Who Needs Sleep Anyway??

This morning started at 0415 when we got up to meet on the PT field for a brigade run at 0445.  I am part of Alpha company of the 187th Medical Battalion (the picture above--though the one above is a different class), which is 316 soldiers.  The brigade is comprised of about 1,000 Air Force soldiers, 1,000 Navy Sailors and about 2,000+ Army soldiers for a total running this morning of 4,329 troops!  It was a pretty awesome sight to see that many people running in formation!  We started at the PT field and then took off down the road for our 3 mile run.  Along the way, the Army band was set up on the side of the road, playing all kinds of music for us, including the Army song and Lady Gaga...it was awesome!  The whole point of a brigade run is esprit de corps, which is basically for morale.  The goal is to see which company can be the loudest.  The reason there were Air Force and Navy joining us is because Ft Sam is where all medical personnel train and also because Ft Sam is now Joint Base San Antonio when the Air Force and Army combined earlier this year.  So we had medics (68 Whiskeys), BOLC officers (my group), Captain's Career Course officers, as well as a variety of other companies.  It was a good run, not too hard, just hot!  I've never sweat so much in my life!!  After the run we had time to run back to the hotel for breakfast and a quick shower before class. 

We broke up into our platoon classes for the morning today.  We had briefs on Army weapons and vehicles, and a few other topics before breaking up for lunch and rejoining as a company in the auditorium for the afternoon.  We had 2 briefs for the afternoon on Military History.  I was kind of excited for these briefs because I really like Military History and thought they would be very interesting.  Turns out I was completely wrong.  They were SO dull and boring!  The first one talked about the importance of knowing military history and how people our age don't care about history anymore and soon it will be lost.  right.  the second one was about a half an hour worth of information on a 12-15 page paper that we will have to write in 4+ years when we attend the Captain's Career Course on a Battle Analysis.  Basically, the point of them telling us about it now was because they think we suck at writing so much they wanted to make sure we had ample time to think about it and get it written.  Huge waste of time on both of them.  Then we got ANOTHER safety brief, we had 3 from various commanders during our morning run and one from our platoon advisor already so that made this our 5th one for the day.  We were then dismissed to enjoy our 4 day weekend!  Got to love the holidays!  We (my roommate, Kinsey and her friend from the July BOLC class) have mileage passes to go to Corpus Christi for the weekend.  We haven't made any official plans yet, not sure if we will use them but it's nice to have the option.  We might just go for a day or two.  We'll see!