Crawling In The Mud

Being that I'm still in basic training, which isn't all that basic, by the way, the commanders like to jerk us around quite a bit. For example, the army gave us immigrants an entire week of Hebrew classes last month where we sat in a room and studied for 10 hours straight. It was an easy week where all we did was eat, sleep, and learn. We listened to music and even watched a couple movies and TV programs in Hebrew. I was loving it. I can do classrooms. I've done that my whole life.

All of the basic training rules and b.s. was pretty much on hold. We walked in formation from the barracks to the classroom instead of running. We only did krav maga once and a couple jogs. We didn't have all the standing still in formation for hours. Before we ate we didn't do many pushups, which we do before every meal regularly. It was raining cats and dogs all week, but we were cozy inside. We just had it easy.

Too easy, at least for one commander. Our week ended on Thursday, so Wednesday night right before TASH (a free hour before lights out) this commander had us get into our combat vest and stand behind the barracks and practice the shooting positions.

"On my yell, you're in the standing shooting position! ... AAHHPP!"

I threw my left foot forward and firmly planted it in front of my body, proper firing position. STOMP. "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE," we shouted. I could feel my foot sink inches into the thick, rain slicked mud.

"ENOUGH! On my yell, you're in the kneeling shooting position!"

I groaned, just waiting to feel the cold, squishy ground beneath my clean uniform.

"AAHHPP!"

SQUISH. "FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE!" The wet, cold earth quickly penetrated the double layered knee bit of the uniform, creating a less than comfortable shock to a recently pampered body.

"Enough! Now, on my yell, you're in the prone shooting position!"

"Really," I asked. "Are we really about to do this?"

And then we crawled in the mud for 15 minutes.

I wish I could have gotten my sleeves and upper body in that picture.

Bedtime. I actually kinda enjoyed it...