Individual tactical training.
High crawls and stuff under and over
obstacles in teams to take out
sniper. Fun but real tough on
knees and elbows. They hurt
like hell. Plus, and I don't know
how to explain it any other way,
but my dick hurts. Must be from
strained groin muscles. Not uncommon
problem. Will receive mail on bivouac.
Morale better but goddamn these
drills are dick heads. Plus they're
not very competent. Only [Sergeant Alpha]
seems all right on both counts.
I thought by now they'd be acting
human, but no. Letter from
[sister]. good to hear from her.
Still not the same as a
letter from [fiance]. Not much
else. Time counting down. Lots
of bull--must remind myself why
I'm here. Found ticks on my body
today from training. Uniform very
dirty however. Some people getting
on my nerves. No phone or PX
privileges now--big deal. 0 - 0 still = 0.
Grenades tomorrow. Should be fun.
Individual tactical training. Finally it was like playing Army as a kid.
One, when you read about how the Army and Marines finally issued knee and elbow protection to our troops from experience in Iraq--and even have uniforms with inserts now--recoil in horror at how long it should have been obvious that we needed that simple equipment. I spent a few hours--without the live fire incentive to hit the ground really fast--and still tore up my knees and elbows.
This also highlights the simple fact that we were far from being soldiers. I had already explained to my fellow trainees that the Army was not about to send us to war in a crisis. Even our tactical training was just in fire and movement with covering fire with one other soldier. These weren't even squad-level tactics--not even fire team tactics, let alone platoon and company training to hold or take an objective. We had the foundation to become soldiers and that is it. Remember that when you read stories about how we run Afghan troops through 7 week (or however many) courses and they are "trained." What they--and we--get from this training is a chance to become soldiers. At least we wouldn't have to do it under fire in the field against actual enemies.
And I had a perplexing new physical ailment that I can't explain. Try going on sick call with that as your complaint ...
But despite that new issue in an alarming area, my morale was improving.
Moving on.
The main problem was that our new drill sergeants were simply jerks and seemed to have no skills at training us. We did have the best of the lot in our platoon, but he was odd nonetheless.
Once, in fact, he lost us. There was a fire alarm in the barracks one day. We all evacuated the barracks as we had established early in training. Second and third platoon went to the front of the barracks. We went to the back of the barracks out in a field. And we stood there in formation for a really long time after the alarm went off. Until finally, our drill sergeant poked his head out the door and saw us in formation. He was actually pleased with us for knowing where to go despite never having to do this. I think he was relieved that we were not lost.
I'd forgotten about finding ticks from our forest training. In the past, I've answered doctors who asked about tick exposure in the negative. Now I know better. Not that any were welded to my skin--they were just there to be picked off by hand. But I had them.
That was a special part of coming back in from training in the field--mutual tick inspection. Do that enough times and throwing yourself on a grenade for your buddies probably isn't as big a leap as you'd think.
I will say that despite the heat and dirt, I'm grateful I didn't go to basic training in a rainy season. Our equipment got dirty, but in a pinch we could brush off the dirt. Caked mud would have been orders of magnitude worse and really reduced already limited sleeping time.
With so much of the substantive training over, it was hard to deal with the orchestrated anger from the drill sergeants. It just wasn't necessary at this point in our training but still we got it from them because it was their training. And that included denying us the ability to communicate or buy supplies out of our own pocket. yet with mail coming in, morale was OK.
But maybe I was just giddy with the prospect of throwing live grenades on Tuesday.
