The Basic School - Close to Halfway

We are about halfway through here at The Basic School and we have already learned a ton. It's nothing like Officer Candidate School; it's harder but at the same time so much easier. You get to be yourself, talk to your friends, get some free time, but the training events are more difficult on every level. Endurance events are longer, land navigation is spread out across kilometers of dense woodland, it is absurdly hot everyday and tests are much more difficult. But the great thing is that the whole time you are learning skills absolutely essential to being a leader of Marines. So far we have learned Martial Arts, basic markmanship with a rifle, pistol, and machine gun, fairly in-depth day and night land navigation, and are getting started into Combat Orders and beginning to learn how to lead a group of Marines with rifles and machine guns into combat.

So far I have loved it. I despise the training most of the time while it is occuring, because it is so detailed, tiring or downright painful but at the end of the day it is a great feeling of accomplishment most of the time. And the longer we are here, the more we realize how this training is important not for us, but for the Marines we will lead. We are essentially just a medium of information for the enlisted Marines that will be under our charge in the future.

Coming up in the future are a lot of time operating outside of the classroom. The next two months will be filled with about 70% of our time being spent running around and sleeping outside, attacking bad guys and defending against attacks from them. It will get progressively more complicated each time with the addition of more personnell to lead, the introduction of fire support from outside your platoon, and a progressively more difficult enemy, among other things.

Also coming up in about seven or eight weeks is job selection. By the beginning of September I should have a very good idea, if not know, what job I will end up in. Right now I am leaning towards the intelligence fields or logistics, but I'm keeping my options open. There is still a lot to learn.

Thanks for reading.