And Then... Enter COVID
Testing
On arrival, each soldier is immediately swabbed and ushered into your room with roommates. The medics doing the swabbing... had never done it before, so they got to practice on you! They take their sweet time scooping your brains out of your nose, and they don't care if you cry or cough. Then they do your other nostril. Once your eyes and nose begin flooding all over your face, you haul your things inside and are given folders of paperwork (that you don't fill out and turn in until the last day apparently), and you wait in your rooms for 2 weeks! Luckily for us, all 303 people were negative on the first round, which was apparently pretty rare. Or so we thought.
On day 10, they swab everyone a second time (same amount of snot and tears) because the virus can incubate for 2 weeks before showing symptoms. Unfortunately, around day 7-8 when they got all of our negative results back, the rules were relaxed somewhat and we were all allowed to hang out in the day room which had a pool table, coffee, and TV. We were also allowed to workout in the gym and run in the hallways, sometimes they even took us outside in large groups for sunshine. All of these privileges were great, except many of our group were taking their masks off in the day room and not following the "social distancing rules" in place. My roommates and I avoided the day room and were careful to wipe down our weights at the gym (which is in our building).
The second round of testing revealed 3 positive cases. Before announcing it to us, they put us all back on strict do-not-leave-your-room rules, and we all assumed someone was positive. Luckily, the positive people were all asymptomatic so chances of transmission were fairly low... except for those people in the day room and such who weren't wearing masks and grouping together! I'm not going to lie, I thought for sure we would have a massive outbreak on our hands. However, since they isolated those who were positive along with their roommates, and no one ever became symptomatic, we started a new 14 day quarantine all over again and we were not re-tested (per the nearby base hospital recommendations).
Those 3 weeks of quarantine... sucked. In every way. We were fed prison style food in a buffet style serving line, standing 6 feet apart, and ate at our desks in our rooms, and our room had no wifi. We had to steal it off a nearby room for a few minutes at a time. Despite the many issues of quarantine that I won't go into detail about here, I'm grateful everyone made it through training healthy.
The Last Week-ish
The first day they let us "out", we walked a long walk to the PX and clothing store to buy uniforms! I'm glad I bought a set before arriving because they didn't have my size blouse. Then we were allowed to go buy any necessities we needed, and loaded our bags into a truck that took it back to the barracks for us. We were all grateful to stretch our legs to walk there, but GEEZ it was far (at least it felt far after sitting on my butt for 3 weeks).
Since we were still a training group new to the base, we were kept separate from the rest of the soldiers on base for our whole training. Small groups of 30 people were sent to different places to get ID cards, lab work, and vision assessments at different times. These were long days sitting in chairs and just waiting. BRING A BOOK! One day, all 303 of us were packed onto buses (social distancing on a bus is a whole new thing) and shipped to the in-processing station pictured below. It's basically a HUGE building with an auditorium and stations for immunizations, dental, and audiology among other things. This was the only part of training that went smoothly, as the people who work there know how to process large amounts of people in a day.
*Uniforms of the Army since the civil war... kinda cool! I remember my dad wearing some of these*
*my face after being finished for 2 hours and waiting on everyone else*
Shooting!
Yea, this was the cool part. Not even that cool, because they didn't have time to give us all a class on handling the weapons for a live fire range, but we got to do the simulation m4 range, which is like a big video game with a rigged version of the real m4 weapon. Same recoil, same feel, just safer. I'm glad they did it that way, because some of these new people were still college kiddos in medical school and can't even follow directions to wear a shirt in the barracks (eye roll).
I was pretty proud I inherited my dad's sniper genes because I was the only one in my group to get a "sharpshooter" qualification, despite some of the other guys shooting really well. I shot every single target in all the unsupported positions (kneeling and laying on my stomach), using the sandbags as support was my least favorite.
Land Navigation
Usually the teachers shuttle us all out to the middle of nowhere, give you a map and tools, and send you out to get lost in the heat. Since we had the largest class in the history of DCC and quarantine issues, we did urban land navigation that started us at the barracks and we had to find 4 points on the base and then walk back. Super fun, but the "class" we did online was not as helpful as some youtube videos were. We found all four points together :) Here are me and my roomies at our first point! (the red sign behind me)
ACFT
I won't go into much detail about this, as anyone can google it and see what the exercises are. But one day they took us all outside in different stations to go through the different events of the new test just to familiarize us with it. Since COVID keeps a lot of people out of the gym and it's a brand new test with a lot of kinks to work out, the Army is not counting scores until 2022 (otherwise a TON of people would be tossed out of the Army).
Also, we all gained weight from MREs and sitting around without exercise for 3 weeks. There's a Sprint-drag-carry event that whoops my a$&, deadlift, power throw, T-pushups that are way harder than they look, and a leg tuck that is the bane of my existence. All followed by a 2 mile run!!! When your legs feel like jelly.
I'm gunna need a crossfit membership.
To Be Continued...
I'm currently waiting for instructions to out-process and awaiting graduation today! I'll make my next post soon about the base and surrounding areas, and some of the things I'll be doing to pass the time. We have 10 days before we have to report to the next training course BOLC, but are not allowed to leave or go home. So... My roommates and I are going to enjoy eating some real food and exploring a bit!
I miss home and my family and a real mattress, but I'm glad the course is behind me and it's time to continue. See you soon!
Comments
Post a Comment