Coast Guard Recruit Company Echo 186 weekly journal posted Feb 22, 2012

Week 06 Summary

Week 06 was by far the best week of recruit training so far. This week was full of interesting hands-on classes but the highlight was our return to glory when we earned back our colors after our manual arms test. This success brought with it many highly appreciated privileges that only senior companies get to enjoy. The manual of arms test took place Tuesday afternoon. The many nights of endless piece drilling paid off and we scored 09 out of 10. After the test concluded our company did an about face and after a couple nervous minutes. We were turned back around to see our guidon bearer holding our company colors, and to receive the good news of our high score. With this challenge behind us we turned are attention to learning how to put out ship board fires. This training was especially exciting because of the amount of hands on activity involved. Recruits got to test out multiple kinds of fire extinguishers on real fires. We also donned full fire fighting gear, self contained breathing apparatus included and formed fire teams to put out a simulated fire using real hoses in a dark room full of smoke. Crouched low with our shipmates in the reduced visibility with load noises and water spraying everywhere was by far the most exciting thing we have done so far. Friday morning we all had our smallpox vaccination sites examined by medical staff. The vaccinations were successful and we are all now suffering from a mild case of smallpox. The week culminated with being awarded on base liberty from Saturday afternoon to Saturday night. Recruits enjoyed visiting the exchange to satisfy long held cravings for the caffeine and junk food that we have been deprived of these last six weeks. We were also granted access to the Harbor View Club, an all-hands club on base where we enjoyed playing pool, video games, listening to a jukebox, watching college basketball and eating non-galley food. The amenities were nice but the real pleasure came from just being able to relax and talk to our shipmates something we’ve never really been able to do here. The biggest highlight of on base liberty however was the chance to call home and have a decent 15 minute conversation with our loved ones. The closer order drill test is coming up on Tuesday and will decide the tempo for next week. We are all pretty nervous because frankly, we suck at marching.