Monday , July 27, 2009
Only 9 days left til it's the 6th! We're still at the FOB... obviously. Right now, I'm actually in a building, waiting for a platoon to come through and clear the building. Myself and 3 other guys are posted in the building as insurgents. My squad and another squad in my platoon just tried clearing the same building and sucked it up. We have too many chiefs and not enough indians on top of shitty communication. Because I'm not PG? I don't know... maybe. The new guy has only been it for a week, so he's overwhelmed. But it was fun to be the insurgents. We got to hide and shoot 'em up with blank rounds. Anyway... I got spaghetti with meat sauce in my MRE. It was pretty good, but I didn't get any freaking candy! We're able to eat it out here. I don't know if I told you that, but it's a pretty big deal.
1900... We just got done with dinner a bit ago. I had some pretty good chicken, but the sides sucked. We don't have a "gut truck" so I'm stuck with eating whatever they have. I miss my primarily protein diet. I'm gonna try and get back on that @ AIT. We finally got our blue phase banner this evening. We only have 1 1/2 weeks left, but I guess better late than never. I got a chance to ask our company first sergeant after we got our banners. He mentioned something about Operation "Anaconda" earlier in the cycle. He was in that... anyway, the book I read "The Mission, the Men, & Me" when I was working the desk at Fitso; part of it was about the battle. Well, the 1SG was a sniper in that operation. I thought that was pretty cool.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
18:30... Well I didn't have enough time to finish and mail this letter last night. I also haven't had any time to write until now! We've been really busy today. We left the FOB this morning about 0730 or 0800 and headed to a range. This range, we did maneuvers with paintball guns. We had an urban environment, an open environment, and we cleared a house room-by-room. It was one of the funner things we've done here. After we were done, they chose 27 privates (I was one of them), and we went against 4 DS, the 1SG, and the Company Commander (a Captain). We went against them in the urban environment. They had the upper hand cause they had the best position which was on the second floor of the building at the end of the alley. They're also bad ass and they had unlimited ammo. They wasted a bunch of us, but since I'm a billy badass, I made it up to like one of the last rooms. I shot one DS in the ass/leg 3 times. But then I ran out of ammo... I was picking up paintballs off the ground that weren't busted and using those. It turned out to be a stalemate, but I never got killed! I was ballin'! It was a lot of fun. I'm wore out right now, though. I don't think we're doing anything else tonight, so that's good.
I'm actually having fun @ the FOB, though... time is going by pretty fast. I'm not sure what's on tap for tomorrow, but after that we get to go to the barracks and take showers! We are suppose to have a 10k march back to the barracks and the DS's are still talking about it, but the rumor is we march 2k and there's buses waiting for us... I think I already told you about that.
20:01... Okay, what sucks about the FOB is pulling security. They'll hit us w/ mortars and we gotta put on full battle rattle and head out and they do that like all the time it seems.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
10:15... AHHHH! Yesterday was so long, but it went by fast (if that makes sense). This morning we had wake up at 0500 and formation at 0530. But... it was raining this morning. It was so relaxing to hear that on the tent. So we didn't have formation, so we pretty much slept as long as we could, until the DS came in and plugged in the lights and made up sit up. It's getting close to lunch chow and I get excited because MRE's are like a surprise, but I've been disappointed with everyone I've gotten so far.
13:20... Ok, well the verdict is in... I got chicken and dumplings. The main entree was pretty scrumptious. No M&M's or Skittles, but I did get this candy called Shock-A-Lots. It's a chocolate covered coffee bean candy. Pretty good. But the little package had a caffeine equivalent of 2 cups of coffee. So, I'm pretty wired right now. It's raining again and we don't have a mission, so we're just chilling in the tents. It's pretty relaxing just sitting in the tent here and listening to the rain.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
14:30... OMG... I'm finally back at the barracks! I didn't get a chance to write yesterday afternoon/evening. Once the rain cleared, we continued with exercises. I'm in 2nd squad. I was there before being PG and I went there afterwards. That's who I did all the exercises with. 1st and 2nd squads had to do a "Log Pack" convoy after it stopped raining. Our mission was to go get chow. We loaded up into 2 HMMV's and 1 5-ton cattle truck. I was in the 5-ton on the very back right. It was pretty fun to ride and check out the scenery and feel the breeze. On the way back we ran into an "IED." We had to dismount and get up a security perimeter. We called it in Yatty Yaddy and they "detonated" it to disarm it so we could move on. We took on fire and lost two men because our security wasn't perfect. Anyway, we haded back and the 1SG talked to us about the goods and bads. After we got back and had chow, we basically got attacked non-stop for 2 1/2 hours. It was like the last hooray. All the DS's were outside the wire blowing bombs up and shooting machine guns and stuff. They called cease fire and the company came together for a tack and then we pulled brass over the entire FOB! It blew, there was so many blanks shot, it was unbelievable. The blanks we didn't shoot, we shot up. So, I loaded a couple of magazines and fired 'em off on burst, that was fun. We then had to load up our duffel with our dirty clothes, IBA, sleeping bag, and I think that's it. We finally got to bed about 23:00.
We had wake-up at 0330! A 10k was scheduled this morning, so we got in formation with our LBV and patrol cap on. We had our clean laundry, gas mask, elbow and knee pads, armor plates, and boots. So it was about 50 lbs. I got out to formation as soon as I could. When I got there, DS asked me how many push-ups I did on the PT test & I told him 61. He said 'okay, go over there.' He picked 4 people with higher PT scores. The other 2 platoon picked 5 each as well. So, 15 of us stayed back and didn't march. There was so many rumors on what was going to happen with the march. Some said we were marching up a big hill and there would be uses waiting at the top to take us to the barracks. There was several variations on that. Anyway, they ended up marching the entire 10k back to the barracks. So they were pretty jealous of us that stayed back. But... we worked pretty hard on pulling the entire FOB. Squaring away the tents, sweeping, cleaning, and policing more brass. We then had to sort through all the brass 3 times, separating the 5.56 & 7.62 & live FRM duds from spents. So it actually sucked staying back, but I would still rather do that than march. When we finished, we had to wait for the ammo people to come pick up the brass, so we got like a 45 minute - 1 hour nap. Cool Beans! But it kinda sucked, because when they all got back, they were told to run upstairs and get their berets and they all put them on together.
We also won the "warrior challenge" so we got a "streamer" (ribbon) for our phase banner. There are streamers for different events... hand-to-hand (combatives), conditioning course, pugil, BRM, & APFT. The 3rd platoon "Punishers" won every event except the warrior challenge which is the big important one. It is based on all the stuff we did at the FOB for our FTX3. So, that was cool to win something and not have it be a complete run away.
So, we finally got back and I took a glorious shower. After that we stared cleaning our TA-50. It sucks; some of the stuff is filthy. I'm gonna get it all cleaned up so they accept it the first time. Tomorrow we are continuing the clean up of all that junk. Saturday there is a church event we get to go to. Sunday is church. Monday we get to DX (direct exchange) any clothes that don't fit or have some type of defect. Tuesday we turn in our TA-50 and out process. Wednesday we rehearse graduation. Thursday, August 6th at 09:30 in the morning, I GRADUATE BCT AT FORT KNOX, KY!!!!! That's only 6 days away. I can't wait. This will probably be the longest week of my life. I'm gonna try and stay busy though. Hopefully it will pass fast.
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