Back in Action - Sapper Yu

Hello all! Well with the blink of an eye it's been 6+ weeks, and I am now a qualified combat engineer (a Sapper as we call it). Without a doubt, this course was much harder than my last one. It was so much more demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally. I barely know where to start describing my QL3.

I can say that is was daily struggle to maintain a balance between mental stabiliy and emotional sanity. I woke up everymorning dreaming it was TO only to open my eyes to see nothing but green. To wake up in the freezing cold morning at 5am to get ready for physical training takes a LOT of motivation. The long hours and lack of sleep also takes its toll on you as your body degeneragtes and you mind follows suit. Ugh....just thinking about it is rough. A lot of times homesickness, lonliness, and boredome add to this burden and it leaves many of the soldiers no choice but to drink away their problems or punch someone out. Half way though the course, we bagan our demolitions training, and if anything was worse than blowing yourself up, it was falling asleep during demo class. They made you PAY. So on top of everything now half of us (including myself) were on caffine pills to stay awake (but for me they only neutrallized the drowsiness my ibuprofin pills caused. I needed to keep my knee from exploding). I don't really know how to end this section. I'll just say that at the end of 6 weeks many of us wanted to fight each other and if this course were 7 weeks long, there definately would have been some brawls.

Physically, this was definately the most challening course for me, and I think I can safely say it's the most physically challening thing I've ever done in my entire life. I realized that in the army they have no need for strong or fast soldiers, they need robust soldiers. Soldiers that can wake up at 5am, workout, spend a day doing exhaustive training, sleep for 4 hours, and do it again and again for 6 weeks. There were days where I did 400-500 push ups a day (I called those weekdays), and there were days where I ran till I puked, but heck, that's what I joined for right? LOL...
In Gagetown you can pretty much find chin up bars on every single building and plently of open areas for pushups. I think I got in better shape...not really sure tho...I feel stronger but after you minus the injuries, I think I'm about the same. LOL...