFORs Middle Eastern accents, attire, and tactics. We were mortared, probed, assaulted, and simply just approached by civilians and we had to react appropriately to it every time. Unfortunately, we weren’t successful all the time (rules of engagement don’t sink in right away to immature 19 year old soldiers who grew up on Rambo movies and violent video games). It was still a pretty fun time though. More than once we received indirect fire or an attack at the gate and we all had to jump out of our cots, throw on our full battle rattle and run to our assigned posts. The whole time we were at the FOB I never fired a round (fire discipline my friends, fire discipline) but it was still lots of fun nontheless.

I especially like pulling duty at the TOC. It was fun being in the nerve center of the action and seeing how the engagements or encounters developed from inside command and control. There were always at least 2 Drill SGTs on duty in the TOC that were on our “side”. We also had a map of the area inside, a large SINCGARS radio that we monitored and used to communicate with Ft Knox range control, a map of the FOB, and a telephone that was connected directly to all four guard towers (if the towers wanted to report anything they would just pick up the phone in the tower and it would automatically call the TOC).

During the days at the FOB we were transported to different sites to conduct “missions”. We did some patrols in the woods, a convoy live-fire exercise where we fired at targets from a moving vehicle, and my personal favorite, urban combat operations with paintball gear. For the convoy live fire I actually pulled front gate guard duty for the rand all day long with another soldier — so that consisted of chilling out in the shade all day long just waiting for vehicles to come in or out and checking their ID and calling it in to the Range Control tower.

We also did some AA (assembly area) and fighting position procedures trainging but I missed that too because I had a doctor’s appointment in Elizabethtown for my nose. I rode with one of my Drill SGTs to the appointment and we shot the breeze a little on the way there (that was kind of fun and a change of pace). At the appointment they offered to completely straighten my nose which is still about 1/8 of an inch off center. But I said no because it would have to splinted and I’d be on bed rest for 10 days and miss a whole bunch of training and the 15 km road march back to the barracks (which is a graduation requirement).

The urban ops missions were the hi-light of the week for me. It was quite frustrating at time because of how un-tactically minded most young BCT soldiers are (especially non-combat arms ones). I was thinking the whole time how much more effective I would be with a team of soldiers consisting of my close friends and brothers.

It was still an adrenaline pumping time though. I took the role of RTO (radio telephone operator) in the squad. I was in charge of the hand held radio which was used to call in Sitreps (situation reports) , LACE (liquid, ammuntion, casualty, equipment) reports, and 9 line medavac requests. It was just like in the movies at times. Gunshots (ok, well paintballs) roaring over head, soldiers yelling everywhere, and me screaming reports and requests for medevac over the radio. It was great.

Everything culminated in a long 15 km road march back to the barracks starting at 12am at night and ending sometime around 5:30am. Only this time it wasn’t just a road march. Every 2 km or so some of the company cadre had set up an “encounter” of some kind. Such as sniper fire, civilians requesting help, IED, a news media crew, etc. It kept the road march from being too boring. My pinky toes bore the brunt of the miles we marched and by the end of it all I was limping with huge open wounds on my toes for the next week or so. Nothing an Army Strong soldier can’t handle though!

After we returned home safe and sound from the FTX we had roughly a week of recovery and gear cleaning and returning that we had to do. We had to turn in all of our TA-50 gear (everything that isn’t our basic uniform issue like rucksacks, helmets, vests, etc) at the end of the week and I was one of only twelve soldiers in the entire company that got first time GOs for gear turn in. Meaning that we didn’t have to go back outside and clean or fix equipment. Because there were so few of us the Drill SGTs decided to give us a nice little pizza party for 9 of us. We ordered 6 large stuffed crust pizzas from Pizza Hut and enjoyed the feast in DS Pentz’ office watching Full Metal Jacket on his personal TV. Heh, heh, heh…after 9 weeks of doing things right it felt good to finally get rewarded for it.

Next week I’ll be writing a letter about graduation and family day and my transportation to AIT in South Carolina so stay tuned for more exciting developments!

Oh yeah, and for the last week after our FTX I pretty much ate dessert every meal so there isn’t any one piece of pie I can tell you about. Hey, it was the last week, so sue me!

—

Like I said before, it’s a great feeling to be writing letters in real time now. I look forward to telling you about my graduation and first week at AIT next time (it could be next week, it could be sooner depending on when I can get on the computer next).

Thanks for all your support!

PFC Christensen

Sorry this one took me so long to post - it came late, and came during final projects. I’ve finally got it posted… thanks to my wife for typing it up.

May 9, 2007

Hey Everybody!

Since I slipped everyone a letter last week I’ve decided to write one this week mainly because we just completed our white phase FTX and we’re about to move into blue phase at the end of this week.

The white phase FTX was all about U.S. weapon familiarization. Which means that we received classes on numerous different U.S. small and heavy arms and then were allowed to test fire them.

Before the actual FTX we did our grenade training. That was pretty fun stuff! We learned how to arm and deploy a fragmentation grenade from several different positions. For practice we used M67 frag grenade shells with just the fuse and the primer in it. When the primer/detonator went off it was about as loud as a .22 rifle. It’s very difficult to throw frag grenades because of how stinkin heavy they are. They’re definitely heavier then a rock of comparable size (which is probably the most people’s perception of their weight.) The [way to] get the good 35 meters that is preferred is to whip your arm like you’re throwing a baseball and throw as close to a 45 degree angle as you can. Even then it’s still a lot harder then they make it look in the video games. (All of you non-gamers out there will have to bear with me- I’m going to do a lot of game-real live comparisons here) Yeah Ghost Recon has it right by making grenades a weapon you have to switch to and take time to throw. Deploying a frag grenade defiantly not as fast and instantaneous as a button tap like in most games. As far as the look and sound of a frag grenade going off – it’s visually interesting and audibly deafening. Seriously, these things are LOUD. There is no way a video game or sound system will ever do it justice (well there’s probably a sound system out there somewhere that could do it but you get my point). So pretty much, the louder game developers create grenade explosives the closer they are to realism. But it’s not a really huge thunderous roar of an explosion. It’s more like a crack, pop, and echo with the most thunderous base and reverberation you’ve ever felt. As far as what it looks like- in the split second that it first explodes it looks a lot like the splash made by a drop of water in a larger body of water - but it’s made of black smoke and dust and dirt with a small yellow flash in the center. But immediately after that millisecond of uniformity it just turns into a cloud of rapidly expanding black smoke and dust about five meters square that very quickly dissipates and leaves a big black splash mark on the ground.

OK, so enough about hand grenades. They were fun but let’s get to some other things. Like the M-2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun! Yeah Baby. Now there is a man’s man weapon. The M-2 has been in the service with the U. S. military since 1934. Thirty four! And it has been left unchanged since that time. Basically Browning made a heavy machine gun that was so perfectly designed that no one wants to mess with it. BTW - did I mention John browning was a member of the [LDS]church?

We were given some classes on it at the range and then allowed to shoot about 20 rounds from it on auto fire. Man, you have not shot a weapon until you have felt a .50 cal thumping into your hands (I’m sure Brent knows what I’m talking about). The machine gun doesn’t cycle very fast because it relies on gravity to cycle another round down into the chamber. Also there’s the fact that the bolt has to travel back and forth a much farther distance because of the size of a .50 cal round (yeah those things mean BUZI-NASS) ; of course it doesn’t matter that it has a somewhat slow rate of fire. The effects of a round of .50 cal are nothing like what they show in the movies. Stuff explodes when it is hit by this round. The ground, vegetation, buildings, and what we like to call in the army – soft targets (people). They all just literally fall apart when a .50 cal round slams home at center of mass. Not that I shot any soft targets (just big metal ones that were ½ km – 1 km out) but our instructors (sergeants) told us stories from Iraq that were pretty gruesome.

Next we shot the M249 and M240B. The M249 is commonly known as the SAW (squad automatic weapon) and is the primary light machine gun used by dismounted and mounted infantry. Not too many people can say that they have fired a fully automatic machine gun. I’m one of those that can. It was so fun to feel the raw power in my hands and watch the tracer rounds go streaking down range (tracers really show just how much bullets ricochet off of anything: a lot, they ricochet probably 35% of the time). It was also interesting to watch the speed of the 7.62 mm rounds going down range (from the M240B) compared to the 5.56 mm rounds of the M249. I’m not positive on the specs but the 7.62 sure appeared to be faster.

Also were instructed in some heavy weapons used as well. Like the AT4, M203 grenade launcher, and claymore mine. We practiced firing the AT4 with models that only fired little 9mm tracer rounds. But it was till fun to aim at the derelict tank bodies down range and watch the rounds bounce off the target or treads or side. The real AT4 demonstration that we saw was awesome.

The concussion from the launch was big enough that we could feel it 100 meters away in the bleachers. What I’ve been consistently amazed by is how much smoke is created by detonating, firing, or otherwise employing one of these heavy weapons. There is usually not that much smoke at all generated by similar weapons in video games. I think the only game that comes close is “Black� for the original Xbox.

The M203 grenade launcher really is as easy as it looks to operate and its blast radius is about the size of a standard M67 grenade so no surprise there. What is a bit of a surprise is the range of these things. Heck with firing grenades at targets 50-100 meters away… try 400-600 meters. M203’s really have the power to reach out and touch someone. Oh yes, and it is 10x more satisfying to load and lock a round in the chamber in real life then it is in any video game. We were able to shoot 10 orange chalk rounds at the tank targets on the heavy weapons range. I think I hit 6 out of 10 tries (they’re rather difficult to aim properly - or I should say consistently).

While we’re on the subject of video games I would just like to point out the fact that our drill sergeants (probably some of the best and toughest drill sergeants in the army) play video games. Albeit it’s a PS2 but still! When they have breaks a lot of the time they’re playing video games in their office. Ha! So tell me now that only losers, teenagers, geeks, and nerds without lives play video games. Every day that old-school notion is blown out of the water even more as video games grow further entrenched in every day society. OK enough preaching… just thought I’d mention that.

There’s a whole other letter worth of stuff to write about individual and squad movement technique that I could tell you about but I think I’ll give Ben’s fingers a break. [Actually Amanda is typing this - and it is stink’n long]

Thanks for the comments that were sent my way, I enjoyed them all.

Specifically…

Yes Nate I did get your letter. It was one of the first I received at basic and it was much appreciated. Although, at the time I was rather alarmed to hear that Keith Nye had my 360. I still am not 100% cool with it but Hey, Keith is a nice guy and if anything bad does happen I’ll take it out of Ben’s hide, not Keith’s.

Thanks for the letter Grandma! I was very happy to see that familiar return address and handwriting on the envelope. Have fun with Garrett at your house (work him hard!) And thank you again for planning to attend Amy’s graduation. It really means a lot to her.

Mom Murdock, I can’t tall you how awesome it is to have in-laws that I consider just as much family as my own extended family. It means a lot to know that you support me and approve of my decisions and the way Amy and I lead our family. You’re the best! Before Amy and I take a well deserved vacation when I get back at the end of July I want to spend a few days with both of our families up in Hillsboro.

Mommy. I still wonder sometimes how you can stand seeing your sons do the military things when it was so hard for you to go through at times. I really do think I have the best mom not just because of how much you love and care for me and my family but just how much you support all of us kids in whatever we do. Thank you so much for raising us like you did mom, pretty much all the good choices I make I can trace back to a consequence of how you raised me.

Daddy. I don’t even remember telling Wayne he sang funny! Dang… sorry. I really was a poop-head back then though. You know Dad, seeing as I’m starting my army life now I have to thank you for making the military life something positive and a source of pride for you. The army values and warrior ethos were very easy for me to adopt because of the straight and honorable way you raised me. Hey, BTW, did you know a young sergeant in Germany by the name of Cornell? My company’s 1st Sgt. here says I look very familiar and he served in Germany at one of the same bases we lived at the same time we lived there. When and where did we live in Germany exactly again? That would be pretty cool if you knew my 1st sergeant and he’s training me all these years later.

Ben. Dude, what’s this about starting your own business? No more mad scientist A.I. programmer? No more doctorate then? I guess there’s ultimately more money to be made in entrepreneurship anyway right? Well good luck with the preparations you’ll be putting into your new business… I’ll be there to help any way I can. I also can’t wait to see Asher and Holly again. It’s so much fun seeing our families grow up together isn’t it?

Oh ya… one more thing… For all my Halo buddies out there. Search the Halo predictions, ruminations, and conjecture threads out there that we wrote. Did I or did I not hit the X-button feature on the freakin’ head?! Ha! I at least deserve a candy bar or something for that one. Man, I’m awesome.

PFC Christensen

P.S. Pie this week was actually cake. Banana Cake… mmm… my favorite.

P.P.S. Ben, post this letter first and then the one about me breaking my nose.

That toughness I mentioned earlier? Now he looks like he’s tough…

18 May 2007

Hey All,

As I write this letter, I can feel the effects of percocet start to slow my mind and hand. I am so sorry that there has been an absence of correspondence coming out of Fort Knox lately. I have my (hopefully) good reasons:

1. Our screw-up platoon is finally getting lockdown treatment which means tough & demanding days for the next couple weeks.
2. My bookman duties are keeping me very busy. The closer we get to graduation the more paperwork there is to finish.
3. Drumroll… I broke my nose! Hence the reason percocet is almost keeping me from writing this letter.

I have a huge letter about all the weapons and tactics training that we did in the past couple weeks but with all this stuff happening… I think you better wait until I start AIT [Advanced Individual Training] on [Here, Sharpie’s writing becomes illegible, and a note says that he fell asleep here :)] June 4 before you get that letter.

I guess you probably want to know how I broke my nose. Well, it was an accident that happened on an obstacle course. On one of the stations we’re supposed to assist eachother up a multi-level structure in 4 man buddy teams. One man would stand on the lower level, grab the ledge of the next level up, hoist himself up feet first while men on top and bottom pull or push him up. Well I was one of the guys pulling on the second level and one of my battle buddies (that’s what we call eachother… kind of like calling Elder’s “companions”) swung his feet up faster than I though he was going to. His boot caught me square on the right side of my nose. It was a pretty bad break. My nose was offset about an inch to the left side of my face. Bleeding profusely, my drill sergeant pushed me to the emergency room where I spent the next few hours being treated. Then they had to take me in an ambulance to Elizabethtown to Hardin Memorial Hospital because they wanted to do a CT scan on my head just in case but the staff that knew how to run the machine had already gone home for the day. So I spent several hous at Hardin where they finally reset my nose with copious amounts of pulling, shoving, & crunching… ouch. It’s still slightly offset about an 1/8 of an inch to the left but I have another appt. on Tuesday with a nose specialist or something. Either he’ll fix it some more, or call it good and I’ll have a crooked nose for the rest of my life - a permanent reminder of my stay at the school of hard Knox. Any way I’m going to finish this & write more in my other letter about the upcoming 4 day field exercise. Don’t worry about me - I’m doing fine. But I could always use your prayers to keep me going and ensure that I graduate on time (these unforseen injuries can really screw up a private’s graduation plans if he gets hurt bad enough).

Well, write to you later.

PFC Christensen