Our 10 weeks of Basic Training are almost up (FINAL STRETCH!) and we just got kicked out and sent on the trek of our miserable (yet sometimes funny) lives. 55km in full gear. That stuff weighs and for a little squirt like myself, it can weigh a considerable percentage of my body weight (50% on easy days and 80%+ when stool hits fans).
Thankfully, the past two days were "easy". We were driven to some random corner of the forest, given a map, a compass and a medpack, and given coordinates to the next point. There we were to get the coordinates to the next (and the next, and so on) as well as a puzzle to solve (I might share the puzzles we got over the course of our trek, if you ask nicely).
ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! AND THEY'RE OFF! SQUAD ONE TAKES THE LEAD, BUT SQUAT 4 IS HOT ON THEIR HEELS! OH, WHAT'S THIS? SQUAD 10 JUST WIZZED BY! WHAT SPEED! SQUAD 8 CUT A CORNER, BUT LOOKS LIKE THE JUDGES ARE GOING TO LET IT SLIDE.
No, actually it wasn't as packed as a horse race. The squads were let loose 15m after the previous, so as to allow for breathing room. We started in high spirits, shouting out our excitement and singing (or strangling cats.... It depends on how you want to look at it), not much of a care in the world. But as the kilometers and hours passed, people got tired and sweaty, and when people are tired and sweaty, all sorts of stuff happens. The guy with the map loses the squad, for example... Porcupines and hedgehogs magically climb up your leg and settle in the crotch area, making it difficult to walk... Backs issue complaints and shoulders plan mutinies.... And when finally, finally, you get to the last point of the day, at around midnight, hoping to catch some shut-eye and nurse the injuries of the day (shredded foot soles [not simply sore, no, silly] and dead backs) it's almost too good to be true when the captain says, "You will have to wake yourselves up in time, we're not going to do it for you." Ooh, mother of ..... We can sleep as long as we like? That's it. Wake up is at 7! Only to have an annoying Sargeant bless us with a rude awakening at a quarter to six. Lovely. Feet are shredded, shoulders waging wars, backs on strike and spirits are about as low as they will ever get. Multiple kilometers and hours later, at the last point, with precious little water left to spare, we get what we want in the wrong form: enough water to swim through, but instead of drinking it, we have to trudge throught it and the mud it is mixed with while under fire, grenades exploding left, right and even under my foot. Oh, and did I mention the crazy lieutenant trying to drown me? No? Oh. Hmm....
After 21 hours of steady trud... Ahem. TREKING, we got back to the comforts of the dorms. Never have I loved the starchy sheets of my metal post bed as much.
