Letter No. 3

Dear Everyone, 07/18/10

Crap, what a week. Yesterday was definitely a BAD day. Got IT’d hard for about 45 minutes and for an hour as a division. The second was mostly because of a recruit in a completely different division. FYI, the RDC’s in our division are apparently the “go to guys” for problem recruits in other divisions to get corrected.

This guy shoved another guy in their compartment. We were getting dropped already for one of our own guys messing up on watch. When Chief came in it was game on. The guy was a total dirtbag. Chief gave him the option of doing 200 pushups and the rest of the division would be able to stop and he said hell no. Weiss, one of our slower recruits was asked “what time is it?” and he answered “Butt kicking time”. Chief made us do 30 eight count bodybuilders (google that) in under 1 min 45 seconds. Chief stopped us because the guy only did four! We recovered but the guy was limping and hobbling and doing a poor job of faking it. Today he was on crutches. The kicker was that he was three weeks ahead of us in a normal division.

In other news, I am the new Head (bathroom) Petty Officer. Not too worried about that. The old Head PO, one of the guys I am getting to know, Montaro, is the new RPOC (Division Leader) and he chose me as his replacement. I was one of the workers there at first. It’s not too bad. Yeah, cleaning that stuff stinks but it is roughly 50% of our inspections so it is important. I also do not have to stand watch (meaning I don’t have to get up at night) and we generally don’t get messed with if our work is good. So now I’m in charge of that. Plus our group is real tight.

Montaro, Erik, Butts, Humphreys and I are a good friends but now ironically getting broken up. Humphreys is Master at Arms (RPOC's right hand man) and Erik and Butts got moved to guard duty since their stuff is squared away. Watch involves sounding off to the Chief and you must have good bearing to do it. A lot of guys have been messing it up.

I don’t mean to sound like it is all good. Yesterday the old RPOC and Master at Arms wrote down names of people who were talking when we were sitting down. Of course the Chief asks for the names of the ten weakest recruits and the old RPOC falls back on that list. There were several on the list, including me, that shouldn’t have been on the list. The Yeoman (in charge of paper work who works with the Chief a lot) is going to say something the Chief. Either way, I’m going to lay low and get my job done.

I hope you guys realize that writing letters is definitely a sacrifice. Any time we have to write it is on our own time and we basically have to sacrifice something to do this. Other than on Sunday, it is done at night and then I’m giving up sleep. Even on Sunday, there’s a lot of stuff to do. I’m only writing this now because I am waiting for an iron to open up so I can iron my clothes. Please write though. I was ecstatic to get letters from Mom last Thursday. I’ll do my best to answer questions in these communal letters.

Love, AL

P.S. By the way on PO Torrez. He’s just mean. He doesn’t yell. He isn’t physically imposing (5’-7” 150-160 lbs). He’s just mean. We were in crucifixes for 20 min. Crucifixes are when you lie flat on your back with arms to the side with your head, arms and legs off the deck. Hold there for 20 min.

RDC Quote of the Week: Chief (points to his head): “that was from an airplane falling on my head. Yeah, it hurt”