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She's Back, and She's got a New Trick... |
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Holy cats! I'm updating! It only took me... three months? Something obnoxious. ******** if I know.
So anyway, here's the scoop.
JOINED ARMY.
Left June 25.
Two weeks in processing. (Where they are only required to give you five hours of sleep. Guess how much they give you? Five. Unless you arrive sometime after lights out. Then you get up whenever the lights are turned on. The night I got there, it was an hour and a half before the lights were turned on. JOY. And yeah, two weeks is a long time to be in processing. I talked to a few people who managed to get out in about three days, but the average is a week. Welcome to the army. Hurry up and wait.) Processing consists of getting your uniforms, shots, and other such s**t. Much time is spent reading a very boring handbook and trying not to fall asleep.
I made it to week six of nine. I found out that because I am skinny like a twig and not used to being that physically active I had managed to get a stress fracture in my inferior pelvic radius (IPR) (a** bone, except because of how the muscles attach, it's like burning pain in the CROTCH. ******** menstrual cramps. And I was trying to run on this s**t) and I was sent to "Warrior Rehab" or, to use the politically correct term "Warrior University". (First I went to Sick Call and was harassed about probably being a malingerer because the Drill Sergeants (DS) noticed me limping and stopped letting me do... anything. I was at first told that it was too early for X-rays to show anything, so I was given a code prohibiting me from... everything and sent on my way. Qualified with my M16, went back, got X-rayed and found out I was broke and it would take at least a month to heal. Next day, I am in a barracks with 50 other females with nothing to do. That is an obscene level of estrogen in one place, and it is NOT pretty. More stupid s**t went on there than in basic.)
I was there long enough to watch my old company graduate, go on break for... a week, I think, and then watch them graduate AGAIN nine weeks later (new people, obviously). My feet started to bother me. I went to get it looked at and found out my feet were ******** up. The boots they issue are known to cause problems, ask almost anyone who's been in the army awhile. I got sent home on my feet, because they refused to send me home on my IPR even though I STILL have problems with it if I walk too much or the weather is ******** up.
The night I was cleared to be discharged (it took, like, three ******** weeks, and that's a short period of time, for them) some higher up (I forget who) was getting a walkthrough of the barracks and found chewing tobacco lying out on the bunks on the female discharge side of things ("Warrior U" is connected to discharge, but has nothing to do with them, if it can be helped. Not even allowed to TALK to them) and so EVERYONE, all four barracks (male rehab, female rehab, male discharge, female discharge) were forced to stay outside while they brought in people one at a time to check their lockers. It was chilly. For a while, it was windy. We were not allowed to go back and get coats in case we tried to hide something. If we had to use the loo, we had to use the portapotty. After awhile, we all just started to sit down and/or huddle together. ******** formation, we were cold, and poorly dressed to deal with it.
DS Freckleton was pretty cool about the whole thing, joking with us and not caring that we weren't staying in formation or anything. There were some fights. Someone got bit (no, seriously). It got dark. We were still outside and it was getting cold. People were starting to freak out. DS Solomon (no one really liked her much) got pissy with the rehab females for huddling together and forced us all to stand up in formation, double the usual distance from each other. No sitting. She left eventually and people started to break formation again. (And she paid the males no mind whatsoever.) I was shivering so hard I could barely stand. I wandered over to Jeri and she tried to start a conversation. I broke down and started crying and DS Freckleton lets her help me to the portapotty since I could hardly walk by myself and she had to catch me a few times. I was so numb I couldn't feel my hands.
Hobbling my way back to "formation" Jeri and I noticed everyone is being herded into a building (females on one side, males on the other, there was a partition in the middle) and when I'm actually in the light the other girls who knew me almost have a heart attack. Apparently I was even paler than normal (hell if I know, there was no mirror) and they couldn't get me to warm up. I had on my heavy polypros (meant to keep you warm since the new uniforms are made for the desert, but the weather called for us to be wearing our jackets as well and as I said we weren't allowed to retrieve them, even though out DS's wanted to let us have them) my uniform undershirt, my uniform jacket (ACU top), someone retrieved for me a sweater hot from the dryer and I was wrapped in blankets. I am told my lips remained blue. They took me to the DS office. I was muttering nonsense by this time, I am told, and I remember something about my Nintendo DS.
DS Freckleton let me in and had Jeri and Monk (two other Privates in rehab) feed me warmed tea (I guess I said it tasted like apple juice, and no, I seriously couldn't drink it myself) and keep me awake. Twenty minutes later, I am still freezing. DS Freckleton says to call ER (it's so late the hospital and Sick Call are closed) and DS Solomon walks in. She starts asking why I need to go to the ER, but she's asking me. When someone tries to answer for me, they get yelled at. All I do is mumble. (What the ******** do you expect, I'm showing signs of hypothermia.) DS Solomon says I'm not going anywhere unless I can tell her myself I want to go, and she can hear me across the room.
However, this is the same DS who would check lockers when we were all at lunch and then trash your stuff if it wasn't locked (she ruined one girls' dress uniform). This happens in basic (except without the destroying of property). It isn't supposed to happen in rehab, and she was a discharge DS anyway. Our senior DS was always going rounds with her. Granted, she was placed in discharge because she was too extreme for basic (so say the Privates, anyway).
I was eventually coaxed by Monk and Jeri to ask to go to the ER and I was allowed to go. They said I was showing signs of an early cold and I was given Tylenol.
Oh, yeah, and no one but the discharge females got their lockers checked.
However, I managed to make it home in one piece and have finally managed to aquire a job. Hopefully, I will actually get on Gaia regularly.
More Army crap in following journal entries, possibly. It wasn't all bad, and a lot of the DS's were actually pretty cool.
Firesighn · Sun Mar 11, 2007 @ 02:43am · 0 Comments |
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