Sunday, December 21, 2014

12/5/2014 "Final of FTX's and 16K Ruck March"


What a long freaking day. We got up early to pack and clean our entire campsite. We are set to hike out on our final ruck 10-12 miles at about 1400. We still had blank rounds left so for inventory reasons it is easier to expend them all. Everyone loaded up a 20 round mag and fired the, off one last time.

We had an official ceremony before starting our ruck. Lieutenant Colonel came out as well. My Drill Sarge was re-upping for his second time and signing on for another 5 years.

About 1420 we started the march. My platoon started off as lead group so myself and my battle buddy set the pace for the entire company. During the first three miles we were going to take “Stairway to Heaven” a hill that is the highest elevation in the area. Due to our route. We attacked it after the first mile and then turned around after about ½ mile and did it again. No lie…it was pretty tough. During the march we stopped about every hour, so 3 stops in all for about 10 minutes apiece. We kept pretty good time. Our rucks were unloaded from 75 lbs. to about 30 lbs. the end of our march was the best. As we approached out bay (CTA) area it was complete darkness. They had chem lights along the path. Closer to our area they had tiki lights on the sides and smoke going across the entrance. Music was blaring and everyone was pumped since our Basic journey was finally wrapped up. Pretty sweet feeling.

The best feeling was finally hitting a shower after 5 days. Chow was nice too since they made us skip lunch chow.

After chow it was already 2230. Instead of recovering we had Drill Sarge Sierra (major buzzkill) so he had us lay out all of our equipment and start cleaning. Worn out tired, right at midnight he finally left us alone.

Bed was amazing.

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