WEEK 04 MIKE 182.

This week started with some good news from our Company Commander  OS1 Ricketts. She told us that our lead company commander DC1 Wingate has given us 30 minutes of personal time to finish up anything that we are unable to accomplish during the day and wind down a little bit before taps.Good news that got us so excited that we almost expressed ourselves with words, but here Our company commanders already told us that it is unmilitary to say “thank you” in recruit training.

We were divided into 02 groups: Port and Starboard in order to get a lot of company business done, remember we have but a short time to get things done. Our company commanders are multi-tasking and they want to make us work like them too, so a lot of things have to be accomplished no matter what short time we have.

25 OCT 09

We started up the day so happily that some kind of liberty has been given to us. And so we marched down to the Marksmanship branch for our shooting indoctrination. There we learned how to properly handle a firearm  and shoot safely without violating the ranges’ safety rules. We learned that “the gun is as safe as you handle it”. After that class, we marched back to our Squad bay where we met our Lead company commander DC1 Wingate waiting for us. He had not seen us in almost 24 hours, and seeing him too brought us some motivation.  On hearing from him that he has missed us, we felt some chills, that you would feel when your father tells you something like that. To most of us, our lead company commander is like our father who is not only a mentor but a motivator; we are striving now to be like him one day. He told us that hard work doesn’t kill, Laziness does, he said. He does not want to hear that we parade around the Regiment dragging our feet.  Anyway, he took us to Chow and back to the Squad bay  for us to have some personal time because tomorrow is our shooting assessment. This exercise is an important part of our training here, not only for duty in the Coast Guard but also towards getting to our graduation.

26 OCT 09

Today is our shooting range test. We are having some mixed feelings of Excitement and Panic!

Excitement because if majority of us pass as marksmen and or sharpshooters, the whole company gets the range pennant for our guidon. And if anyone qualifies as an expert, he or she gets a medal. Very Exciting!

Panic because most of us have not shot  nor handled a gun before and getting comfortable with those “pieces” takes some time, unfortunately we did not have eternity to get used to shooting. But the good news is that at the end, most of us came out as marksmen, a handful was sharpshooters, some got some performance trackers for unsafe handling of the gun. That again sent some mixed feelings to our company commanders. We passed the test but we shot unsafe. Here we rise and fall as a company. Individualism was left at home before our trip to CAPE MAY. DC1 Wingate took us down to the photographer to get our official military pictures and portraits taken. For most of us this is another  moral boosting event that we are excited and cannot wait to show our families and friends our pride in our country,  duty, uniform and training. We think they are going to be very proud of us too. Our company commanders;  DC1 Wingate, OS1 Ricketts and BM2 Jansen are working tirelessly to get us squared away and fit for this job.

27 OCT 09

Today a lot of things happened. The second group- Starboard went out for their shooting exercise, while Port remained in the classroom for a lecture on Commitment by our company commander OS1 Ricketts. In this class, we learned how to be committed and ready to persevere with purpose. Some very outstanding and gallant Coast Guard members who gave their lives serving America and also showed us some examples of commitment and dedication to fatherland and humanity.

Another important class with our BM2 Jansen, dealt with Colors. Colors mean a lot to America and the US military. Some people think it just as a flag but we in the military see it as our Pride, our Patriotism and a call to honor United States and men and women of uniform who died serving America.

Also, we got our military or work emails set up, a step towards permanent parties of the US coast guard.

While we were away, our section commander Chief Hampton inspected our Squad bays and was not satisfied with them. A clear indication that we still need to work as a team. Petty Officer Wingate was disappointed with us. Now we have to work harder, show him more motivation to earn it back.

28 OCT 09

We took our physical fitness assessment today and it turned out pretty well, only about 07 persons have to go for some remedial to make up. After that, we had some classes that basically dealt with our assignments to our new units after training in a couple of weeks from today.

Mike 182 can hardly believe how far we have come. It feels like yesterday we arrived here. Now our assessments and all these activities are indications of the hard work of our company commanders. Tomorrow, we pick our new duty units and that will definitely bring the pictures the training has been trying to paint to us from day one.

 29 OCT 09

Today has been a very busy day for us. We started off the day with Remedial for those who had to swim and make up for physical fitness assessment. After chow, we marched to seamanship that we call HELM COMMAND. Basically, it is all about vessel navigation, command and control. We had some hands-on exercise to really feel it. It was very interesting but most importantly, we were assessed too and most of us had master command and control. From there we went to Building 251 for our Assignment class. We picked our new units today and submitted them to our Yeoman who is in charge of that. By next week, we would be able to know and contact our new units.

30 OCT 09

Today, we had indoctrination to pugil sticks fight and rope climbing. By Monday, we would be dealing with each other in the Pugil Stick ring. FS2 Chase is ready to set us up shipmates against shipmates.

We are looking forward to that fight.

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