Basic Training part 3

      After a few days of messing around in the woods and conducting drills we got down to the real show. Live Fire range. I actually can't remember what they called it, so for now that's what I'm going to call it. Anyways, live fire range was this big deal because it could potentially kill you. What you had to do was march down to the very end of this rectangular shooting range and low crawl from the back end up to the front. In between the start and the end were things like C-wire, hulls of cars, pits of mud, metal corrugated pipes half filled with water, etc. The best part was that the whole time your doing the low crawling the drill sergeants are at the top of the range, several meters above the rest of the range, firing machine guns above the range. Now we were told that there really wasn't any danger as the drills would be firing well above standing height, but before the range started a crusty civilian range safety told us a story of an unfortunate young troop who stood up to run only to get shot in the thigh and die. Whether he was telling the truth or not I'll never know because I just kept my head to the ground and made it to the end of it, alive, just like everyone else in my class did.
      There was some fanfare afterwards and speeches made by the commanding officer of whatever brigade/battalion. I honestly didn't know the difference between a platoon, company, or battalion at this point much less anything bigger than a brigade. I wasn't paying attention anyways, I just wanted to sleep and eat.
     Those two things pretty much summed up basic training; at any point I was either really hungry or tired. Or both.
     The out processing/graduation week went by pretty quickly and uneventfully. We all spent several days scrubbing every square inch of Army gear we were issued in order not to get held back the the issuing facility, who were notorious for kicking back items even slightly unclean or stained. Despite the hellish experiences this gear goes through, these cats expect it to look brand new. One of the more memorable moments for me at this stage was when I left my laundry bag out to dry in the sun. It was the last piece of gear I had to clean and dry for the inspection. As I was bringing it into the building a bird flew right over my head and took a nice crap right on the bag. No joke, this bird had wasted over an hour of my time and would waste an hour more by cleaning and drying this bag again but by this point all you can do, and all I did, was humorously accept it and just go through the motions. It does make for a laugh now and then after all, and what better laugh can a man have than at oneself?
      Family day came and went in a blur, my folks arrived with a duffel bag's worth of contraband and a new smart phone. I had never had a smartphone before but they'd figured my life would be easier with one so they got me a galaxy S4; which I would lose in less than a year, but that is also a funny story to laugh at myself about. We ate Jimmy John's, my favorite sandwich place, and I drank so much coke I was sick.
     The next day we graduated. I was awarded the iron warrior award for best APFT score of the class and for that I was also promoted to PV2/E-2. Which was pretty cool because alot of my buddies were still rocking a fuzzy chest and I got to have my mosquito wings. After graduation we got to spend a little more time with family, but not for very long. My parents sneakily drove by my barracks during our evening req time outside and I sneakily brought it into the barracks. The Drill sergeant at the door asked if I had any contraband inside. It did. I was opening my mouth to admit to it but he held his hand up and siad "As long as there aren't any weapons or drugs in there I don't care.". I said roger that, and walked through the door, went to my room and stuffed it into my wall locker. I went to sleep about an hour after that; it would be my last night there. Good Riddance.