BCT: The Joy Begins

So, I left off with my wonderful intro to Reception Battalion at Ft. Jackson, S.C. (Relaxin' Jackson as the uninformed call it. I had a chance to compare my training with folks from other BCT sites later on and trust me: it's the same crap wherever you go. Ain't no "relaxin" involved!) My usual luck held true and I was placed into a Reception platoon run by a female DS from the deep south who will forevermore be known to you all as: DS Bipolar. This DS was the nightmare DS of reception. All the other platoons empathized with our plight under her crazy tutelage ("Dude, I'm glad I ain't in your platoon!") DS Bipolar treated us pretty much as you'd expect a DS to, right from the moment we arrived. The other DS's were a bit easier during Reception (they saved the crazy for when we got to our training company.) not DS Bipolar. All that kept us sane was the belief that it was only for a week or so. Once we got to BCT proper, we'd be assigned new platoons & new DS's. There was one DS there that everybody loved, he was cool as hell and unbelievably funny. We'll call him DS Comic. I won't bore you with too many details about Reception: it was long, miserable, and we all would have sold our souls to get out of there and down range to BCT (yup, even now I'd make that deal!) The entire time we were there, they kept telling us that 25% wouldn't ship, we'd be held over in Reception for another month because we were too heavy or didn't do well enough on our initial PT test. Well, I was borderline on both categories so you can imagine I was quite nervous. When the morning FINALLY came to ship, they started calling off names of which trainee was going to which DS. If your name wasn't called, you stayed back. Well, after 1/2 hour of names, here were few of us left standing there and I was certain I'd been held over. When the DS calling roll stopped and looked up I almost burst into tears; hell we all almost did. We cheered like madmen when he said "The rest of you belong to DS Comic!"

Yes! Yesyesyes! We got the best DS there, luck was on my side for once . . . or so I thought. DS Comic was there and he walked up smiling "Think you got lucky, huh? You'll learn different." One of the guys called out "C'mon, DS Comic, you can't be that bad!" That made the DS laugh out loud. "Me? Hell, I'm a pain in the ass but I'm not what you have to worry about. I'm the ASSISTANT Drill. The boss is who you have to worry about!"

And that's when she walked out. Yup, you guessed it: DS Bipolar. My lucky old ass had the crazy woman for my entire run of BCT. I can't even begin to tell you how miserable she made us. Not even because she was a DS (there were plenty of those around) but cuz she had her own personal brand of crazy that she worked hard to share about with everybody! Hell, even the other DS's called her "That crazy bitch" . . . and NOT in a nice way. Just the night before, I'd watched her smoke a buddy of mine until he literally wasn't capable of lifting his arms up at all. We had to undress him for bed. I resolved right there to stay out of her way and never give her any reason to get pissed at me. That resolution lasted until the very next morning when I became the very first soldier in the platoon to receive her "personal" attention.

Sigh. :-(

They woke us up at 0330 for PT and marched us to a field that was surrounded by a running track. The four platoons in the company each lined up on one side of the field, facing the center where the DS's were. It was all good (exhausting, yes, but good.) until they told us to fall out onto the track and run for a mile. Problem was, I didn't know anybody in my platoon yet, so when we got back from the run I accidentally formed up next to the guy I THOUGHT I'd been standing beside earlier. Well, stupid me didn't notice that I'd lined up with the entirely wrong platoon. I was there for about two minutes before I started to notice things didn't look the same . . . buildings on the wrong side, parking lot on my right instead of my left, etc. it finally hit me and I started to move quietly out of rank, trying to sneak back to my platoon without anyone noticing. I made two whole steps before I heard DS Bipolar scream in that charming tone of hers: "Coppinger! Where d'hell is Coppinger at?"

Shit.

"Here, Drill Sergeant!" There was no hiding now.

"Oh, Hell no! You did not mess up my formation! Get yo' fat, stupid, white ass over here! I oughta kick you square in the back of you stupid ass head!"

Actually, it was one of the nicest things I ever heard her say. She proceeded to have me low crawl around the perimeter of the field for the rest of the PT session. This was much fun, particularly because it was a cold, misty, morning and the mud just added that extra bit of OOMPH to the suck. So much for staying off her radar, huh? :-)

I did a better job of it after that, but it didn't really matter. DS Bipolar was a firm believer in mass punishment, even after it was supposed to end when we hit White Phase. Hell, she was still doing it the very day we left . . .

Well, that was my next step in the BCT journey. Next, I'll tell you all about how I almost got recycled because of DS Bipolar's incompetence and my own screwed up anatomy!

Later!