July 22, 2009

I am in a fantastic mood tonight. Why you ask? Well let's start with one of the many things. first off, the most exciting thing has to be that tomorrow starts our first day of White Phase. We are so relieved to be out of Red phase. Three weeks down, six more to go (for BCT). After I will have 4 to 5 weeks of AIT but one thing at a time (Right Dad?) Lol.

What will white phase bring for me? Well, one of the most important things is that we will have more personal time which means I will have more time to write all of you. Like I said before, personal letters to each of you will be coming very soon (you especially Daniel. I can't thank you enough for your daily letters and you aren't even family.) We will be treated less like shit and more like soldiers to a certain degree, but I'm not counting on it too much.

We will begin firing our M4 rifles and qualifying with them. Today we got to ropel off of "eagle tower" which is a 4 story structure, and it was cool as hell. I felt like a SWAT team member or something. Second source of good news: I got 8 letters tonight fo rmail call. Two from my Dad which were awesome, one from my Mom which included a cool poem about the Lord, one from my Aunt Mary, three from Daniel and one from my Poppo and Granny. Even though we werent allowed to have magazines, my Drill sergeant allowed me to keep the Readers Digest she sent me (thanks for the stamps too!).

Now for some good news that will make some of you proud. I've heard through the grape vine that I will be made a platoon guide and that will happen this upcoming week. There are 56 people in my platooon, and apparently I'm the one they feel can do the job. I think its because I'm quiet, I do what I'm told, and I work my ass off. The drill sergeats like me too. drill Sergeat "K" makes me keep an MRE box on top of my locker with a frog in it. He make sme name them, shower with them, and catch bugs for them. Its a real pain in the ass.

More good news! Someone died! Ha-Ha! No, it wasn't someone in my platoon, in fact it was an old man. Remember when I told you I had gotten selected for Funeral Duty? Well out of the 200 or so people we have in our company, only a handful of guys were selected for this task. At first I thought it was like jury duty, meaning it was crappy and something people hated. Apparently it is a pretty big honor to be doing this, and it looks good on my military resume.

What do we do? Well there are 16 of us. Seven will carry the casket as Paul Bearers, seven will be the firing squad, one will be on stand by and another one will play the Bugle. Guess that I got chosen to do? Yep...the F-ing Bugle, or as I call it, "The horn". It has a small device that fits inside of the bugle that plays the song, so Im not even playing, better I'm pretending to play. I had my drill Sergeant on the floor laughing so hard today. I told him, "Wow would my father be proud of me right now. Those guys are carrying a body, those other ones are shooting M4 rifles, and his son is standing off to the side pretending to play a Fucking Horn..." LOL!

Anyways, we get to wear our Class A uniforms which look amazing, we got excused from having to take our first PT test (They didn't want us to be too tired and drop the coffin.) LOL, well I have to go now. Lights out. Night Guys!

-PFC Zaleuke