Latest Letter from Bradley...

"Dear Family, Hi! How are all of you? Today is my 5-5 Day, just 2 more weeks. I had Gas Chambers today - that really sucked! It was my division and our brother division doing it for a total of 163 people, in a room no bigger than our basement (NOTE from Melissa: It's only a half-basement so not very large). We all had gasmasks on our face. We were in rows of 18 so we got to watch everyone else do it in front of us. I was second to the last row. they would have each row move up to a red line and tell us to take off our masks and hold them up in the air with one hand and cup our other hand under our moths to catch all of the drool and snot that pours out LOL

Let me go back to the beginning. The way they make the gas is on a hot plate, they drop 3 tablets on it (tear gas) and it smokes up real bad, then when there's a big cloud of smoke they turn on the fan to spread it around the room. So, if you're close to the hot plate then you'd get it alot worse than anyone else. I was 4 people away! That's about 7 feet. When I stepped up to the line, my skin started burning all over my head and neck. The instructor told us to take our masks off, and at first it didn't hurt at all, just a slight irritation but all at once it kicked in. My eyes were on fire, like insane amount of pain! I couldn't breathe because I was coughing so much. My eyes were pouring and it felt like my eyes swelled up 3 sizes. We had to stay in there for 40 seconds and we had to say our name and our division number and we had to keep our eyes open or else we had to redo it til we got it right. And keep in mind we had to wait for everyone to do it and some people were messing up. It was bad. I can't describe it but you feel amazing once the effects wear off LOL.

On a serious note, I have this weird rash on my left side, I went to the doctor here and they diagnosed me with shingles. I don't know much about it but they kept calling it a disease but they also said it's nothing to worry about. But I could go blind from it when I'm older and it breaks out around my face. They said it's not typical in young people and mine is bad and only seen in the elderly. IDK, this sucks. As you can tell, I don't know much about it. (NOTE from Melissa-I will be writing to him with more info about shingles and reassure him that he's not going to go blind from it.) They gave me some cream for it and its starting to go away.

But anyways, tonight is my 6-2 day. I'm almost out of this hell hole LOL. All I got left is a PFA test and Battle Stations. So basically I have 5 real days of boot camp left and my RDC's are being nice to us. They joke around with us and give us more freedoms..I gotta go I love you all,
Love Bradley
P.S I went to church"

MB: Wow - our poor recruit! I left out a few gory details about the body fluids from the gas just FYI, for those that thought it was too graphic! We are so excited about his PIR...only 9 days away. We're heading to Great Lakes early to make sure we can sit close and get a good look at him.

The PFA is the Physical Fitness Assessment and they need to pass that to graduate. If they fail, they get sent back 2 weeks and will have to try again. Battle Stations is the final boot camp test. It is a twelve hour long simulation of battles, crises, and ship life. When they're done, they get to trade in their "recruit" hats for real "Navy" hats and are officially able to call themselves "sailors". So, we're almost at the end and I know Bradley is SO ready to move on to A-school. Keep in in your prayers-hopefully he'll breeze past these last 2 weeks!