Summer Encampment – Day 3
Same as day before – up at 4:30am, but today only some light physical training, showers, chow. Then the day begins.
Each night a squad has “watch” duty. Every hour, two Reichert youth are assigned to march back and forth & keep the barracks secure. In real war, this is serious business. Most have done well. We had at least one hour though thus far where it appears the two who were supposed to keep us safe instead decided to catch some winks. As a result, the entire Bravo squad has paid the penalty in some extra encouraging mentoring.
We have a “medic” on staff, Mr Cooper (AKA Coop). With the heat, physical activity, and responsibility for dispensing all medications several times daily, he has been very busy. A sprained ankle here, sore knee there, nausea and the inevitable throwing up that sometimes comes with it, and hydration issues all have been part of the equation. As example, we have a few young men who have inhalers. We keep a very close eye on them. Hydration – plenty of it frequently and the men always are supposed to have a canteen in their right BDU pockets at all times. When they forget these, leave them behind, or can’t find their own canteen, it is not pretty. We mandate hydration and canteen filling at frequent intervals. This in turn leads to frequent requests to use the “head.” The treeline sometimes doubles as a head.
Even with this, we had one young marine go to the hospital today and his main concern was still would he be able to go the graduation (Answer: Yes) and learn his Reichert House Creed (Answer: We hope so.)
Today, the group began to really master cadence and marching and now seem to have the concept of “road guard” down. Whenever we are on foot and have to cross a road, there is a road guard protocol to block the road.
Intense rush in morning with the rappeling exercise. Everyone learned how to rapel off of a very very high tower. Very unnerving and takes a lot of courage to hang off the edge into free space. 48 Reichert youth walked up the several flights of stairs and 48 made it down to the ground via the rapel tower.
Nightime physical training – the “sand pit.” Which is physical greuling exercise in a sand pit. Former Reichert House staff member and now volunteer and a retire marine sergeant himself led the exercises. Needless to say, extensive laundry is being done tonight by an assigned squad of youth. Hopefully most of the sand will come out.
Sleep deficits even catch up with staff at times. During the very small and short downtimes, all staff members who will remain nameless (but who I will tell anyone who asks) have been seen in semi-comatose states melted into their bunks. If anyone says I was sleeping by the way, they are lying.
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