I woke up the day after graduation of basic training still in my basic training bunk at the same time as usual: 0530. We spent the morning do one last room clean, turning in our linen for our beds and putting fresh new linen on the bed for the next class. We ate breakfast and then came the wait. We all waited, sitting on our duffel bags outside for hours so it seemed. The drill sergeants relaxed and talked to us about the "real" army. I had a drill sergeant tell us about life as a medic and what to expect into AIT. After waiting a long time and watching other groups get to walk away to their bus headed to Fort somewhere in whatever state. Even worse were the guys who woke up that day and walked down the road to the AIT barracks already on Fort Leonard Wood for either 31B training or 88M. I didn't envy either of them though because those jobs kind of suck.
Eventually my bus came and we all eagerly piled into it, ready to be free! Even if it was just for a bus ride to Fort Sam Houston. One of the drill sergeants that taught my platoon saw us off. One of our buddies said "Good bye drill sergeant!" to which he replied with a stoic face "I hate you all.". As we drove away some of us waved, to him and another drill sergeant. My drill sergeant gave us double middle fingers as we drove away. Having been in the Army for awhile, I understand why that was both super funny and well deserved on our part.
The bus ride was a solid 18 hour ordeal. We only stopped once about 6 hours into the bus ride at a gas station. We each eagerly made purchases of snacks, sodas, phone chargers, tobacco products and energy drinks. For the time on the bus was our only freedom and we knew it. The bus ride honestly sucked and I wish it would have gone by faster. I didn't really get too much enjoyment from our freedom at the cost of just sitting down and holding my poop in until we got to Fort Sam. Which we got to at approximately 0300.
I was expecting to get there at such an hour and get a bunk and a few hours sleep. That did not happen. We filed off the bus and were immediately got called into a formation and waited. (You have to wait for everything in the Army. Sometimes you get put on a waiting list, just to wait.) We were given in-processing forms that were not something you want to fill out in the early morning hours after not sleeping on the bus ride. Eventually we finished our inprocessing and were told to go to sleep in any empty bunk we could find. As it turns out were we stuck at the dreaded golf company. Alpha through Foxtrot company were the real training companies for medics. Golf company was only for those who were in-processing or holdovers because they were going to have to retake the course. After finding a bed and laying in it for about 15 minutes I was awoken for morning formation. I didn't sleep a wink and just was gonna go about the rest of the day that way. Cool. We got yelled at and eventually ate breakfast. The best thing about eating breakfast was that were told to go in, eat and be back outside the chow hall in 45 minutes. This was great because 45 minutes to eat was about 40 more minutes than I had ever had to eat at a basic training chow hall! I even got to sit and talk with my buddies for a little over some excellent chow hall breakfast.
The rest of the day consisted of trying to look busy and waiting around. It was rumored that some people waited weeks, if not months to pick up for the next class. Golf company is sort of a limbo stage where anything can happen. Where it is both laid back and uptight. You aren't training, but you have to being doing something.... but what? Anyways I wasn't about to let that happen to me or my battle buddy. The air was tense at around 1600. Suddenly there was a call from the NCO running the place to form a line outside his door. I grabbed my battle buddy and headed for the door. There was already a substantial line, which I cut to about the 4th person in line. A smaller kid behind me said that I couldn't do that. I flexed my arms that were pretty big from all the lifting I've done over the years and told him to shut up or I'd punch him into the wall. He didn't say anything else. The line turned out to be who was going to be in the next class! I was excited to have escaped spending only a mere 18 hours in golf company.
We were told to grab all of our stuff and march about a mile to a particular soccer field. We met our platoon sergeants who would be with us for the 4 months we were there. These platoon sergeants were not nice and were acting just like drill sergeants. We even got yelled at and had to dump out our bags again just like at basic, what fun! Eventually after a few other fun games we got told to go stand outside a certain room number and stay put. I was on the 4th floor, which really sucked, and I wasn't rooming with my battle buddy. But that's okay, we still were inseparable friend throughout our training there. My roommate was a short and stocky mexican kid who gave me a weird vibe. But he was cool and we got along well. After getting our room locks set up with our cac cards to open them we got to dump our stuff, eat dinner and form up for evening formation. We were told that the very next day we were going to start training. Which I thought was crazy, after only being on Fort Sam for like a day we were going to start training. No joke the next day I got certified to conduct CPR. Welcome to Army training.