Sunday, March 22, 2009

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...