Dearest Evie,<br/><br/>I can't seem to do anything right, Evie. If something is good enough, it's not fast enough, if it's fast enough, it's not good enough. Just as soon as I learn one rule, I turn around and break another. I am constantly "walking tours." I have to get in my dress uniform and walk at a quick pace with a rifle on my shoulder. I walk about a hundred and fifty yards, turn around and walk back. This is repeated for hours on end. All I do is worry.<br/><br/>Things started out good enough. We have to learn Morse code - all it is is a series of long and short beeps that represent letters. We were supposed to supposed to be able to decipher a hundred characters at five words per minute. I did seven. Only two of us out of a class of eighty did that well.<br/><br/>We have so much to do here, so much more than we did at basic or even classification. I thought there would be a greater emphasis on study, and there is! We go through three chapters a day in our mathematics classes. But there is even more physical training. We have to jump over four foot walls, then slither under chicken wire mesh, then there's a twenty foot wall to climb, then we run on top of logs that zig zag, then we jump in and out of three trenches each five feet deep and come to another twenty foot wall. After that we finish with a mile long cross country track.<br/><br/>We must also stand guard duty. The upperclassmen told us punishment for falling asleep on guard duty is death! Because this is a military base and it's war. I would never let that happen but I always drink extra coffee just in case. We have brass to polish, shoes which must constantly have on them a high shine, even if they are just sitting in our lockers! We even have to scrub our barracks floor no once, no twice but three times a week! Inspections are unbelievably rigorous.  They look for dust in the most ridiculous places.<br/><br/>That's actually where I had my first real big screw up: inspection. It was a Friday afternoon and we were all eager to go out on pass but our barracks orderly saw something...I couldn't tell you what...wrong with my bunk so he ripped the sheets all off and tossed all my belongings out of my locker and foot locker. He found some things wrong with other people too so he confine us to base for the weekend. I still feel like the rest of the guys blame me.<br/><br/>With all the extra duties here and the class work, I am lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night.  When I finally sit down to study I can barely keep my eyes open and I have to go over things again and again just to barely understand them. I took a test the other day and when I left I thought I would get at least a 95%. I ended up with 65%! Careless mistakes, just like Ms.Osborne always used to tell me.  I constantly wonder if I am going to be here at the end, or even next week. Guys a lot smarter than me are dropping out all the time. I continue to do the best I can, I fear my best isn't good enough, but I don't know how to do better than this.<br/><br/>I must sleep now, please write again soon<br/><br/><br/>Always yours,<br/>Jack