This Army Life Is Crazy Part 1
September 12th was the day my life changed forever. I got on a plane to St. Louis, Missouri to start my army career...and let me tell you it was interesting. As soon as I boarded my flight I was nervous but a good kind of nervous because this was something I had been looking forward to for the past few months. When I got off my plane in Missouri, I met a couple people that were on their way to Fort Leonard Wood as well, we became instant friends. We had a couple minutes to grab something to eat and get our bags outside to load the bus to go to reception. Reception. It was a two hour bus ride from St. Louis to Fort Leonard Wood so we all got advised to sleep because we definitely needed it for what we were about to go through. When we pulled up to reception we immediately saw a drill sergeant and thought what the heck, we’re not even at basic yet and there’s already drill sergeants swarming us. They yelled at us to get inside and dump our bags to get whatever contraband out that we had. That was the longest night of my life we didn’t go to bed until two and wake up was at 3:30. Reception was the worst, all we did was stand around and we couldn’t talk at all to anyone but the day we got fitted for our uniforms was the best day ever. Let me tell you when you first put on that uniform it’s the best feeling in the world and you feel so motivated and that you can take on whatever is going to happen. Everyone in that room had the biggest grin ever. We were in reception for about six days then shipping day came along. The most nerve-wracking day of my life. We woke up, ate breakfast, and around noon we got in formation with all our bags lined up. I don’t think there was a single person in that formation that wasn't sweating like crazy from being so nervous. Then from the corner of my eye I saw the drill sergeants that we were going to be spending the next ten weeks with. They came up to us not saying a single word, just looking at all of us, then all of a sudden they said load the bus. Then our journey began. We were on the bus for a good five minutes, I was sitting next to the girl I was bunkmates with in reception, when the bus stopped we just looked at each other because we knew this was the worst part of basic training. Shark Attack day zero. The door busted open and you hear, “Get the f*ck off the bus!” Everyone, I mean everyone, took off, we looked like a bunch of chickens running around with our heads cut off. There were people falling, crying, and screaming, it was a mess. We got inside and they made us line up our bags...again and said, “Lift your bags above your head” so we did and that was so hard. We had to squat with our bags too and run just about every exercise you can think of. I've never sweated so much in my life. After all that we finally got to go to our company and then we all thought to ourselves, man what have we gotten into. Day zero out of 70 complete. Here’s to new adventures.