Mom keeps learning about Boot Camp (Part 3)

I am missing my son. Great time with him for Family Day. Here I share some more thoughts regarding time with Josiah, Wheeler, and their time at Boot Camp in Fort Benning, Georgia.

• I had the mistaken notion that all of their needs were taken care of while they were in training. They have to provide their own hygiene items and many of their medical supplies (like moleskin for all the blisters they get on their feet). Someone from their squad gets to go to the PX once every two weeks to make purchases for their group. Of course, on the 36 hour pass we made a stop to get running shoes, baby wipes (for field showers and gun cleaning), toothpaste, soap, ziploc bags and a few similar items. A good thing to remember in the for my soldier as well as other soldiers.

• The soldiers typically carry their Camelback water pouches. Water is greatly enforced during training. When without their Camelbacks, they have 12 ounce canteens and are taught to guzzle the water when they have opportunity to hydrate.  Ft. Benning has at least two deaths a year due to dehydration. Josiah and Wheeler said they are much more aware of when they are thirsty than they have been in the past.

•  I found out that hand sanitizer (another item they are required to carry) serves another purpose. If you squirt some on your hands and breath in the fumes it helps you wake up during some tedious training/lecturing. Some college students may want to implement this.

• A few soldiers can't make the cuts and are dismissed from the training; some injured soldiers are rotated back into a week of training with a new group after healing; most of the ones who leave do because they don't want to continue.

• The Captain was brave enough to inform the families of the Gas Chambers and actually show a picture of a soldier leaving the chambers. I will leave the image up to your imagination. They are forced to do certain tasks in this chamber while inhaling the gas. I am going to research and see if I can find out what this gas is, but do I really want to know? Anyway, I suppose it makes sense to train for this sort of thing, but it is not something a mom likes to hear someone is doing to her child.

• Josiah's Battle Buddy, Wheeler, told me that I had better just call him Wheeler (after I asked his first name) because that is all he has answered to for the past nine weeks and was not sure he would respond to his first name.

•  Wheeler informed his girlfriend, Nicole, in a phone conversation that there were NO girls at Ft. Benning unless you count the old lunch ladies!