Recollections of Basic Combat Training, Part 4

Worst day of Basic

I'm trying to think of any really bad days I had during Basic. They all pretty much sucked, but trying to figure out which one sucked the hardest, well there's a pretty dilemma. I can think of moments of suckiness but not an entire day.

Early morning PT sucked, but there was that one morning, where my whole body ached from the march the day before, where I just wanted to quit, just lay there and do nothing until one of the drills saw me laying like a log and started the yelling. Memories of her ran through my head, and I knew that I deserved everything that I was going through. I guess flutter kicks are my bane, because they hurt like the dickens, but they allow you to look up at the sky and to hope, to realize that there might be better days, but then you have a drill yelling at you to straighten your legs and get them six inches off of the ground and you lose all hope. Hope's a wonderful, yet a horrible thing at the same time.

Another bad moment happened on a weapon range. We had to, in full gear, run/jog a mile and then immediately conduct reflexive fire drills. The point of this exercise was to expose us to the effects of exhaustion and a very rapid heartbeat on your marksmanship. I remember the run, my M-16 in both hands, a gallon of water strapped to me, my flak vest cocooned around me, my LBE flopping against me... yeah, a good time was had by all. About half way through, one of my straps came off, and my 2 quart canteen came off. Trying to fix the strap while running with ragged breaths coming out was quite the chore. On top of that, I had our senior drill sergeant telling me to hurry up and catch up with the front of the pack. And then I had the misfortune of having our First Sergeant in the back of the pack, motivating the slower movers. That was one of my prime motivations, not having him on ride me the rest of the way to the freakin' range. I did manage to stay in the middle of the pack, so not to bad for an old man, but still, those minutes on that run sucked. It seemed to stretch on forever.