TUESDAY, MAY 16th

Tomorrow is a long day. And, frankly, it’s all I can think about as I lay here in bed (a bad habit, I know). We wake up at 0430 and don’t stop training until 2300 (that’s 11:00pm). We’re going through the night infiltration course tomorrow night. If you’ve seen the movie Jarhead, you know what the course is like. We start low-crawling @ 2200 (10:00pm) under barbed wire, climb over walls, do short sprints behind cover; all of which with 25 pounds of gear (better than the 80 pounds we had today). While performing these stunts, we’ll be shot at (er, over) by our drill sergeants with the M240B automatic machine gun. Grenades and claymore mines are also a part of the course, but I don’t yet know when they’ll come into play. Supposedly, we low-crawl for over half a mile, but that’s just rumor (or so I hope). Low-crawling, by the way, is literally dragging your body, including your head, along the ground. It is very difficult to do through gravel (like tomorrow) and very tiring.

But tonight I want to get my mind off of those things. For the past few days I’ve been really missing home. I know that because I’ve come this far I can’t quit, but I’ve desperately wanted to for the past few days. I can’t stand the “lifestyle” I live here. It’s so frustrating to live in a prison-like environment. I would tell you everything, but there are too many details to list. Ok, here’s one: every single night before lights-out we have “hydration formation”. At formation, we chug a full canteen of water (one quart) before going straight to bed. At this point, I’m so tired of getting up in the middle of the night (every night) to pee that I’ll probably just wet the bed tonight. Yes, I’m 25 years old, and I’m a bed wetter.

Oh, and here’s something else that’s fun. Sometimes we have to chug a full canteen in the morning before training (like we did today). Lo and behold, by the time we got to training, people had to use the bathroom. The drill sergeants chewed us out for that and smoked the entire company because half of us needed to pee. They were seriously upset because it threw off our training schedule. Makes sense, right?

Another thing. I often try to remind myself of the reasons why I’m going through this, the big questions, spiritual ones. But I have no time alone to pray, to read, to just think and clear my head. This is a total control environment. As such, I am unable to reflect and refocus on my motivations and goals. I am frequently uneasy, very tense and anxious, throughout the day. The methods by which I normally cope with difficult situations have been taken from me. For example, one of the people in the barracks just came up to me as I was writing and started telling me a story about home. There is no “me” time, because there’s too many “me’s” in one place.

Anyway, I really need sleep…and a beer…and a cigarette…and cherry pie. Goodnight.

Benjamin