Sometimes, we as people, take a lot of things for granted, especially in the civilian world. For instance we, as young adults, take most of our natural abilities for granted; one such thing we take for granted is our ability to have a full and uninterrupted nights rest. There are many things,people, and events that I may not remember, but one of the things that I will always remember is the lack of sleep. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay awake sleepless, staring off into the night and wishing that I would eventually fall asleep.
One such night was about the second or third night at BCT, I lay in bed staring at the bunk above thinking, what have I gotten into. My mind kept wondering to a few days before when the guy night to began to cry uncontrollably; for no reason whatsoever, or at least for no reason that was initially give to anyone. He had merely stated that he wanted to leave and that he would be going AWOL in the hours that followed. I thought this was odd, because he had been in Reception longer than I and, from all outward appearances, was not the kind of person you would expect to start crying. I felt sorry for him, at first, but as time went on I began to find some hilarity in the situation.
Sometimes when we go without sleep for a long time, your days and nights start to merge and become one. For about one week, it felt like one day, and that wasn’t altered by the fact that we were working 16 hour days. From the time we woke up, we were working.
A typical day began with a 4 o’clock am wake up, usually our alarm clock was the sound of multiple trash cans thrown down the aisles by our Drill Sergeants. Now I need to take a side step for a little while; most of the time I was in BCT we were assigned 3 Drill Sergeants, but we only worked with 2 at a time. A brief description of the DS that I had to live and interact with for the next 9 weeks.
DS1 was a short thin African-American male, who if I might say was not too bright. He had a strong, thick southern accent and like all people shorter than 5’8 he had an inferiority complex. DS2 was Puerto Rican, about 6’2 and had a striking resemblance to Ricky Ricardo, in fact in private I would refer to him as DS Ricky. Lastly, DS3 was a caucasian male around 35 or 40, and held a higher rank then the other 2, he was also the first to disappear for an extended period. He was off to train a group of future recruiters and therefor had to leave for about 5 weeks.
Now back to this lack of sleep that I was getting. The days were long and the nights were shorter, I couldn’t believe , wait I couldn’t comprehend, what was going on throughout the day. We were doing so much in the day that it was hard to keep track of if we were coming or if we were going. I can vaguely remember doing some classes, many of which I fell asleep through and I remember doing a lot of exercise; in the beginning we mostly woke up exercised, had breakfast, had some sort of class and then we exercised more and had some sort of meal, then more classes. I mean in the beginning it was just a learning experience and the Army trying to break us down.
I was never broken, even with the little bit of sleep that I was getting. I found some solace by taking quick naps or in sleeping through classes. In the beginning I was never caught for these little naps that I would take, because sometimes they were unstoppable, I couldn’t help it that I was falling asleep. But towards the 3rd or 4th week that all changed, I began to get noticed.
Now as unremarkable as I tried to be in BCT, somehow I began to get noticed, which was never my intention. There were about 64 people staying in the barracks and I was trying to stay unknown. Maybe because I desired to remain unknown I had stuck out. Thinking back on it, I’m glad I was noticed because there were so many unremarkable people that bleeding into the background wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.
The first time I was noticed was because off all the people in my entire battery I was the first one to get sick and have to go to the hospital. Now I say sick, and I’m using it very leisurely, what I should say it that I got constipated. I am perpetually afraid to use a public restroom, especially without having any sort of sanitation equipment. I had gone about 5 days without any sort of deification (I know this is a bit disgusting but I do wish to share all of the details of my training with you) and therefore required medical attention. The second time was because of the fact that I constantly fell asleep, I mean anytime you seen me, specifically those first couple days, I was half asleep. I was having a hard time staying awake, on thing I can say that the Army had really taught me was that I could practically sleep anywhere; standing, sitting, kneeling, in a position to do push-ups, there was no doubt that I would fall asleep almost anywhere, except when it was meal time. You would think that more people would fall asleep left and right but you were moving at such a dizzying pace while in the DFAC, short for dining facility, that it was almost impossible to fall asleep. I can’t tell you how many times I stood in formation, with my body swaying above the earth, in an almost euphoric trance. The only time that I stated to feel like I was getting adequate sleep was when I left BCT and headed to AIT. For 9 weeks I was asleep yet awake, in almost a waking dream-like state.
The Long Road 