Balog
Member
After a surprisingly lengthy stay in the unfriendly confines of MCRD San Diego, Balog's BACK, and he's a Marine!
I'm sure the people who were following this thread want to know how things went (oh heck, let's be honest. All you care about is how I did on rifle qual, isn't it?
), but I'd like to thank a few people first.
Many thanks to Kor, MarineTech, and P95Carry for the letters. I didn't receive them all, but I'm sure they'll be trickling in eventually. And what I did receive was a tremendous boost. Thank you.
I'd also like to thank those who offered kind words to my wife. I was worried about her, but she came through wonderfully well thanks in part to your encouragement.
Now, on to the fun details!
I arrived Aug 17 around about 22 or 2300. The first few days were actually rather nice. We only had one DI and he was A. pretty laid back & B. quite funny. This continued until the first Fri, when we did the Initial Strength Test and met our training Co DI's. That day is known as Black Friday, and it managed to live up to its name. We got smoked, a lot.
Despite the rather stressful conditions I was doing well. I'd been made head scribe (the scribes do all the paperwork for the plt and are generally treated better) and was enjoying the training experience, even if some parts of it were rather painful. Then came our first MCMAP lesson. Due to a series of unfortunate events my civvie glasses were either lost or destroyed, and my mil-specs hadn't arrived yet. Little did I know it at the time, but they were destined to be delayed another 3 weeks!
Recruit training is a difficult experience. Recruit training when everything more than 6 inches from your face is an indistinct blur is a whole new level of badness. Still, I chose to think of it as a training opportunity and managed to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Things had reached a state of admittedly rather fuzzy equilibrium when a second milestone came along: the "Confidence Course."
The confidence course is basically an overgrown obstacle course. One of these obstacles is a set of dirt ramps. There is about 3-4 feet between them, with a thick rope hanging in the middle. The idea is to sprint up one ramp, jump and grab the rope, and swing over. Sounds easy enough, right? I suppose it would've been, if I could've seen the freaking rope! My inability to correctly time my grabs led to rather nasty rope burns on one hand and a fall that bashed my head against the sharp concrete edge of one of the ramps. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but as I did the rest of the obstacles I grew more and more dizzy. By the time we marched back to the house I was weaving so badly I was unable to stay in formation and was sent back while the rest of the plt did something else. I didn't want to goto medical, but our senior DI wasn't taking any chances.
Thankfully, my head was fine. However, the doctor decided I had pneumonia and dropped me from training to the Medical Recovery Platoon. I was crushed. And, after a month of forced inactivity in MRP, I was back to pre-boot camp levels of physical fitness. This made my transition to Fox Co, plt 2029 rather difficult.
The second phase of training takes place at Edson Range, Camp Pendleton with the Weapons and Field Training BN. Lots of fun. Lots of cold and pain too, but it was more than worth it.
The week of rifle qual was a wet and miserable one. Qual is on Fri, and Mon thru Thurs are devoted to spending time on the range shooting and working in the target pits. The Known Distance course of fire we were on is shot at the 2, 3, and 500 yard lines. 50 shots with a possible score of from 0-5 points each shot. Mon I shot around 220 out of a possible 250. Tues was too wet to track score. Weds I shot 233. Thurs was again too wet to track. Fri was cold and very, very windy (est 30+ mph. They had us making 3-5 click windage adjustments at the 200 yard line!) but at least it stopped raining by the time the sun was up. I was shooting in the morning relay, and I must admit I let the wind get to me and psych me out. I ended up with 218 out of 250. This is 2 points short of the highest rank (Expert). I was disappointed because I can do better, but it gives me a goal to work toward next time around.
Third phase was uneventful. Got our uniforms, did our swim quals, got our tan belts in MCMAP. And, on December 10, after almost 4 months on Depot, I'm free!
Thanks to the holidays I'm receiving 14 days of recruiters assistance before returning to the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton. It'll be lots of fun, altho keeping fit over the holiday season may prove a bit of a challenge. However, I'm getting back into a regular PT schedule and remain confident everything will work out well. God willing I'll be able to see some of my AZ THR buddies and send some rounds downrange. I'll also try and get some pics scanned so ya'll can see what I look like. A rather dubious pleasuer I'm sure, but...
I'd best be going, but thanks again to everyone for the kind words. Merry Christ Mass!
I'm sure the people who were following this thread want to know how things went (oh heck, let's be honest. All you care about is how I did on rifle qual, isn't it?
), but I'd like to thank a few people first.Many thanks to Kor, MarineTech, and P95Carry for the letters. I didn't receive them all, but I'm sure they'll be trickling in eventually. And what I did receive was a tremendous boost. Thank you.
I'd also like to thank those who offered kind words to my wife. I was worried about her, but she came through wonderfully well thanks in part to your encouragement.
Now, on to the fun details!
I arrived Aug 17 around about 22 or 2300. The first few days were actually rather nice. We only had one DI and he was A. pretty laid back & B. quite funny. This continued until the first Fri, when we did the Initial Strength Test and met our training Co DI's. That day is known as Black Friday, and it managed to live up to its name. We got smoked, a lot.
Despite the rather stressful conditions I was doing well. I'd been made head scribe (the scribes do all the paperwork for the plt and are generally treated better) and was enjoying the training experience, even if some parts of it were rather painful. Then came our first MCMAP lesson. Due to a series of unfortunate events my civvie glasses were either lost or destroyed, and my mil-specs hadn't arrived yet. Little did I know it at the time, but they were destined to be delayed another 3 weeks!
Recruit training is a difficult experience. Recruit training when everything more than 6 inches from your face is an indistinct blur is a whole new level of badness. Still, I chose to think of it as a training opportunity and managed to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Things had reached a state of admittedly rather fuzzy equilibrium when a second milestone came along: the "Confidence Course."
The confidence course is basically an overgrown obstacle course. One of these obstacles is a set of dirt ramps. There is about 3-4 feet between them, with a thick rope hanging in the middle. The idea is to sprint up one ramp, jump and grab the rope, and swing over. Sounds easy enough, right? I suppose it would've been, if I could've seen the freaking rope! My inability to correctly time my grabs led to rather nasty rope burns on one hand and a fall that bashed my head against the sharp concrete edge of one of the ramps. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but as I did the rest of the obstacles I grew more and more dizzy. By the time we marched back to the house I was weaving so badly I was unable to stay in formation and was sent back while the rest of the plt did something else. I didn't want to goto medical, but our senior DI wasn't taking any chances.
Thankfully, my head was fine. However, the doctor decided I had pneumonia and dropped me from training to the Medical Recovery Platoon. I was crushed. And, after a month of forced inactivity in MRP, I was back to pre-boot camp levels of physical fitness. This made my transition to Fox Co, plt 2029 rather difficult.
The second phase of training takes place at Edson Range, Camp Pendleton with the Weapons and Field Training BN. Lots of fun. Lots of cold and pain too, but it was more than worth it.
The week of rifle qual was a wet and miserable one. Qual is on Fri, and Mon thru Thurs are devoted to spending time on the range shooting and working in the target pits. The Known Distance course of fire we were on is shot at the 2, 3, and 500 yard lines. 50 shots with a possible score of from 0-5 points each shot. Mon I shot around 220 out of a possible 250. Tues was too wet to track score. Weds I shot 233. Thurs was again too wet to track. Fri was cold and very, very windy (est 30+ mph. They had us making 3-5 click windage adjustments at the 200 yard line!) but at least it stopped raining by the time the sun was up. I was shooting in the morning relay, and I must admit I let the wind get to me and psych me out. I ended up with 218 out of 250. This is 2 points short of the highest rank (Expert). I was disappointed because I can do better, but it gives me a goal to work toward next time around.
Third phase was uneventful. Got our uniforms, did our swim quals, got our tan belts in MCMAP. And, on December 10, after almost 4 months on Depot, I'm free!
Thanks to the holidays I'm receiving 14 days of recruiters assistance before returning to the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton. It'll be lots of fun, altho keeping fit over the holiday season may prove a bit of a challenge. However, I'm getting back into a regular PT schedule and remain confident everything will work out well. God willing I'll be able to see some of my AZ THR buddies and send some rounds downrange. I'll also try and get some pics scanned so ya'll can see what I look like. A rather dubious pleasuer I'm sure, but...
I'd best be going, but thanks again to everyone for the kind words. Merry Christ Mass!
