American Soldier
ENC1101
1 February 2012 American Soldier It is 04:30 am, a time when most people my age are just going to sleep. I, however, am waking up for some good old physical training. “Why am I up?” I ask myself. As I slowly roll out of my bunk, I definitely don’t want to be awake this early in the middle of the summer, much less going to exercise for an hour. Not that I don’t like the idea of working out, everyone needs a little exercise every now and then, but this isn’t at the top of my list at the crack of dawn, nobody will be able to see my gorgeous body under that oversized, vomit-colored uniform anyway. However, I don’t have much of a choice, so I grab my camel-bak, and head to formation, thanking my parents for influencing this decision. “As you all know, today is the company’s first AGR run. We will be running five miles at a minute mile pace.” While drill sergeant Anderson is talking, I’m standing in formation thinking, kill me now! As we started to run, I was motivated and feeling great. After about two and a half miles, I feel myself slowing down and falling behind. My legs feel like someone is hitting them repeatedly with a hammer, and it is becoming harder and harder to breathe. “Don’t give up”, I keep repeating to myself as I continue to run. Just when I thought I couldn’t run another step, we approached our end point. Even though I felt like I was going to die, I had finished and that’s all that mattered to me. The first three weeks of basic training are over now, and as time progresses, this army thing didn’t seem so bad after all. However, our first road march is coming up and I am kind of scared. I figured they would take it easy on us being that it was our first one. I guessed wrong! We had been marching for about an hour, in the rain, and it seemed like we weren’t getting anywhere. To make matters worse, we had to march up a hill as high as a mountain. We
1 February 2012 American Soldier It is 04:30 am, a time when most people my age are just going to sleep. I, however, am waking up for some good old physical training. “Why am I up?” I ask myself. As I slowly roll out of my bunk, I definitely don’t want to be awake this early in the middle of the summer, much less going to exercise for an hour. Not that I don’t like the idea of working out, everyone needs a little exercise every now and then, but this isn’t at the top of my list at the crack of dawn, nobody will be able to see my gorgeous body under that oversized, vomit-colored uniform anyway. However, I don’t have much of a choice, so I grab my camel-bak, and head to formation, thanking my parents for influencing this decision. “As you all know, today is the company’s first AGR run. We will be running five miles at a minute mile pace.” While drill sergeant Anderson is talking, I’m standing in formation thinking, kill me now! As we started to run, I was motivated and feeling great. After about two and a half miles, I feel myself slowing down and falling behind. My legs feel like someone is hitting them repeatedly with a hammer, and it is becoming harder and harder to breathe. “Don’t give up”, I keep repeating to myself as I continue to run. Just when I thought I couldn’t run another step, we approached our end point. Even though I felt like I was going to die, I had finished and that’s all that mattered to me. The first three weeks of basic training are over now, and as time progresses, this army thing didn’t seem so bad after all. However, our first road march is coming up and I am kind of scared. I figured they would take it easy on us being that it was our first one. I guessed wrong! We had been marching for about an hour, in the rain, and it seemed like we weren’t getting anywhere. To make matters worse, we had to march up a hill as high as a mountain. We