Mailed blog – written by Julian

29 Jan 11

Finally, some warm weather and something with a melody.  It was a truly beautiful day here and for the first time I was glad I experience Ft. Jackson this time of year.  I couldn’t imagine wearing all this gear in the summer time.  And while cadences don’t really count as music — It was good to hear something beside “left, right, left,” while marching.

What a marathon day!  We did a five mile tactical field march before the sun even came up.  A tactical field march is different than marching in a group and in time.  It’s  where you wear all your combat gear, march in two long lines, each person 15 feet behind the other, and always keep your head on a swivel to watch for the enemy.  Our whole platoon made it with no problem.  We’re getting pretty used to all the hills here, even the killer 50 degree incline hill.

After the march we ate a quick breakfast and then learned combative for three hours.  We learned how to attack the enemy in a hand to hand situation.  This meant after the long march, we had to wrestle each other in a sand pit…for three hours.  Then at the end we crawled on our backs all the way across the PT field.

After lunch chow, we did drill and ceremony practice for two hours.  This is marching in time and doing fancy movements all at the same time.  Then after dinner chow things kinda slowed down with a two hour rifle cleaning session outside on the drill pad.

It just seemed like today would NEVER end.  But it did! In all, it was pretty fun looking back.  My arms and legs are so bruised up, you could play connect the dots.  So, I definitely have the marks of someone who’s been having “fun.”

Thank God tomorrow is Sunday!