Mailed blog – written by Julian

24 Feb 11

As someone wise back home says, teamwork is the best kind of work.  You know who you are.   Today it felt like our whole company was really working together.  During training the platoons were all mixed together and we had a good opportunity to get to know people outside our tight knit circle.

It was another beautiful day spent playing outside.  We are all developing fantastic neck and hand tans.  It’s pretty funny.  My hands are about four shades darker than my arms.  It’s the only part that sticks out of my uniform!

Each day we add more of our skills together.  The last week is a huge exercise where we put everything from BCT together.  Today we did running and shooting, covering your buddy as he runs for cover, shooting behind barriers, blown up cars, and even trash cans.  The course was an urban setting and we had to bound up to the building where the enemy was firing from, shooting  the whole time and then blowing them up with a grenade.   Yeah, it sounds fun and it was.  We were supposed to go through twice.  Once dry, just saying “bang, bang”, and then again shooting blank rounds.  Unfortunately there was only enough time for the dry run.

After dinner chow, we normally go to our bay classrooms as a platoon and either have Q&A with our DS about training or just clean our weapons.  It’s a nice way to relax after a long day running around outside tonight, just as we sat down for platoon time, we got a call over the intercom saying to come down to the drill pad.  We had to move all the sandbags which surround every building and line the sidewalks, and stack them in this field.  Apparently there’s some construction tomorrow.  Anyway, it was a big job and we weren’t too excited.  But, we worked as a team and did the job in half the time we were allotted.  The whole company was running around in the dark, carrying the heavy bags and singing cadences at the top of our lungs.  For some reason, we were so motivated!  It was a good feeling.  We felt like a family.