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