120626-120630

Hey Everyone,
     Well I've had some questions that I think I have time to answer. So we get our first hair cut during receiving. What it is they get a buzz cutter (or whatever you want to call it) and completely shave your head. Now most of you will probably think that that's not too bad but when the people shaving your head are pushing as hard as they can, or at least that's what it feels like. We also get haircuts every Tuesday. Same thing, it still sucks.
     When we got here to receiving, we got to wear the trousers and green shirt. After receiving, we got to wear the blouse, not with our names stitched in or US MARINES stitched either. We also had to button up the top button of the blouse. We got to wear boots about half way through the 2nd week.
     2012 06 30
     Well today was initial drill, one of they few things there is a trophy for. We've spent the last 4 weeks prepping for this. If we won our senior drill instructor, Sgt. Flores, said he would let us hygiene on our own as well as let us blouse our boots and un-button the top button of our blouses, making us look more like Marines. Initial Drill is where all the platoon's compete one at a time on the parade deck. For all you marching band people, it's a lot like a competition. There are 4 drill cards your platoon can be assigned. 3 and 4 are the hardest in my opinion, 4 being harder than 3. It's graded by about 5 DI's, 1 of which is a Drill Master. To put that in perspective, at MCRD there are about 300 total DI's but only 4 Drill Masters.
     So we got up, went to chow and got ready for Initial Drill. We were the 3rd platoon to compete out of 6. Also Initial Drill is scored out of 100 points. The record for Initial Drill is held by our Senior Drill Instructor's (SDI) last platoon with a score of 68. The score that platoons get that decide who are 1st and 2nd are normally between 1 point. To make that clearer, 1st and 2nd are normally separated by less than a point.
     So we competed and I did really well I thought. I also thought the platoon did well.
     Well after we competed, we went back to the squad bay and tightened things up while we waited for the other platoons in our company to compete. Well, we were squaring stuff away when our SDI came in and yelled at us. It went something like this "Last Place! You guys just wasted 4 weeks of our time! And you guys thought you did good! Pathetic! Last Place!"
     The silence after that sucked. All our hearts dropped. After about 30 seconds, one of our DI's, Sgt Haly, the one who taught us the drill walked in with the first place trophy in hand. The squad bay erupted. We saw the SDI and the other two DI's smile, even if it was only for a few seconds.
     Things are going better. Thanks for the prayers and letters.
                                              - Bryson