Day 10 - A good day

Pretty decent day. I got my notebook back - one of the drill sergeants found it and kept it in the office.

Today was also pretty cool because I topped out the climbing rope in front of the whole company, and DS-A had say, “You give me your best, and I’ll give you mine.” That was cool. He had me saw “Cobras! OCS leads the way!” I guess I said it too loud, because I had to do 30 pushups. But I was happy that I could do it. McGrath fell and hurt his foot; I hope he’s OK. It would suck if he were recycled.

As promised, today was gas chamber day. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Some people freaked out, and ran for the door. I tried to stay calm, so that I wouldn’t breathe in too much gas. Mostly I was afraid to throw up – those biscuits and gravy I've been having for breakfast are pretty good, but I didn’t see any reason to taste 'em again.

We ate MREs for lunch, and I had #10 tuna. Yummy, but I’d have preferred something warm. In the afternoon, we had three classes on guard duty, composite risk management (CSM), and operational security. Basically, CRM is “don’t do stupid junk that’ll get you killed.” Reduce risks. Operational security can be summed up like this: don’t sell out the country and be careful – loose lips sink ships. Guard class was a waste.

We also had “the gut check” today. During the OPSEC class, the captain came in and said Iran attacked Israel with a nuclear missile, but it was shot down, and that the Republican Guard overran two border posts in Iraq. He said Bush asked Congress for a draft, and that all OCS candidates would be reclassified as 11B (infantry).

There were all kinds of holes in the logic (if there’s a draft, woudn’t they need officers to lead them? Why not just branch us all infantry?), but I understood the point of it all and kept quiet. I understood the reason, and I’d already checked my commitment when I decided to be an officer. According to my recruiter, we don’t choose our branch, and even if we do get what we want, we could still get detailed into another branch for a couple of years.

So I survived another day of basic training, and even came out ahead, in my opinion. Good deal.