By YM/PFC William Tailor Tualatin Valley (OR) The day before the Overnighter I packed my rucksack without a single idea of what to bring. When packing, I forgot that in the e- mail it said that the items I brought had to fit under my clothes. I packed my rucksack with a 30x36 foot blue tarp, a sack of almonds, a water bottle,a 3 inch S&R knife,a spare shirt, a pair of socks and my guide book.Of all that, I used the almonds, water and the knife. I wore a medium sized grey jacket, jeans, red nat shirt, my cover, socks, boots and gaiters for my boots.By comparison,I heard other Young Marines had 3-6 layers of clothing. Finally the day had come, the Hard Overnighter started. I went to GAF driven by my mother and LCpl Trevor Sill, who asked me if my gear could fit under my clothes. I saw the other Young Ma- rines and Pvt.Krupicka’s mother,asking me if I was wearing more. I said no, and Pvt. Krupicka said in reply soon after that (paraphrasing here) that I was poorly prepared. Without giving us time to stuff our gear under our clothes, we were called into the staffer room to do a safety brief on sur- vival and tried to lengthen it because the weather made it too easy. We were organized into fireteams. Mine was the smallest fireteam. Luckily, my team consisted of PFC Herrick (who has done the overnighter before) and Gunnery Sergeant Sill (who has done it several times). Gunny was late, so PFC Herrick and I did nothing for the first few minutes after being sent out to the woods. When Gunny arrived, he picked a few spots. To his credit the first spot (which was chosen democratically), we chose was much worse than the one he decided on. Initially, we started work- ing on a shelter between two trees. While Gunny was shaping the structure, PFC Herrick and I were gathering resources such as sticks and leaves for it. Upon getting the number of leaves and sticks Gunny asked PFC Herrick whether or not the spot between the two trees could fit all three of us, spontaneously Gunny picked a spot at the end of one of the trees next to a stump which was a little bit elevated. Gunny trashed all the sticks he was just working on and we started all over again. When we were done gathering the sticks,leaves and Herrick’s emer- gency waterproof blanket we put the shelter to- gether, it actually started to look livable. While all this occurred, some of the other fire- team’s shelters made ours look bad. In the end the deals that were made to include us getting a shovel in exchange for water, and the female team got an entire team to help them in ex- change for food. After we were finished doing deals and building all the Young Marines were ordered to gather near the entrance of the for- est. We began singing the Young Marine Hymn and quizzing each other on Young Marine knowl- edge. Eventually night fell, and all the fireteams tried their best to sleep but the conditions in the shelters were so cramped. Not only was it impossible to rest in a comfortable position we were also extremely hungry after working on the shelter for hours. In our shelter PFC Herrick insisted of elbowing all the sensitive parts of my body and lying down on half of it. When we tried to improve our situation, Herrick moved to the opposite side of the shelter. Over the course of the night our team talked a lot, we told that we were the loudest and the other groups could hear us despite being so far away from them. I was the only one with a phone and I was asked to play music off of it and Herrick hung a flash- light over our heads. All of this while freezing, cuddling and with our feet slightly sticking out. During the night we were awoken several times by the adults checking on whether or not we had issues. The criticism that the adults gave our team was that the shelter wasn’t well insulated, so we went out and tried to fix it. In one of these check ups the PFC Kress was having cognitive issues and we were brought inside. We got hot chocolate, debriefed our actions and slept the rest on the night indoors. Since then we have moved bases from there to a CrossFit gym, so I'm not sure how we will be able to do the event this year. I was surprised to see how much knowledge in the briefing actually applied to the event itself. The unit learned a lot this event and it was a valu- able experience. The Overnighter: A Challenging (and Chilly ) YM Event YOUNG MARINES ESPRIT ONLINE 31