Fourth Weekend of Basic Training

Again, I walked from home to the armoury with all of my kit on me to start my fourth weekend of basic training.  Friday evening, we had some marching and weapons drill practice.  We also had to meet, one by one, the course warrant officer and the course officer to let them know how we were doing and to get some feedback from them.  The course officer used to be a software engineer so he was interested in my civilian career.

Saturday morning, we had physical training outside in civilian gear.  It was -7 Celsius.  This is outrageously cold for Vancouver.  Many people didn't bring more than a t-shirt and a pair of shorts for PT.  After experiencing such cold, I'm sure they will bring more gear next time.  We jogged and did sprints for about 40 minutes before coming back in.  After PT, we had breakfast followed by our morning inspection.  Then, it was a whole day of class.  Topics covered varied from ethics and military ethos to dealing with interpersonal conflict and basic radio communications.  That night my section volunteered for fire picket duty so that we would have time to clean our weapons while being night sentries.

Sunday morning, we had a light rucksack "forced march".  The morning inspection was done by the course warrant officer and was done to a uniform standard across not only sections, but the whole platoon.  That didn't go too well as one section was completely different from the others.  Since it was the first section to be inspected though, all the other sections were deemed to be out of standard.  The rest of the day was spent revising marching drill, learning how to deal with hazardous material, learning new marching drill with weapons (which managed to get me confused) and learning how to deals with rifle stoppages.

Third Week of Basic Training

The third weekend of my basic training was not as demanding physically as the second one, but it was more exacting overall nonetheless as instructors turned up the heat again.  On Friday, another guy was selected to be our section senior.  At first, he didn't seem quite comfortable with the role because as soon as we started referring to him as "section senior" and started asking him for instructions, he felt sick and actually went to the bathroom to deal with nausea and / or vomit!  But then things got back into place and he was able to go on.

Saturday morning, we did some physical training which consisted of crossfit-ish activities such as push-ups, leg raises, boxed jumps, burpees, doing the "moutain climber", planking and running around.  After half an hour of that, we stretched and cooled off before taking showers and getting dressed for the day.  Because of the lack of showers, as soon as the single female recruit is done taking hers, guys go the women's bathroom to take showers.  After each meal, each of the four sections of 9-10 individuals has to take care of one of the assigned tasks:  cleaning the tables, cleaning the floors, emptying the garbage cans, and cleaning the bathrooms.  This weekend, my section had the bathrooms.  After eating and cleaning, we had to get ready for our morning inspection.  This time around, the instructors really went into town.  For example, my duffle bag was zipped up and all its buttons were done up and its handles were laid up on top of it.  However, the handles were not tied together.  Because of this, I had to hold my duffle bag in front of me with extended arms for twenty minutes while the staff carried on with the inspection of the rest of my section.  Needless to say, my muscles failed.  Eventually, my section commander replaced the bag with my riffle.  This was lighter, so I could manage to hold my arms out with only that charge.  Still, it was far from pleasant.  After a total of half an hour, I can assure you I was very relieved when I was finally allowed to take my arms down.  But that relief was short lived as we were then ordered as a section to do planks.  Other teams had their share of fun too.  One section had a sergeant flip all the cots (with lots of equipment on them) over the floor and scream his lungs out at them.  I also saw and heard many boots fly around.  That was quite the start to the day.

Thankfully, the rest of Saturday was more relaxed.  We had classes on compensation and benefits with the Canadian Armed Forces, on the Canadian Honours System (orders, decorations and medals), and on physical and mental well-being.  This last part felt a bit a bit touchy-feely.  But at least we learned about available resources should we ever experience difficulties.  Also, an instructor gave an account of his personal experience with PTSD after returning from Afghanistan.  I am thankful for that as his testimony was much more real and informative than any video or text can be.  That night, we were told to go to bed half and hour earlier than usual.  I didn't get to benefit fully from that night, though, as I had fire picket duty.

Me on fire picket duty

The next morning, we were told to wake up 15 minutes later than usual.  Then we had another "forced march", this time with a small backpack filled with equipment on our backs.  After coming back, we were told to take a shower, get dressed and be ready for breakfast in 15 minutes instead of our usual half hour.  After breakfast, we had our morning inspection.  Because of the extra 45 minutes of sleep and because our time was cut in half to get ready after breakfast, our inspection turned out to be disastrous.  I'm pretty sure that is what was intended by the instructors.  So we got yelled at for half an hour.  Once that was over, we moved on to a morning of training on marksmanship and riffle combat drill.  After lunch, we had marching drill, this time with our weapons.  Finally, we were let go early this Sunday (shortly after 4 pm).  Maybe this had something to do with the Super Bowl.