Water Buffalo....... Monday, July 12th

Well, I've caught a few minutes to write this letter so here we go!

Yesterday (Sunday) was a somewhat easy day, however, with my platoon, we can't just quite make it through the entire day....While some of us were in the Bay Cleaning, others were doing things they shouldn't have, like writing letters. So DS "W" starts smoking us. Well about this time about 6 or 7 guys had just gotten back from religious services. They stood outside waiting for us to finish. Not so Fast.....DS "W" noticed this and then decided we needed to work on teamwork. How would we do this? Well, so we have this "water buffalo." It's this large container on a trailer that holds 500 gallons of Water. Our job, empty it while rolling it as we went yard. Then, once it was empty, we had to refill it, Doesn't sound to bad right??? Well.... when we refilled it, we had to use our canteen cups which hold 1 quart of water....it took us a little over 45 minutes to get it halfway and we left for chow. When we came back, we had to drink our Camel Packs and go refill them with the water in the buffalo. So we go over and find out that one of the guys who ALWAYS screws up, was at it again! This time he dropped a canteen cup in the buffalo and didn't tell anyone until a DS found it just floating inside. So since this is the water supply for the entire company, and it is now contaminated, we had to dump it again, bleach it twice, and refill with canteen cups......AGAIN!!!!

So that was part of Sunday, but I forgot to mention that today we had our first official APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test). We had 2 minutes to do push-ups, sit ups, and then a 2 mile run. I did 37 push-ups, 60 sit ups, and get this a 13:50 2 Mile!!! I couldn't believe it....my first mile was 7:05 and my second was 6:45. I shattered any previous Personal mile time record with my run today! I guess going yard has it's advantages HAHA!! So I need to work on my push-ups, but I think a 300 PT score (100%) is definitely a possibility now. We do push-ups everyday and I know I can do more. Some of us are going to start putting our Kevlar Vest on before bed to work on them. That should get us squared away right? Other than that, we've just been in the classroom today going over Land Navigation. We were going to head out into the woods and work on it, but then it started raining and lightning so that got scratched. We're back in the classroom and we're having the written test on all of this after chow. Wish me luck! Even though you'll get this and I'll know already if I passed. HAHA.

Anyway, that's all I got for now

Love you All - keep writing

Embrace the Suck!
SPC. Martin

PS. Another teamwork exercise involved going yard while carrying my 220 lb injured battle buddy 1/2 way, and 3 others on the way there. My legs were as stable as my stomach would be after watching Rosanne sing Take me Out to the Ballgame.

PPS - Passed my Test!