I just got a letter (and thus his address) today. He’s a good friend, I want to support him and don’t want to get him in trouble. I know I can’t send food. I know that something nice to send is stamps, so he doesn’t need to buy them, and I tucked a couple in the letter I just dropped in the mail.
Are things I can put in a normal, flat envelope okay? I mean, magazines, comic books, quirky newspaper clippings, cartoons, photos, etc. Playboy and other thematically-similar magazines would, I imagine, be inadvisable to send, but things like Sports Illustrated or Time?
(In case it makes any difference whatsoever, he’s at Fort Benning in Georgia. He also said he now knows what it feels like to “somehow excrete my entire body weight in sweat in a single hour”.)
My understanding of the way basic training works is that This Man’s Army deliberately packs your day from reveille to taps with such a whirlwind round of exciting activities that you literally don’t have time to read. However, it’s possible that This Man’s Army has changed since the last time I looked, and is now a kinder, gentler Infantry Resource Personnel Unit, with time set aside for lounging in the coffee bar, in which case I’d ask him what he wants to read, since you don’t to be in the situation of being the person who sent him the 20th copy of Atlantic Monthly in the barracks. Oh, what they’d give for a People, or even a Star…
I went to basic a little over two years ago and Ft Sill, so my personal experiences may or may not be applicable to your friend. That said food was often times allowed by my drill sergeants as long as it was shared with the whole platoon. Other than food and personal letters there was little else that was really useful. If he has any particular toiletry type items that he can’t find at the shoppete you could buy them and send them to him. As Duck Duck Goose said there isn’t really any time for reading, and I think magazines and the like would be confiscated in any case.
Army Recruiter chiming in here, send him letters. Doesn’t matter how mundane they are. He will love to read them. Send him sports clippings from his favorite sport or team. He really won’t have time to read the full paper. Send him a long distance phone card. He should be allowed to call home once a week, and the phone card will make it easier for him to do so. Maybe send him some tasteful pictures.
Food, even the Crystal Lite will probably be taken from him. Send him greeting cards, but not playing cards, dice, or anything that could possibly be used for gambling. Be positive in all your contacts with him, in letters or when he calls. He will be tired and stressed out at first, but he will come to enjoy the experience. Be encouraging.
I wish him the best. Any specific questions, you can PM me.
Mail. What he will want more than anything else is mail. Anything, everything…just to know that there is still an outside world that isn’t controlled by the Army will do him best.
Apart from reminding him that there really is a world outside of BT,let him know just how proud of him everybody is and that it WILL end in a little while.
I’d be wary of the love bit as during low points it will make him feel worse and might possibly go over the wall only to regret it as soon as…plus it doesn’t help with the homesickness.
I’ve never had the pleasure of basic training, but from my impressions from friends and documentaries, it may take a while before a person will “come to enjoy the experience.” About how long does it take before someone wants to go back and do it again?
about a year or two, in my experience.
Not that I’d actually want to do it again, but you do retain fond memories, and forget the bad ones, quickly enough that you can honestly and genuinely recommend it as an all-round good experience.
Stamps are also welcome, in the experience of someone near and very dear to me.
But write letters. Lots of letters. As long as you can manage. The person of whom I am thinking described getting letters from home as the highlight of his day.
Graduate of the Air Force Basic Military Training program at Lackland AFB (320th Training Squadron, Can’t Stop The Rock! Heh.), dunno how different Army is from Air Force, but for us, the rule was no food, no toys, no porn. As others have said, the best thing you can send is letters from home, letting them know there is an outside world that still cares about them.
Heh, a girl I talked to only on the internet ended up becoming my pen pal while I was in Basic. She wrote me more often than my mom did.
By far the coolest thing I got while in Basic was a full-page hand-drawn image of a dragon done by my ex-girlfriend (we parted on pretty good terms). Right now it is stuck up on the inside of my wall locker in my dorm.
They must still do that, because yesterday we went to the Fort Jackson Torchlight Tattoo and had to seek shelter under the bleachers because of a giant thunderstorm (and rumored tornado) - there was us and around a thousand baby soldiers, who mostly seemed kind of happy about the free time. It was pretty obvious that just being allowed to mill around was quite the novel experience. And then they got all formed up and started yelling a lot of things at each other - one assumes it was all to keep them busy.
Somebody who was leading one group in a cadence got dragged down with a “Not around the civilians!”, we noted. Must have been a good one.
Hehe, the flight I graduated with, whenever we marched or ran anywhere in formation, he had very conventional jodies (There was a variation of Captain Jack, Momma Momma Can’t You See, When My Grandma Was 91, and of course the one that goes “Gimme more… PT! Good for you… Good for me!”).
The day before we graudated, we had the Airman’s Run, where all of the graduating flights go on a leisurely mile and a half run in our squadron t-shirts and parade past all of the families coming to visit their newly graduated airmen. Anyhow, we’re doing this, and right when we get to where the families are, our sergeant breaks out all the “bad” jodies, the ones that talk about blood making the grass grow, bodies everywhere, and napalm sticking to somethingorother.
Once we were out of earshot, he switched back to the normal jodies. :rolleyes:
When I was in JROTC, there were jodies which were infamous because they were banned, such as “Sniper’s Wonderland”. There were also ones which were banned because people were jerks and didn’t like them, such as the Brady Bunch theme and “Doo-Wah-Ditty”
Thanks, but I think I’d like to live to see another birthday. The closest I can come to anything like basic training would be football practices, and I still hate those. I liked the games, but practices - no. Especially two-a-days.
The 192nd, if his unit is what precedes 'BDE" in his address.
No playing cards, but I will send him some greeting cards and possibly a phone card. Also, I believe I’ve found a use for pages from the stunningly awful joke-a-day calendar an aunt gave me.
Another vote here for your letters alone will be enough to make his day.
Probably the best thing I ever got in any of my Navy days care packages was when a girl I knew included a couple of fall leaves for me. Little things, showing that you’re thinking of him, will mean more than anything else.
I sent a colleague who is going through Basic training, two blank postcards. On the first, I wrote on one side of it “PV1 ______, Is it REALLY true that when you’re dropped you’re laughing on the inside?” On the second postcard, I wrote “PV1 ______, Can you really do more push-ups than your Drill Instructors?”
None of these postcards resulted in extra push-ups/PT. In fact, the DI’s were amused by the postcards. The Army is getting soft, I tells ya!
