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...