This is probably the most interesting week we had in BMT. The reason is cuz this is BEAST WEEK! WOOOO!!! .... not really, it was hot and it sucked. Haha. But it was a good experience. Now, allow me to write about it.
Monday morning, around 4:00AM. We had everything packed. Our green duffel bags were packed to the top with random toiletries and clothes we needed for the "deployment". We pretended to treat BEAST like an actual deployment to Iraq because it seemed more exciting that way.
We took all our duffel bags and M-16 training weapons outside, and we all got in formation. We had breakfast at the dining facility, and we all got on the bus. We drove off base, went to Medina Training Annex, and got dropped off some 15 minutes away from Lackland. We all got off the bus, and we had to be sure we all had our M-16's on us at all times. If we were caught without our M-16's, it was trouble for us. Lots of trouble.
We hiked to a part of BEAST that held our HAZMAT gear (the overalls, pants, boots, and gloves). We grabbed our gear and hiked to our zone. We were Predator Zone. The RPA Predator, not the animal. We were all in tents. And they had AIR CONDITIONING! Even tho AC was around 90 degrees, it was a lot cooler than outside so it was still nice. BEAST was a lot hotter than Lackland, and we have no idea why.
We all had to wear FLAC vests and combat helmets. Well. Everyone except me. I still had to wear the helmet, but not the 40 lb flac vest. I had pneumonia. And I had orders from a superior officer to not wear that flac vest during BEAST. Sucks cuz everybody literally hated me for it. But it's not as bad as the girl who had the waiver so she couldn't carry her M-16. Even the instructors got super peeved at that.
I was SUPER dehydrated when I started the day. That on top of the pneumonia I was fighting. I nearly fainted a couple times doing simple hikes to the HAZMAT gear and back. I had to sit and drink a lot of water. Luckily by the next day I was good to go.
Still Monday. At the end of the day, after setting up all of our tents and putting everything away, we figured that BEAST was set up like this: Monday-Wednesday is field-training and perfection (medical, poisonous gas, unexploded ordinance, entry-control point, all that wonderful stuff). We started getting in groups and started to practice our stuff. Thursday was "test day". That's when we were given tasks out of the blue and we had to respond to the situation in a quick and accurate manner. Depending on how good we did on test day determines if our flight gets the "BEAST RIBBON". This was a big deal. Yes it was.
I was the master at Entry Control Point. What that entails is standing at one of the main gates and challenging anybody who tries to enter the base. I stand here with an M-16, looking as threatening as possible. And then I get to yell at them. It's so scary being yelled at by me. ... not really. But I try.
During that Monday, I get introduced to the madness that is an MRE. This has two meanings -- Meals Ready to Eat, or Meals Rejected by Ethiopians. I'm going to be honest, MRE's aren't that bad. Some of them are really good. What makes them good, however, are the kick butt desserts at the end. My favorite is the blueberry cobbler. Mmmm. I was the only trainee who could old down the infamous Veggie Omelet MRE. Probably not cuz it looked and smelled and tasted like a veggie omelet, but it felt like barf. I have the ultimate ability to ignore what a food feels like when I'm hungry. It's so ultimate that the rest of trainees found out I could hold down this veggie omelet. So every time somebody else got a veggie omelet MRE, you could guess who they came to for a meal rescue. Yeah. We had MRE's for breakfast and lunch. We had an actual dining facility dinner, however. That was an awesome meal. Period.
Monday some more. We had to go through MOPP drills. That involves putting on and taking off our HAZMAT gear (gas mask stuff) on and off. When the sun comes up, it stops being fun. HAZMAT gear holds in heat like you wouldn't believe. It's a greenhouse on your body. When that gas mask is on for more than 3 minutes, you can start to feel the sweat slide down your face, and there's nothing you can do about it. Cuz if you take off your mask to wipe your face down, YOU BE DEAD! The instructors had some sort of immunity so they didn't have to wear the gas masks with us.
Showers were not fun at BEAST. Well, they weren't really that fun period, but it was horrible at BEAST. At the dorms, the showers were right there, 15 seconds away from your bed. At BEAST, you had to walk about 3 minutes to a separate building where you had to take your shower. And you had to carry everything with you. It was not fun.
Tuesday. Guess what was for breakfast? Veggie omelet.
We spent most of the day going over our practices and whatnot while I chilled at the entry control point, looking vicious. Then we got a hurricane warning near the end of the day. We all took refuge in a protected area and watched the tents get destroyed by the winds and saw trees breaking in half and cows flying past us. Not really, but pretty close. After the hurricane passed, we packed all our stuff and went back to Lackland mid week! WOOO!..... until we got back.
We got back to Lackland on Tuesday night, and we were met with a very pissed off MTI. *PISSED*!!!! We had to do random PT for about 10 minutes. For what, you ask? Well, seems like we forgot to sweep all those rabid dust bunnies before we left for BEAST, and our MTI had to sweep our entire dorm by himself so the dorm could pass inspection. Our MTI was NOT happy. He could destroy planets with his rage.
We spent the next day (Wednesday) doing tons and tons of drill practice before we went back to BEAST that Wednesday night. We got back to BEAST and only had a few hours to get our stuff perfected for test day. Crunch time!... however, since we got back to BEAST late, we completely skipped the BEAST obstacle course. That kinda sucked cuz we were all looking forward to it. But oh well. I also had a couple veggie omelets. The next time somebody asks me to trade a veggie omelet, I'm going to slap them.
Thursday. Test day. Our tests involved being bombed by terrorists, leaving unexploded ordinances behind, entry control point (which is what I did), putting HAZMAT on and off all the way and staying like that for 15 minutes (I had to put on my HAZMAT gear outside cuz I was protecting the base from intruders), medical stuff, and yeah. We did so well, except for the fact that somebody kept dropping their M-16 on a body that they were trying to work on. So we lost the BEAST Streamer due to that. However, a lot of 4-Stars and High-Ranking peeps came to BEAST to see us all do our stuff. We had to do the test all over again to show the people in charge what we were made of. We did so well the 2nd time. We would have gotten the BEAST Streamer if that one counted, but it didn't. It was all for show.
Not much happened after that. We put all of our stuff back, got rid of our gas masks, and went back to the dorm on Friday afternoon. Yay! Oh, our MTI came up to BEAST and heard we did good in front of all those high-ranking individuals, so "daddy" told us good job.
Because we majorly screwed up on Tuesday when we got back, our MTI told us to get into sneakers without him having to tell us or else we would be in biiig trouble. So we got into sneakers. Our MTI saw us with sneakers, asked what the piss, told him we were told to put on sneakers, he told us to put our combat boots back on. Haha.
Sunday was great. We had church and it was 7th week! We were done with BEAST, and (we thought) it was all downhill from this point on :D.
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