Journal Entry: "Settling In"

We’re now 11 days in and routine is starting to take form. We wake up daily to the intercom loudspeaker playing musical prayer calls followed by the mechanically sarcastic and steely voice of senior DS Rose hurling insults and various other negative motivations at us. For those of us that were hoping AIT was going to be more like college than like BCT, well we were grossly misinformed. Word is that this is the 2nd hardest AIT in the Army (I’ll find out the 1st hardest and let you know). The DS’s curse up a storm here and it is mostly directed at one of us poor recruits. The Army isn’t really geared for older guys. Everything is geared to the 18 to 20-year-old range where I suppose it’s safe to assume that if you give the slightest latitude to f*ck up, they will do so. I know this and have stopped taking their bullshit personally months ago, so all their raving and stomping has little effect on me other than a certain eye-rolling, “Oh, bother” kind of annoyance and dash of healthy, aloof resistance. I was made squad leader almost immediately, but I have yet to be called up to PG or Student 1st SGT. In this environment, I’m not sure I’d want the “honor.” The acting leadership gets abuse from both sides: the cadre and the soldiers they bear the bad news to. The DS’s are ruthless with their skepticism and their insistence on immediate perfection. My thoughts are that I will need to fill one of those roles eventually if I'm to make Distinguished Honor Graduate, but I am content for now to let one of the others “guinea pig” it for us for a while and learn from their mistakes. In the meantime, I’ve been having a lot of fun just being a regular soldier and leading informally by being a good example and helping the PG and 1st SGT behind the scenes. I’ve already obtained a positive reputation with the others and my sense of humor continues to serve me well as I’ve made a few memorable comments in formation already that have playfully chagrined the DS’s but drew belly laughs that made it all worthwhile.

One worth mentioning requires some back story:

On or about Day 2 we all decided that in order to seem really gung-ho and to annoy the DS’s we would repeat certain things followed by a hardy Army ”hoo-ah” whenever we were given commands. For example: When told to “Get down and push!”, we would yell, “Push, hoo-ah!” at the top of our lungs as if we just loved the idea of doing some more pushups. You get the drift. Anyway, it was after lunch and we had just been told by DS Rose to go up and "conduct oral hygiene" when I piped up with “Oral, hoo-ah!” (yes, I knew the double-entrendre) and broke everybody up except DS Rose, including a couple other DS’s. It cost me about 100 flutter kicks, and it’s become a standard in formation when the cadre isn’t around. Today, I added, “Shrinkage, hoo-ah!” when we were sprayed down with cold water before entering the pool for our combat swim test. Even DS Rose laughed that time. He’s actually a very intelligent guy with a well developed sense of humor. I’ll have to write more in depth about him later. Tomorrow is our first FTX. We have a 2-hour ruck march (w. 50-pound bag) and a 2-night bivoac where we’ll do day/night land navigation. Should be plenty of fun. I wish I could take a few beers and a couple of cigars with me.