Kristie's Letter, Dated July 31, 2009

Kristie has been at Fort Leonard Wood for a month now. I have to admit the first couple of weeks were very rough for me. I miss her a lot. Even now it doesn't take much to bring a tear to my eye just thinking about her. This last week (July 27 through 31) a lot of bad stuff was happening to her that was not very pleasant. Kristie's honesty and strength sure prevailed in the situation based on the actions that were taken. There is more information in her letter. Here it is:

Hey Mom,

Well I thought I'd give you an update on life in the army. We have had BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) for the last week. I want expert so bad!! Whoever gets expert, which is 36 out of 40 shots we get to wear a pin for graduation. That would be awesome!

Tomorrow we go to the range for a practice quality: Like we will shoot 10 rounds in kneeling supported, 10 kneeling unsupported and 20 in prone supported. We shot targets from 50m to 300 meters away. I'm really good at my "fundamentals" which is grouping the shots. The four fundamentals are breathing, aiming, steady position, and trigger squeeze. If any of these are off we will usually get told that we suck and need to fix ourselves. LOL.

I'm definitely used to the yelling now. A new company just came in on Friday so I hear them getting yelled at...a lot! It's a good feeling knowing we have passed that stage. We moved to White Phase today which means we can ride trans to church and the doctors and stuff, more freedom pretty much. We have been in red phase. Also in white phase we don't have mass smoking so if someone screws up they get in trouble instead of the whole platoon in trouble.

Well I'm going to let you know some bad news :(. You know how I got in a fight with that one girl and I said I'd kill the bitch? Well someone...put bleach in her water canteen. I had to go talk to the company commander and everything today. If my name comes up one more time I get a dishonorable discharge. She told everyone that I did it on my fireguard shift and came up with this whole story. It was really bad. Good thing everyone, well almost everyone knows I'm not the type to do something like that. All the females had to write sworn statements, the whole shabang. Drill sargeant Lam really likes me so he stood up for me a lot. I think we get our phones on Sunday so I will tell you more about it then but it's past lights out so I'm going to bed. I'm tired, had a long stressful day.

Thanks for the letters. I love reading them!

Love Your Army Guard Daughter PV2 Johnson

The outcome of the bleach in the canteen is that the girl was transferred out of the platoon. When I talked to her on Sunday, she sounded tired and exhausted. I'm sure it's part physical tired and part mentally tired. I was a nervous wreck when she told me about what went on that week. It was horrible.

I would encourage all of you to write her. She misses everyone and truly loves receiving letters from you. The address is on this blog spot.