I vividly remember getting onto a white bus that left the reception area and was to drive us to the permanent training barracks we would soon reside in. A female drill sergeant, attempting to be funny, opened the door to the bus and said "Welcome to Fort Leonard Wood, and thanks for your service.". I certainly found this funny because the second after she said that many other drill sergeants came running from all directions yelling and screaming for us to get off the bus quickly, each in their own individual and creative form of the English language. We were told to line up, drop our bags and empty them for an equipment inspection. It was a frantic scramble to hold up your various socks or boots in a desperate attempt to please the brown topped gods that were soon to rule your every waking minute. If you had something, great. If not, well sucks to suck because you got yelled at and with no legitimate excuse you just stood there babbling to the couple of drills that were screaming in your face. I didn't really have a problem with any of this. At one point I was ordered to drain my canteen by drinking it all in under a minute and then hold it over my head. I finished my canteen and held it over my head. A few drops dripped onto my brand new army hat; this was apparently not the right answer. A drill came over to me and an exchanging of words took place that went something like this: "Weren't you told to empty your canteen, private?". "Yes, Drill Sergeant!", "Well judging by the moisture on your headgear it appears that you didn't quite complete the mission!". "Yes, Drill Sergeant!" (Yes, Drill Sergeant. This sentence is about 50% of what you say at any given time during basic training.) "Private Moore, I think that your in my platoon, I don't like you already! it's gonna be a long couple months for you, Private Moore!". This certainly did not make me feel confident about my future time at Fort Leonard Wood, but as it would turn out this cat wasn't my drill sergeant and wasn't even in my company. It was just a little lie to scare me, no big deal.
I eventually was assigned to a room full of other privates whose last name started with an M followed by an O. Our room was around a 20' x 20' room, with tall, tan wall lockers on the sides and two sets of bunk beds against the back wall and two more by the door. I got a bottom bunk at the back, no complaints here since I've fallen off the top bunk a few times in my life before the Army. I looked over and saw the tall skinny guy who had nose breathed all over the top of my head earlier in the week and was reminded about how much I'd've liked to punch him. Later I'd find out he was a really nice dude and would often have discussions about our two religions in our sparse free time. We barely spoke, and if we did it was only to relay what a drill sergeant had instructed to the masses. We threw out things into our lockers, which was a mistake, and ran out to the front of the building to get in formation. After being yelled at for a few minutes about our terrible timing and lackluster formation the cadre introduced themselves and we proceeded to fill out many pieces of paper. So much for not having to do paperwork at my not desk job.
We were then sent to our rooms and told to stand at attention by our bunks, which we would come to recognize as a command indicative of a room inspection. There were many other rooms in our building, most of which were different sizes and held different numbers of people, from 2 man tiny rooms up to the 16 man bays. I was somewhere in the middle in my 8 man room. The drills went through each room to size up each recruit and wreck our poorly put together wall lockers, for which there was a strict standard we had not met in our haste to please them. After being told the standard, we had a time hack to meet that was fairly unreasonable. After failing the timelines a few times I guess we got it mostly right and they we were ordered back into formation in front and marched to the dining facility for chow. It was pretty good food, like any other cafeteria food it had few options and an apparent portion size meant for a large child. As a young man who regularly consumed over 4,000 calories a day, these meal times would seem more like a fortified snack and I was always hungry.
The drill sergeants told us to meet in each of our platoon's "War Bay", which was this room on the 3rd floor with no bunks in it. Just a desk and a white board. In the coming weeks meeting here was a semi-daily occurrence and usually meant we were going to have a class, clean weapons, or get yelled at for messing something up. The drill sergeants went over some basic rules for us to follow and gave us the average timeline for each day: 0430 wake up followed by formation at 0445. at 0500 we would start physical training that ended at 0600. From 0600 to 0700 we had time to shower and change. 0700-0745 we ate breakfast chow and we trained until 1800. Normally by 1800 we went to dinner chow (Lunch was almost always an MRE). After finishing our chow, 1900-2100 was "personal time" which usually meant a drill sergeant mandated platoon war bay meeting, showering, bowel movement, talking with a few of your newest friends and maybe even writing a letter back home. A sacred time that would become something like a miniature weekend but only it happened every day! What a treat. 2100 meant lights out, so shut up and get in your beds. Sleep always came easy at the end of the day.