Destiny Hobday

Dr. Reginald Watson

English 1100-012

05 December 2019

Reflection Paper: My Basic Training Experience

Dear Younger Me,

I would like to tell you a story about our future, it won’t be easy to hear and you’re going

to wonder why we did this in the first place; but no matter what, I want you to go through with it.

On July 13th, 2018 you will enlist in the United States Army as an E-2 Private. You will make a

commitment to the United States Army National Guard for at least the next eight years of my

life. Joining the military hadn’t always been something that you necessarily wanted to do in life

but you really became serious about the idea your junior year of high school. Throughout high

school you will do Junior ROTC and excel at it, and in your senior year you will be the battalion

commander. Since dad is a retired Marine of 17 years, growing up in a military family and

setting, moving from place to place our entire life; you will definitely see the positive and

negative sides to the military lifestyle. Your second semester of your freshman year you had

already registered for the fall semester classes last year and paid for them, so you will do what is

called Delayed Entry Training (DET): meaning that you’ll leave for Basic Combat Training

(BCT) when the fall semester ends. So on January 2nd of 2019, you will leave for BCT and you
weren’t supposed to have returned until around April 16 th, however, you were sent home on

February 14th 2019. You knew what we were supposed to be signing up for when we enlisted, but

we never could have imagined the personal hell and trauma that we were about to be exposed to

for the next month and a half. You learned many different lessons while you were there, the main

two being patience and strength.

The morning before I left to go to BCT, I was somewhat freaking out inside, I was

nervous and I didn’t sleep at all that night, I physically wasn’t able to. My parents and my

youngest brother drove me to the armory in Greenville, where I signed some last minute rights

away and said goodbye to my boyfriend of 3 years, who was also leaving for BCT but at Fort

Jackson, SC. It was a difficult but very short goodbye and very impersonal since our superiors

were standing there watching us. I then went to the airport and said goodbye to my parents; I was

doing an excellent job of keeping myself together, until my little brother hugged me and then I

teared up a bit. The plane rides were about 8 hours or so in total. When we arrived at Fort

Leonard Wood Missouri at one am, everyone on the bus was scared half to death and dead silent,

it was pitch black and about 15 degrees outside. At this point we are parked outside of the

reception building and awaiting further instructions, all of a sudden a very loud, fast paced, angry

drill sergeant appears on the bus and proceeds to scream directives at us. We scramble off the bus

and separate into four different lines and stand there for about 30 minutes. During the first few

days at reception, you sign even more papers and rights away, they give you multiple different

exams, they issue uniforms and gear, and they fail to feed you or give you any sleep. On day

three at reception, I already have all my gear issued, all my rights are signed away and most of

my exams are complete, all except the blood draw. At this point, I am sleep deprived, scared,
close to starving and stressed out. When they went to draw my blood they couldn’t find any

veins at first, it took them about 20 minutes to finally locate a vein and then the blood was barely

coming out of my body, they were barely able to get enough blood to test. However, they decided

that all of these actions combined were cause for concern. On day five at reception, I was in the

transport line and I was cleared to go to my unit. My unit drill sergeants were about seven or

eight people in front of me, checking ID’s and dog tags. When I heard my last name called by the

reception drill sergeants, I hoped I was hearing things but then they called it again and told me to

step out of the line with all of my gear. They called me to the medical pit and informed me that I

have severe anemia and that I am unable to go through BCT. My heart shattered into a million

pieces, I couldn’t control my emotions and I started to cry. They were extremely rude and

uncaring about the situation, which wasn’t surprising to me. They told me to sit outside the med

pit and wait. I had the worst view from there, I watched my entire unit leave and ship out,

without me.

My drill sergeants at reception didn’t tell me anything, not when I’d be leaving, not if I

was going to be discharged from the Army, nothing. They did however make sure that I was put

to good use while I was there, I worked in many different offices and assisted in issuing gear,

transportation of soldiers, assisted in exams, everything. I had to teach other people and get them

ready for shipping out and doing the exact thing that I wanted and was there to do. It was torture,

it was brutal and unkind. I definitely feel that this process taught me patience. I have always been

a very patient person to begin with, but day after day of training and preparing others to achieve

the dreams that I wanted to as well, is the most patient thing I can think of. My drill sergeants

also played this fun game with my emotions where they would tell me that I will talk to
Company Commander (CC) and she will tell me what is going to happen to me, but then tell me

that it got rescheduled or is actually going to be another day. When I finally did hear from the

CC, she informed me that they will be discharging me from the United States Army and the only

way in which I may re-enlist is if my anemia is cured. However, medical professionals don’t

have the slightest clue as to why I am anemic. I was unaware that my heart could break again,

but it sure did, I did a better job of keeping my composure this time though. Then my drill

sergeants played with my emotions some more and would give me dates that I could possibly be

leaving, those days would come and then they’d say ‘oh, you haven’t completed this’ or ‘change

of plans’ or my favorite ‘next time’. Patience is something that is acquired through different

tasks that one may perform in their lives, I can assure you, I have had and used an entire

lifetime’s worth of it.

The next lesson that I learned from this experience is mental strength or perseverance, I

believe that patience and mental strength go hand in hand. Again, training, shaping and preparing

other individuals to go and do the thing that was supposed to be you, is incredibly difficult and

requires an immense amount of strength. You have no idea how incredibly scary it is to be sitting

in a room with 400 other people and feel so alone. I’ve never been one to brag on myself, but I

feel that I have become an amazing person who has been tested in life again and again. I can

remember each time that my drill sergeants would call me down to the office and proceed to tell

me that something else has come up or is going to delay me going home or prolong the process

of my discharge. I can also remember when I hit my breaking point there. I had just received

news that I could call my parents and finally tell them that for the past three weeks I had been

stuck at reception, because as far as my parents knew I was in BCT. They went to give me my
phone so that I could call, and my phone was dead, I told them that it was dead and they said

“well you don’t have time to charge it right now, so you will have to wait till the next time we

allow you to call them”. I went to the latrine, with my battle buddy of course because you can

never have a moment of privacy, but it was just us in there at the time. I remember

uncontrollably crying and punching the countertop of the sink area as hard as I could. I was so

upset, I was having a panic attack; but we didn’t have very long to be in the latrine so I had to

pull myself back together and go back to training others. Another way that I was taught strength,

was by not being able to tell my boyfriend about any of this. Since he was in BCT at the same

time that I was, we were only able to send letters to each other. He would send me letters but

since I was stuck at reception I didn’t have a physical address that he could send them to. So I

was unable to actually read any letters that he wrote to me, but I knew that he was doing well and

was going through BCT, so I would send him letters telling him half-truths about how it was

going with me. I just knew that if I told him what was really happening with my situation, then

he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his own stuff and it would affect him and his training

proformance. I consider that to be an immense amount of strength.

Throughout this experience I have learned two very valuable and hard lessons, patience

and strength. There was only one good thing that came out of me not being able to go through

training, and that is that I was able to surprise my boyfriend and his basic training graduation. He

was so happy to see me that he cried. When I got home from everything, I did go through a

period of depression because I didn’t know exactly where my life was going to go and I wasn’t

sure how I was going to pay for school. Now that I have started up classes again I am doing

better, it is still difficult for me to talk about or be around certain people at times, but overall I am
doing much better than I was.” I am proud of you for enduring the things you did and for

persevering, and for being the biggest supporter of your future boyfriend, even at your worst

moments. Right now in our life, I am still struggling with some daily things; but I hope that

someday we can feel as proud as we should about ourself..