Downhill ride

We are now done with the field time. The only requirements between us and graduation are a couple of easy runs, a history test and a PT test.

Last week was more of the same stuff like the week before, however this time we did the exercises as a platoon. It was really neat to see a larger size unit manuver on the field and take objectives.

At the end of the field problem we had a 10 mile march back in.... It wasn't that bad, I got a bit of a blister on the ball of one foot but nothing that a day out of boots won't heal. Amazingly we lost no one on the march, unlike many of the others where we had one or more fall out and get picked up by the truck. This just goes to show that it's more a matter of heart, this march was tougher than any of the previous ones and it came after we had been running a lot for the previous three weeks but no one quit.

When we got back in we picked up several people that were recycled from other companies to ours. Tommrow we will likely lose a few that started with us to the next one ourselves.

The weekend was spent cleaning our rifles (hours of fun), and cleaning all the personal equipment we used. In addition we had a book report due that everyone had to get done since we did not have time to type it while we were out in the field. I had finished reading the book the previous weekend so it was a matter of just writing it. I ended up doing mine on Sharpening The Warrior's Edge which is a great book on the psychological aspects of survival training.

Today we started with a nice easy run (well easy for me, not for some others who stayed out drinking all weekend). We are scheduled to do bunches of running this week, so I'm looking forward to it. After the run we had to do peer evals. This is where we rank everyone in our platoon from 1-34 in order of how we think they perform. It's tough to do that but something I will have to get used to, we will get asked to rank our subordinates all the time so just have to get a thick skin and drive on. The afternoon was the start of the final block of American Military History, the last class lost quite a few that got sent to us because they failed the final history so I'm not taking any chances.

Our platoon had the CQ (charge of quarters) duty this week so that means I will be doing one hour shifts in the middle of the night every day this week. It will be good for studying and getting a few cleaning things done, but I will be tired this week.

It's great as not the end seems in sight. As long as people don't lose their minds and get lazy or try to get away with crazy stuff we all should just be able to cruise through till the end.