One week left...

Well since I am still alive enough to write this, you would be correct in assuming I made it through sleep deprivation week without turning into a zombie. Although I will admit that near the end of the week there were a few times that I was pretty close to being the walking dead. But I'll start at the beginning.

Monday was kind of neat. We arrived, marched to our bivouac and set up our perimeter defense. No we did not set up camp, we just put our rucksacks down in our designated positions, then ate lunch and had some classes. All our classes were outside of course, and the first one was on pyrotechnics. We'd already had the class back at the school, but this one was for the demonstrations. We got some bangs and booms and flashes and tripwires - just a small taste of what was in store to wake us up at random times throughout the week.

After a bunch more walking around and some more classes, we got back to the bivouac after dark to set up camp. That was fun. There was only minor difficulties and minimal complaining. In comparison to a squad of high school cheerleaders. I love it when our staff makes things far more difficult than they need to be.

I have no idea when or how many times we got woken up that night, but later on, I counted myself lucky that I got that hour and a half of sleep.

We took down the tents in the morning before setting out for some more walking and classes. This would set the standard for the week, which we were really impressed with. Tuesday was a cool day though. It was the first time we got to put the cam paint on, and also got our pictures taken. We also practiced trying to see things in the woods that were more or less hidden alongside a stretch of the road. Then one of our instructors hid there in a gilly suit (makes him look like cousin Itt or a pile a leaves) and shot at us until we could see him. It took a surprisingly long time considering how close he was. When he stood up, all I could think about was the Monty Python sketch of "How Not to be Seen." of which the first rule is "Don't Stand Up." It became extremely obvious why that is the first rule.

Wednesday was topography. That was a fun day, since the weather was nice, and we were all sent off alone into the woods to plot our paths and find our markers. A whole day of no one yelling at us, or telling us to go faster. A whole day of wandering about in the woods. We had a whole hour to make and eat our lunch, which was hot for once, and if we were tired, we could just sit and take a break. It was that day that I realized that no matter what we did in the day, we got far more rest in the hours the sun was out than any night. It was a bit bizarre.

Things get a little blurry after that. I think I got 45 minutes of sleep one night, none the next, and 20 minutes the night after. That might sound crazy, but the even crazier part is that we kept functioning. Well, except classes where we sat down. I tended to start nodding off a little bit there. But every night we were woken up by fire alarms, or artysims (they make a bit flash and boom to simulate artillary - REALLY loud) or an "attack" on the camp. Every time we had to yell "Stand to!" until everyone was awake and at their post. Then wait for it to be clear, go out on the road and clear our weapons and come back into camp. Every one takes about a half hour. It doesn't seem like a long time, but when you add it to the two hours of duty (like being on watch) that you have sometime between 11 and 5, the time it takes to change or clean the rifle (which is higher on the priority list than food, which is higher than sleep...) it adds up to a whole lot of no sleep for recruits. So you might see why my memory of these times is not wholly intact.

All I remember of the last part is being very close to crying and giving up. I guess it was Thursday night when we had a class about different kinds of missions and "Pull Pole" was one of them. It involves being found by the enemy and needing to take down the camp as fast as possible - ideally in less than 20 minutes. Of course, as soon as we heard it, we knew what was going on in our last night.

It was about 3am when we got the call, took down the camp, packed our rucksacks and met up on the road. Since the general idea was that we were supposed to be moving camp, we took our loaded rucksacks with us. It was a long walk with probably 50 to 60 pounds on our backs, and we never reached our destination. After a few kilometers, we came under fire, and dropped our rucks and headed into the woods to deal wtih the "enemy". Since this meant that our route was "compromised", we had to set up camp somewhere else, and headed back the way we came for a km or so. Then we wandered into the woods to scout where our camp would be. It was at this point that I fell down and just could not get back up. I felt weak and about as terrible as I ever have been in the past few years, and would not have gotten back up without an awesome friend there to give me a hand up. That's the good thing about all this. We all know that there is someone there if we need it, because it's the only way we can make it through this craziness.

The day did get better from there, and not only because it could not have gotten worse! We were given three whole hours on our own to make "hoochies" (little tents out of our groundsheets) and eat breakfast and rest if we wanted to. The sun started to come up and our spirits rose with it. It was our last few hours there, no one had to be on duty and the staff were gone. It started to warm up, and people were singing. It sounds corny, but yes, this actually happened. And because we were in a better mood, the tiredness took on a different form and absolutely everything became hilarious. A think all of us laughed more in two hours than we did the rest of the week.

And so, we survived. A little worse for wear, and slightly paranoid about a certain descending whistling noise that the artysims made, but we all made it back. We didn't lose any people to injuries, and no one actually got into a fight, so I consider that a success. Apparently so does our sergeant, because he said that anyone who can make it through the week 11 that he puts us through has his respect. And for once, I think he wasn't being sarcastic. The other platoons had it far easier, with more sleep, and fewer attacks that happened at more convenient hours. Fewer long marches too. Not that we're bitter. We were at the time, but now that it's done, well....we made it and that's what counts.

As for the next week...well, what part of the weekend we didn't spend sleeping or drinking, most people spent speculating on whether week 12 would be harder or easier than week 11. Stay tuned to find out!