Florida!

It's been a while since I posted; business as usual. I finished IFS up in Manassas and promptly packed up my life and drove to Pensacola. I had orders to leave Quantico on July 13th but I actually pulled out with my enormous Budget truck the next day around noon. I decided that to save money on hotels that I would instead drive straight to Pensacola, a nearly 1,000 mile drive. I downloaded some audiobooks to my iPod and set out. It started out pretty slow until I realized that the truck was perfectly capable of driving 75 with the car trailer behind it (that was where the governor kicked in, probably a good thing). I stopped for dinner in Knoxville, TN around 10:30; the half-way point. Things got a little weird after this. I had started to get tired around 9 but figured I would be fine until dinner, which should wake me up as well. Well anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of tobacco products, but I went with the suggestion of a friend and bought a tin of Skoal Citrus pouches and whoa, that worked. Buzzing like a mad man, I finally pulled into my apartment in Pensacola just as the sun was rising at 6:30 am. After 18 straight hours of driving I grabbed my bag and proceeded to pass out on the floor of my new apartment for about 5 hours before hitting the beach for the first time. That night we unloaded the truck, pouring sweat in the humidity.

Since July 15th I've been living here in Pensacola, not doing a whole lot. I check in every morning on base in uniform for a quick role call before hitting the gym. From there on the day is mine and I've filled it with getting appointments completed that are required to start flight school (flight physical, legal, getting measured for flight suits, etc...). I will be taking leave again from August 20-30 to go home for Bruce and Luke's weddings, which I'm standing up in. After I get back it looks like I'll be doing a whole lot of nothing until I flight school, which is supposedly going to be some time in February. There's a possibility that I might get a "stash job", working in an office somewhere, but that's not very likely, at least for the immediate future.

In other news, I adopted a puppy from the local animal shelter. He's somewhere between 1 and 2 years-old and is a mix between a golden retriever and a black lab. I named him Henry Jones Kuhnmuench to keep up with my string of Harrison Ford-related pet names. Henry is extremely well-behaved, a little too well behaved actually. I think he may have been abused by his previous owners (a lot of the signs are there, not to get too specific) and I'm still trying to draw out his inner puppy, of which I've seen flashes of, especially around Joe's two dogs. He was pretty skinny when I got him, but a diet of a canned dog food and gratuitous numbers of treats seem to be working to pack on the pounds.

Well that's all I can think of for now, hopefully updates will follow soon!

To all of my long-lost readers...

I'm fully aware of how long it has been since I last updated this, and for that I apologize to anyone who may have been waiting with breath held for my next post. I don't have a lot of time to go over everything that has happened since my last post, so I'll give a quick overview of my life since March. Following the completion of FEX-3 was our very short Convoy FEX, which involved us running mock convoys using real Humvee gun trucks and 7-Tons (made in Wisconsin!) and being hit by simulated IED's and ambushes. The highlight of this FEX was my Humvee being stuck in a mud-filled field for a couple hours due to the frantic gesturing of a certain roommate of mine's gunner... After Convoy came the culmination and my favorite part of TBS: MOUT.

MOUT stands for Military Operations in Urban Terrain, basically everything we're currently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent 6 days in a mock-town, complete with multiple-story concrete buildings designed to simulate real building layouts such as hotels, banks and more. We traded in the upper receivers from our M16's (this part runs from the rear sight to the barrel and includes the bolt and chamber) for shortened ones that were chambered for 9mm simulator rounds. Imagine the same results of paintball, with all the pain of a round using an actual charge... Once the adrenalin got going, however, it was easy to ignore the sting of being hit in the hand or leg. We wore high-coverage paintball masks and practiced giving and receiving orders in the MOUT environment, which ended in us fighting each other inside and out of the buildings using the sim rounds. I don't thing I've ever had more fun in my life. The week ended with us at the FBI academy's urban simulator, known as Hogan's Alley. This is a realistic city, complete with actors playing the villagers and fully-stocked shelves in the stores. Here we conducted a full urban patrol, complete with more ambushes, IED's and vehicle and house searches. Awesome.

After MOUT, TBS really began to wind down. The last and easiest FEX was AMFEX, or Amphibious Operations Familiarization Exercise. AMFEX involved us getting on charter buses and riding down to Norfolk Naval Base, the largest Naval Base in the world. We spent two days there touring amphibious ships and watching demonstrations of landing craft and other Navy-related things that I really can't remember right now. The importance behind AMFEX is that the Marines are historically an amphibious force; it's in the National Security Act of 1947 as well as naturally suiting as the sister service to the Navy. Lately we've gotten away from our amphibious training, leaving us extremely weak in that area (thank you, Iraq). The Commandant has since decided that we need to "return to our amphibious roots", starting with new Lt's getting formal instruction that the officer corps has been missing over the last 8 years.

TBS ended with Mess Night, which deserves a post of it's own, followed by a week of out-processing and finally came Warrior Day (Family Day) and then graduation. My brother and parents came out for 5 days, including Warrior Day and were able to see a lot of the weaponry and machines that the Marines use, as well as getting a chance to fire M16's and M203 grenade launchers. Obviously they also got the all-encompassing tour of TBS by myself.

Since graduation I have been living off base in an apartment (heaven) with a friend of mine from 2nd Platoon. I've been waiting around the Quantico area for the last 3 weeks before starting Introductory Flight Screening (IFS) on Monday. IFS is civilian flight school with all of the tests and classes and none of the certifications usually granted to people completing it (we'll be about 10 hours short of our private pilot licenses at the end). I've been in ground school all week and have my first exam tomorrow, which should clear me to start flying with an instructor next week! I'll attempt to get some more updates here now that I've finally sat down and started again. Take care!

FEX III - Monday

FEX 3 was last week, so I'll try to get this one out while it's still fresh in my memory. FEX 3 was a 5-day, 4-night field exercise that ran from last Monday to Friday. I'll try to break it down by day since they all had their own highlights and events.

Monday:

Monday we were up at 4:30 to grab mandatory breakfast before leaving for the field. I already had my gear ready so this managed to be fairly relaxing. I powered through my fake eggs and bagel and headed back to my room to apply camo paint to my face and wait for 0615 to roll around. My fireteam was the last group out due to us being tasked with sweeping and mopping the hallway before we left. As we were doing that, my roommate gestured for me to come down to his end of the hallway. I was annoyed at first, but I went down there and lo and behold, there was the Commandant of the Marine Corps in the meeting area. I quickly went back to work in the hopes that he wouldn't decide to come talk to us and see the the Texas Tech-themed face paint I had put on, or my roommate's Joker theme. We got out to the LZ last, just in time for the safety brief. After that we met up with our instructors and proceeded to the terrain model where the Lt with the first tactical billet gave us his order. We would be in the defense the first two days, oriented West in a blocking position against the Centralian Revolutionary Forces. (All of our orders take place in "Centralia" against the "CRF" who are played by the instructors, it's kinda silly.) After debriefing the order, we got on trucks and headed out to our training area for the week. It had been raining for several days before this, so the LZ we were dropped off at was pure mud, draining my hopes for a dry, warm week. The student platoon commander set off on his recon of his defense site, leaving us to rehearse the occupation plan, among other things. He returned around 1300 and we got ready to move our selves and our packs the 400 meters or so into the woods. We got to the site and dropped our packs, then assumed a silent security halt for 15 minutes while our positions were checked. The guy I was sharing a hole with and I had picked a nice spot where someone had previously dug a hole, hoping to save us some work, but it was not to be. Instead, we were placed between two large trees, again dashing my hopes for easy digging. Finally we were set and we started digging in. I was on the far right flank of our defense and was not part of the main effort, meaning that I c0uld be called away at any time for any number of tasks, such as security patrols forwards of our lines, digging alternate fighting positions, or sitting at the Listening/Observation Post (LP/OP). Knowing this, I dug furiously, trying to get as deep as I could before being called away. I managed to avoid most other tasks for the afternoon, getting to about knee-deep in the root-infested ground. At about 1900 the word came down that I would be going on the next patrol. Just as we set out, it started raining again, and we decided that speed was the most important thing to accomplish on our patrol. I got back to the defense fairly wet, but warm from the hiking. It was now dark and I settled back into my hole for a night of intermittent sleep and security watches. The rain had other ideas, however, and continued to fall as I continued to get colder and colder. The low point came during my 3-hour sleep period when I realized that I was too cold to sleep and just gave up, sitting in the mud and dark, waiting for Tuesday morning to come. Monday was definitely not the best day I had out there, and thankfully Tuesday went a lot better. More to follow on that...

It's been a while

It's been a long couple of weeks here since I last updated this, so this might get a little long, please bear with me. Last week's highlight was our Call For Fire Field Exercise. We've been learning about calling for indirect fire, a tenet of the Marine Corps Warfighting philosophy; using direct and indirect fire weapons to place the enemy in a combined arms dilemma. Basically this means shooting at him with our rifles, forcing him to hide, then hitting him with something like a grenade launcher or mortar fire; a lose-lose situation for the enemy. The field exercise for this was awesome. The week prior we had practiced using a computer simulation and then in the field next to the barracks using actual mortars. These mortars were hooked up to compressed air and basically shot lawn darts at little metal tanks to simulate mortar fire. Sounds like a great game at the family barbecue... The FEX involved us heading out one of the ranges on a cold, rainy day. There were 3 stations, the first of which being an EPW handling and search technique station, to hammer out some stuff we learned in class. This gave us the opportunity to hide fake weapons on our persons and then practice searching people like we would at a checkpoint. It was definitely fun tackling people in the mud when we did find the weapons. After this we headed a couple miles down the road where they had set up an artillery gun line with 3 155mm Howtizers and a Fire Direction Center (FDC). This was awesome; the guns shook the ground every time they fired (the rounds landed back at the range we started at, which was filled with old tanks and the like for us to target). Several people got to pull the lanyard to fire the howitzers, I was next in line when the fire mission ended, so that was a bummer. After hanging out here and observing for an hour or so, we headed back to the start point for our turn on the radios. Using our maps to pinpoint targets in the field, we got on the radio and used the proper format to call for fire. To our left was a couple of 60mm mortar tubes that were also firing into the field, and these are what I got to talk to. Using callsign "beefhammer" (we were given some leeway with this, obviously), I called for fire on a group of rusted APCs. I registered a direct hit and ended the mission with "2 APCs destroyed, est. 8 casualties". We were supposed to get a demonstration of Close Air Support, but due to the poor weather, this was cancelled. The group that went the next day though had a Cobra and a Huey fly in and fire rockets and miniguns at the tanks...bastards. Final Land Nav was that week also and quite frankly I don't want to talk about it; I did well, but it wasn't pretty. One other note was that I got called out to brief an operations order in class and knocked it out in front of Col Smith, CO of TBS; pretty good feeling.

Last week was FEX 2, a three day platoon exercise. This is the next step up from the squad tactics we had been learning. We woke up early Monday morning and headed out to the LZ for our op order. The first day we were operating as a platoon in the offense, with the other half of the company in the defense. We got our order and then boarded helos (CH-53's again!) for our insertion into our AO. We immediately went tactical after landing, dropping our packs and grabbing our assault gear before punching out into the woods. I was part of the Support by Fire element, we would break off from the platoon and move into a separate position where we could fire on the enemy in order to fix him in place while the main element attacked the flank. We got to within 400 yards of our enemy and took a long security halt so that our platoon commander could conduct a recon of the enemy position. He returned and my squad set off on our own route. As we came up the hill I spotted the enemy at the top in a clearing and we immediately started firing. The enemy returned fire and we went back and forth, them in the clearing and us down the hill, hiding and moving behind fallen trees. After a couple minutes of this, we saw the assault element moving up the hill from the side. This is where the plan's faults came to light as we watched the main element attempt to assault up a steep hill under enemy fire, as we were ordered to cease fire. They took the objective successfully, however I'm sure with many casualties had it been for real. We gathered at the top of the hill as a platoon and debriefed with our instructors, who went over the high and low points of the attack. We then switched to a new platoon commander and set in security while he prepared and set out on his own recon mission. This time we would be attacking one of the other platoons' defensive positions instead of a group of instructors. This would be a test for both our platoon commander and the other platoon's commander in the defense. Our platoon commander returned and we got our order. This time I was in the main element and we would be attacking the defender's flank. Our plt co had seen the enemy defense and had set us up to be attacking almost from behind. However, when we got there, the other platoon had messed with the markings that our plt co had set up, so we ended up attacking almost straight into thei defense. To say that it didn't go well would be an understatement; at one point I was baseball-sliding down a steep hill and then attempting to sprint up the next one, all while staring the other platoon in the face. Thankfully we were only using blanks so I wasn't actually killed, and we did manage to "defeat" their defense, but mainly because they were ordered to stop firing when we got close. I attempted to take a friend from the platoon prisoner and that was pretty funny, so it wasn't all bad. After we consolidated it was the same deal as the last one and we switched to a new plt co again. This time I was selected to go with on the leader's recon and I would be left behind near the enemy as a guide for when the platoon showed up to attack them from behind. It was now sunset and by the time the platoon showed up 2 hours later it was pitch black and we had switched on our night vision. I attempted to guide the platoon through thick brush in the dark to the enemy position, which took forever. We finally got to our assault position and the platoon took off towards them. Thankfully, I was left behind again to join the reserve unit, so I didn't have to attempt to assault the enemy in the dark, stumbling and tripping like everyone else. Again, we "successfully" defeated the squad of instructors, got our debrief and then headed back to the LZ for the night. We set in a defensive circle for the night with 25% security. I had 3rd watch and used the opportunity to heat an MRE and get some food while manning the SAW.

The next day we packed up and switched to the defensive mode. We got our order and at about 10 we set off to occupy our defensive position. We had an Israeli camera crew following us for the day, filming god-knows-what. I found them to be an annoyance as the guy in the bright red jacket kept walking everywhere while we were attempting to be sneaky...jackass. They interviewed some of us, although I'm a little curious as to why they picked who they did to interview. Our Captain told us that he wasn't sure of their motives either, but what can you do? I was in the main effort of the defense, so thankfully I wasn't tasked with digging extra holes like many of my friends, or patrolling, but digging one hole was enough for me. By night-fall I had a knee-deep fighting position for two guys, complete with sandbags and camouflage. About mid-afternoon we had been attacked by one of the other platoons, but whoever their plt co was did a horrendous job and I never got to fire my rifle. I did throw some friction into their mix however by yelling random things during their consolidation phase as they attempted to get accountability. Their Captain thought it was pretty funny, so I kept it up. That night our plt co decided for whatever reason that he wanted us at 50% security all night, so sleep was short and painful. Much of this was also due to our Captain, who decided to randomly throw artillery sims at us throughout the night, forcing us to go to 100% security for a half-hour every time he did. I'm sure he thought it was great fun, but it was cold as hell out, so the humor was lost on me. We also got "attacked" by one of our own patrols in the middle of the night (the Captain told them to do this, and I suspected this would happen at some point), which was a good chance to fire off the rest of my blanks. The next morning finally came and we filled in our holes, debriefed, and headed back to the LZ for our glorious truck ride back to TBS.

This week was a very slow week, much due to the massive snowstorm that hit us on Monday. The base was openned late on Monday, so most of our scheduled events were cancelled, including final night land nav. We had a couple slow day of classes, the highlight of which was getting our familiarization classes with the M2 .50 Caliber machine gun, M240B machine gun, and MK19 automatic grenade launcher. We get to shoot all of these next thursday, which I'm obviously pumped about. We had a live-fire range on Thursday, practicing the platoon attack with support by fire again, this time shooting at targets. The snow added a nice twist to this as it had warmed up and turned the field we were using into a massive soup of 6 inch-deep mud. We ran through the range 4 times that day, which was exhausting. Friday we had another slow day as our 12 mile hike was cancelled. We did get to watch "Taking Chance", which was pretty good. Kevin Bacon's good in that movie and the subject is one that doesn't get a lot of media attention. Check it out if you can, it's an HBO original movie, so I'm sure you'd have to watch it on there for now. That's about all that I can remember for now, I'll try to post more frequently over the next couple of weeks. FEX 3 is coming up the week after next, a 5-day field event that's basically the same as FEX 2, just extended. I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about after that one...

Gods and Generals

Apparently having beers with Colonels on Thursday night wasn't enough for God, who decided to mix things up on me last night. Myself and two friends decided to go the Globe & Laurel restaurant, owned and operated by a retired Marine Corps Officer. Major Rick Spooner, the owner, served active duty for 30 years (starting in 1942) before retiring and starting the business.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_T._Spooner

One of the attractions to the restaurant is Major Spooner himself, who takes the opportunity to walk around to every table during the evening, introducing himself and telling war stories. During our meal he stopped by once and chatted briefly, before moving on. After the delicious meal (I had the "Semper Fi Steak"), we were sitting at the table talking, waiting for our checks when the Major stopped back. He asked us if we were at TBS (a good catch by the Major) and then proceeded to ask us if we would join him down in the Wardroom for a beer after dinner. Well having heard the stories of this place, this was not an opportunity to pass up, so we went back to the Wardroom. This place was awesome; it was a small room with a full bar on one side and couches and a recliner on the other side. The Major poured us a drink and we proceeded to the couches, him in the chair, where we listened to the old Marine tell us about his career and ask us about ours. After the Major had made us all feel like less of a man (having cable and internet in our rooms is a huge step up from the dirt-floored huts they lived in when he went through TBS), one of the waitresses stopped in and told the Major (the staff all refer to him as "The Major" as well) that "the General was leaving". All of our ears naturally perked up at this and everyone's back got a little straighter. The Major tells her that the General should stop down for a drink or he would half to yell at him. She says that she thinks he may have left. Wrong. Three minutes later, in walks our Commanding General for MCCDC, the same man I spent 30 minutes hiding from in the PX last time I was there. I am immediately kicking myself for not being dressed better, and immensely relieved that I decided to shave before we went out. Introductions are passed within the two groups and we settle back in to talk. Obviously, I was sitting on the couch closest to the Major before, with my two friends to my left, so where does the General sit? You betya, right next to me. We talked for a good while, probably about an hour. We listened to their stories of TBS and the Marine Corps, and we told them about ourselves and our limited experiences. The only trip-up came when the General stopped us and goes "Ok, quiz time". "Oh great" we all think, and he proceeds to ask us in what battle did Lt Hawkins (the man the bar in our barracks is named after) get his Medal of Honor. The quiet was so deep I could hear conversations in the main part of the restaurant. I can see Hawkins' face in my mind so after a couple wrong guesses I throw out this gem "I remember that he had a sweet mustache, sir." Apparently not as funny as I thought it would be, but we moved on and the General didn't seem to hold it against me. Finally the evening wrapped up and we said good night to everyone, with promises that we would return soon.

I still can't stop hoping that I didn't look like a jackass in front of the General; hopefully he's more forgiving than I am. Looking at the natural progression in chain of command from Field Grade to General Officers in a 2-day span, I wouldn't be surprised if I somehow knocked back shots with the Secretary of Defense tomorrow night. All together, it was an awesome evening, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you're ever in the Quantico area, I definitely recommend you stop in to the Globe & Laurel and talk to the Major. You won't be disappointed.

Motivation

I more wanted to write this down for myself than any other reason, but tonight just gave me the shot of motivation that I was looking for. Tonight, all of the air contracts (future pilots like myself) got a chance to meet a reserve General and his review board staff, a group of reserve Colonels and Lt Colonels. Up until now there's been a bit of a disconnect between the senior officers and us lieutenants, but tonight was sort of a breaking down of barriers. Having a beer shoved in your hand by a Colonel who happens to be an F-18 pilot is a huge gesture, let alone getting a chance to sit down and talk with him, man to man. The biggest thing that struck me was that these guys truly, deeply, love their jobs. Albeit they aren't all currently active-duty Marines, but the men I talked to all stated that they loved what they do so much that they would do it for free. All of these guys had cool civilian jobs as well, one of them being a producer on CSI: Miami, and this season of Heroes, and then flying things like attack helicopters on the weekends. Awesome.

GAS! GAS! GAS!

Just a quick update, CS gas is fun stuff! But not really... Anyways, we were issued our M40 FPM gas masks the other day and today was our first chance to use them. We got issued MOPP suits which are charcoal-lined utility chemical suits designed for combat use (ask anyone who's worn one in the desert if they agree with that statement). On a cold day like today they were nice and toasty, however highly ineffective due to their repeated washing (water ruins the charcoal). The point of us being issued them was based on a nice story that the sergeant running the classes told us. Apparently he told an earlier company that he thought it was funny to go in the gas chamber and then go 'crop dust' the PX (base store). The CS gas clings to clothing, skin and hair, so he would walk in and shake off and watch the effects. Well the company that he was telling this story to decided it would be funny to all walk into our barracks Subway and do the same. This ended not so well as they gassed the girl behind the counter to the point that the gas/she ruined the food as she experienced the typical symptoms: runny nose (more like pouring), coughing, watery eyes, and sometimes vomiting. Thanks to those Lt's, we now all wear the suits into the chamber to reduce the amount of gas on our clothing.

A quick rundown on what the gas chamber is like: we don our protective suits and masks and do a quick check on our masks to ensure a proper seal. We then proceed into the chamber, which resembles a European spa, in a sick way. Through the cloudy interior we could see the instructors running a small camp stove in the center with CS pellets, pumping out smoke. We then do a 3-part test, taking off our masks further off every time and putting them back on and clearing them, ending with us taking them completely off and putting them back on again. At the end was the "Trail of Tears", which involved taking our masks off, putting them away, and then doing a lap inside the chamber before pouring outside into fresh air. I kept my eyes closed and my breath held until I reached the last wall when I lost it, breathing in a lung full of the gas. I tried to stop coughing, but the damage was done. I hit the fresh air and stood off to the side, snot, tears and spit running down my face. Laughing like only crazy people would, we poured water in our eyes and slowly the gas faded and we felt fine again. Looking back now, it's really funny and I can only imagine the joys that the instructors get every time they watch that.

AMBUSH IS KILLING AND KILLING IS FUN!!!

"AMBUSH IS KILLING AND KILLING IS FUN!"
"AMBUSH IS KILLING AND KILLING IS FUN!"
"AMBUSH IS KILLING AND KILLING IS FUN!"

We shouted during our Ambush Patrol class, following a movie clip of Marines doing the same thing. Taught by a group of highly motivated Captains who frequently donned combat gear and face paint to teach us (out of the ordinary, even for the Marines), this class and the other patrolling classes were meant to get us fired up and thinking about everything that goes into a good patrol. The mantra "A Marine squad that can patrol well, can do anything well" has been repeated several times over the last two weeks and it's true. Whether it's Iraq or Afghanistan, patrolling is the simplest and most often-used tactical exercise, as well as one of the most dangerous ones. With our combat orders we were forced to take it up a notch, planning every detail of our routes and actions at every stop. While we usually won't be the ones leading the patrol as officers, it's equally or more important for us to understand everything that goes into patrolling (reconnaissance or security) to keep our Marines safe and support them as best we can.

Monday morning was our first day of patrol (not counting the practice runs we did last week). We stepped off early in the morning to our practice zone for a quick gear check and safety speech. From there we took buses out to the landing zone (LZ) where we got our orders from the patrol leader (PL) for the day (a student tactical billet). I've gotta say that our terrain model that our PL used for his brief rocked; we went out on Sunday before the Super Bowl and built it, complete with little "trees" (branches with leaves on them) that I placed throughout the model. After this we did some station training, with our instructors running us through different procedures used in patrolling, ie. reentering friendly lines, exiting friendly lines, crossing danger areas, forward unit coordination (or FUC, giggle) and command coordination. After what felt like an eternity, we finally got permission to depart friendly lines and stepped off on our patrol. We moved in a tactical column and I was one of the flank securities, so I walked about 100-150 meters away from the main unit, watching for enemy units (the other squads out there). Our patrol leader did a good job of moving us around terrain features to avoid skylining ourselves on a hill or something. This took us a bit off our planned route, however, and the enemy contact that our instructors were counting on didn't happen. Contact in this case involves seeing or hearing another squad (or if you're unlucky, getting ambushed) and then simulating an attack using blank rounds and artillery simulators (grenades that make a whistle and then a loud boom to mimic indirect fire). Finally at the end of the day/patrol we camped out on a hill and waited for a squad to pass us by (our instructor had coordinated it with their instructor). When we finally saw them we opened up on them, hoping to use up the last of our blank rounds. It was pretty cool until our instructor threw an arty sim at us and we had to take cover and then flee to the thicker woods to avoid being "shelled". We then regrouped, debriefed and headed back to the LZ to take buses back to TBS.

A CH-53E Super Stallion doing something obviously cool

Tuesday was a day in garrison, basically resting for yesterday, our Day/Night Ambush Patrol FEX. The day started out similarly, with us heading out to the LZ next to the barracks to prep and get our orders for the day. It was a cold, windy morning, making the order-giving process a little difficult. All of that was forgotten, however, the second the helicopters started to land. My first taste of the free world's largest combat helicopter landing 100 yards away from me left me awestruck until the dust cloud hit me in the face at full force, stinging and forcing me to turn away. Time after time, the big CH-53E Super Stallion (a quick caveat, this is the helicopter from the beginning of Transformers that attacks the base) helicopters from HMX-1 landed in the LZ, picking up squads to take them to their respective LZs for the day's patrols. My squad, A1C (Alpha-One-Charlie) was the very last to go, and when our bird landed, I completely forgot about the cold. We raced out to the helicopter, rifles in one hand, packs slung over the shoulder, heads low and boarded as fast as we could. I have to say that until now I felt like I was just playing "soldier", but this was legit. I buckled myself in (an extremely difficult task in full combat gear), and settled in for the ride, heart racing. The pilot took off low and fast, simulating a combat environment. This also meant that he flew low to the ground (only a couple hundred meters up), and took several evasive turns, leaving us in the back at a 45 deg angle, feeling like we were going to fall out of our chairs and land across the aisle in the lap of the Marine across from us. After what felt like a heartbeat, we touched down for the day. When the "1 minute" sign had been passed, I took off my lap belt and the second the helo hit the deck and the ramp dropped, I was out and running to the woods at the far side of the LZ. As we regrouped and the helo took off, we were left in what felt like complete silence. Being 'tactical' now, we weren't allowed to talk, using only hand and arm signals to communicate. We immediately set out on our patrol, heading south through the forest to our first checkpoint. This time around I was the point man for the assault unit. We had only a short time for our first patrol before we needed to start the process for the night ambush, so we were forced to shorten our route, bringing us into contact with two squads simultaneously at a small creek. The creek being a danger area, the security unit was the only one across (4 men) and when I looked across and saw them giving the sign for enemy spotted, my first thought was that we needed to get across as fast as we could to help them out. Apparently I was the only one paying attention, however, and by the time our PL and his staff realized what was happening, blank rounds were going off and we were forced to charge across the creek in open view of the enemy to try and reinforce our forward unit. We received a "break contact" command, ordering us to peel off to the left where our flank was being attacked by another unit. This is supposed to be a "fire and movement" maneuver, with one Marine covering the other one as they leap-frog away from the enemy. Apparently I was the only one who remembered this during the "battle", so imagine my surprise when I turned around from covering my unit to see them a 100 yards away, facing the other direction. I hope had that happened in real life they'd put me in for a Medal of Honor for giving my life for them, because I'm pretty sure I would have been dead at that point. After that engagement, which my squad 'lost', we got a quick debrief from our instructors and moved on to our next LZ to prep for the night patrol.

We spent a couple hours at the next LZ (LZ Martin) building a terrain model, getting some food in us, putting on warmer gear and getting our order for the night from our new PL. After some quick rehearsals, we got our gear on and started messing with the halo mounts for our night vision goggles (NVG's). These mounts are basically a head harness that the NVG attaches to, taking the place of our kevlar helmets if we so choose. A better description of these is a migraine machine; those things sucked. Apparently we took too long doing this, however, so the instructor decided to throw an arty sim at us, forcing us to take cover, and then sprint for the woods, gear flopping everywhere. This threw us off completely, as we ended up across the LZ from the direction we needed to be heading. As we moved around the LZ to the other side, a Lt from the squad decided to drop her halo mount, not noticing it for several minutes (why she wasn't wearing it is beyond me). This forced us to halt the patrol to look for it, stealing valuable time from our PL. I finally found it several hundred meters behind where she claimed she lost it (thankfully I have some experience with said Lt, so I was skeptical of her claims, but I digress). For the sake of our ambush, we were forced to expedite the movement, missing out on some of the tactical aspects of moving to the ambush site. We set 360 security as our PL reconned the ambush site, and when he returned, we picked up and moved in a line to the site and were set in our positions for the night. Lying there perfectly still and quiet for 1.5 hours wasn't too bad except that I had to piss the whole time, but at least that kept me awake. Finally the tug came on the line we were holding, signaling an enemy in the kill zone. The PL opened fire on the enemy, setting off a ridiculous amount of noise as 17 Marines opened up on the helpless Lt's in the trail. I personally had my weapon on 3-round burst, since having saved rounds at the end of the day is a logistical pain in the ass, and I fired through my magazine faster than I thought possible. Thankfully it wasn't a real ambush, because I was dry in about 6 seconds. The cease-fire call came, and I moved out into the kill zone with my unit, ready to search the enemy for intel and weapons. Apparently some of the guys in my unit were asleep however, since it took them absolutely forever to get out of there. My buddy and I, him with SAW pointed at the enemy as I searched them, moved down the line, searching as fast we could in the 2 minutes allotted. Our time was up and we needed to move before reinforcements arrived, so we punched back into the tree line and headed back to our rally point, moving with our NVG's on. This sounds cooler than it was as this point was a huge clusterf*&% as disoriented Lt's tried to move in the dark (not everyone is cut out for infantry, to put it as nice as I can). We headed off on our route to the LZ for extraction, being forced finally to take the road (an obvious no-no in a combat environment) as our instructor had to hurry us to make the helo extract. We stopped for a quick debrief, and then lined up in the trees next to the LZ. I stood next to the radioman as he called the helo (NIGHTHAWK 34, this is A1C, over) and setup the extract. The bird came in in the dark and landed facing us, forcing us to run out in similar fashion to the morning around the tail and up the ramp. The inside reminded me of the helo scene from The Rock, with everything bathed in blue light. The crew chiefs and pilots had their helmet-mounted NVG's, which looked awesome. They flew us back to TBS in a much more tame fashion than the morning, with combat no longer being simulated. We filed out again in the semi-dark LZ and proceeded back to clean our gear and get some food and rest.

I've gotta say, patrolling was awesome. Our Captain told us this is his favorite FEX and I can see why. Even as I write this, I can hear the helicopters landing for today's group (the other half of our Company). Today has a new treat on the docket for us: gas chamber time! Everyone who's been through it says it's not so bad...I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully CS gas isn't too much worse than the pepper spray the police use at Halloween in Madison...

Playing catch-up, yet again...

exam, e-course, fire support, helos, land nav 3 and night, hmx-1

Due to a busy schedule again, I'm forced to try to recall every thing that happened last week to give all my faithful readers a taste of the TBS life. While we lacked any cool Field Exercises, we had a very busy week in garrison. Monday was a morning exam, followed by our first running of the Endurance Course. This is a 5.5-6 mile course (it's a little fuzzy, I think it's closer to 5, they say 6) in the forest that is run in full combat gear, starting with one running of the O-course. To max the course you need to run it in 60 minutes or less, 80 to pass. I started out slow to conserve energy before realizing that I was doing fine and I came in at 62:18. I fully plan on getting that down to the 58 minute range. Tuesday was Land Nav 3, this time involving 8 boxes in 6 hours. It snowed all morning we were out there and the base was actually closed for training at 2pm when we got done. Had I not been racing a friend to see who bought lunch, this would have been a great day. The fresh snow made it really easy to see the red boxes and the weather was perfect for hiking up and down hills. Land Nav is probably my favorite thing here, as weird as I'm sure that sounds to a lot of my peers. Nothing beats getting the entire day to trek around in the woods on your own with nothing but a map, a compass and some little boxes to find. Wednesday was a day of classes on patrolling to get us ready for this week, with a sprinkling of fire support and helicopter capabilities. Thursday was more of the same, but then that night things got interesting with our first Night Land Nav event. The only thing that made this bearable was the snow and moon combo, giving us a little bit of light. I made it through, it wasn't pretty, but I didn't manage to poke myself in the eye with a stick like one kid in my squad (who had to wear an eye patch for 3 days afterwards, hilarious). Friday finally came, along with some cool surprises. First was when two helicopters from HMX-1 (the President's squadron) flew in for us to practice loading and unloading on them for patrolling operations. HMX-1 is based in Quantico and we're constantly seeing these things flying around here. A CH-53E Super Stallion and a CH-46 Sea Knight were the two helicopters we got to see up close. I'd seen the 53 before and it was just as huge as I remembered. The 46 on the other hand was a lot smaller than I anticipated...they look a lot bigger flying in the air. After that we did a little patrolling practice and it was time for the weekend! Today (Monday) was our first day of patrolling, and it was awesome, but that'll be another post for another time. I'm off to eat some chinese and get this camo paint off my face and out of my ears, take care!

Busy busy lieutenants...

It's been a while since I've had an opportunity to sit down and write something, so I'll jump right into what I've been up to the last couple weeks.

Last week:

At the start of the week we had the Squad Weapons Field Exercise (FEX for short), probably one of the coolest things I've done so far here. We got up and hiked out to the range where we fired M249-SAWs, AT-4 rocket launchers, M203 grenade launchers, and threw grenades. After that exciting day, we spent a couple days in garrison before pushing out to FEX 1 (squad tactics). We got up at 4 am and hiked out to the woods where we froze our asses off in single digit weather before spending an exciting day of attacking sergeants in desert camo in the woods. I got chosen as a tactical billet holder for the second attack of the first day and all went well despite a small land navigation error. After this was done, we went back to our packs and camped out for the night. It's amazing how beautiful it is in the winter at night, despite the cold. The next morning was rough, with half the platoon in a hypothermia-induced stupor, aided by lack of food and water (since almost everyone's water froze in the cold. Even those of us like me who slept with our camelbacks were stymied when the straws froze after 10 minutes outside). We did some more attacks the second day in a new part of the base and finally around midnight Friday night we were secured for the 3-day weekend.

This week:

This week was a pretty relaxing week. We started out the week with first aid and combat lifesaving classes on Tuesday. Wednesday we headed out to the field again for a live fire range on Thursday and Friday. When we reached the range, we were informed that our night shoot would be cancelled due to a range violation that happened to the first group that went on wednesday. We camped out Wednesday night (much warmer this time) and then started off the day Thursday bright and early with a walk-through of the range and then jumped right into live rounds. This was a blast, but extremely tiring rushing up the 300m course in combat gear. We did this twice with live rounds before the day was over and then got shipped back to base in the back of 7-ton trucks (terrifying). We had been scheduled to stay out and do the range at night, so we had to go back out again this morning and police the range for spent rounds. This took forever, but we finally finished and now we're done for the week!

With that, I'm outta here, time to get some real food.

A little bit on the awkward side...

Well I'm back at Quantico after a much-loved and restful break. I gotta say I was lacking motivation on Monday, but I think back up to about 90% focus and this weekend with duty should help get that all the way up. I don't have much I care to say now, class all week has been what I expected. Tonight we had the opportunity for the first time to talk one-on-one with Captains from every MOS to learn what we an about them. While this is most important for the ground guys (since mine is already chosen), it's still a fun time and good information to have, especially if you fail out of flight of school, like one of the Captains I spoke to did. That's all I have for now, back to writing Op Orders. I'll leave you with these two gems I saw on the news yesterday, I hope you like them!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7816336.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7816511.stm