Dear All,
It’s been a week since my last entry, and seeing how religiously I’ve been keeping this journal, you can probably imagine how busy we’ve been. It has been hectic in BCT. A lot of work and very little sleep. To top it off, I’ve gone and caught myself another sinus infection. So things are generally just peachy But hey, the training makes the days fly by. I’m amazed how quickly this last week has gone. Sometimes I think how Monday was a lifetime ago, and sometimes I feel like it was just today, right before lunch.
We started Monday by playing with the M240B, a crew-served machine gun firing 7.62 mm rounds. That is a beautiful weapon. The firing was clean and smooth, and I hear it practically never jams. I enjoyed it a lot; Quidachay fell in love. Stars in his eyes. We also practiced assembling/disassembling the M240B for time, and though I was bale to do it (after much practice) better than most guys in the company, I wasn’t close to Quidachay. He made furniture back in Guam and says that his experience has given him a natural knack for tools. I can believe it. Man, does he love that weapon. He beams when he’s around it. I don’t blame him.
On Tuesday we played with the M249 SAW, or Squad Automatic Weapon. This is a 5.565 mm machine gun, and surprise, surprise, like most of the 5.56 mm weapons we have now seen it has a tendency to jam. Compound this with the fact that the 5.56 round is generally considered insufficiently lethal and you’ll see why I’m starting to be a fan of the 7.62mm. The M249 SAW is a lot like the M240B, except it’s smaller, more difficult to disassemble, jams more often, and coughs powder residue everywhere. I had my mouth open shouting something to my assistant gunner during my spin with the weapon, and I’ve gotta tell you, this stuff leaves a bitter, ugly taste in your mouth. Gross. Long story short, I don’t like the SAW much. I’ll stick with the M240B, thanks. Yeah, it might weigh about eleven more pounds. But that’s a small price to pay for guaranteed functionality.
On Tuesday night, we got the Night Vision Goggles back out and attached laser sights to our M16A2s. We went out to the range for a night-fire exercise. And once again, I learned why the US now owns the night. This tech is absurdly helpful. I went form a pitch-black world, occasionally marred by tracer rounds, to a neon-green landscape with picture-clear targets all marked by the glow of the zeroed scope laser. Aim? No need. Just move your arms until the laser light (really only visible by goggle) hits your target.
But as always, when we have night training, we sacrifice sleep. So we dragged our sorry selves back to the Bay around 2300 and prepared for our second field training exercise, meaning that we had everything in order and hit the rack around 0100. Wake-up on Wednesday morning was 0430. We boarded the busses in full regalia, burdened with gigantic ruck-sacks, grateful that at least we weren’t marching the six miles there. First we started with a few grenades launched from some M203 launchers we received for training. Those things are fun, but I definitely haven’t learned how to aim them. Then we hit the field and entrenched ourselves in our fighting positions.
At this point I’ll end the summary and go back to narrative, because FTX is always an experience.
Does everyone remember the fighting holes form FTX 1? You and a battle buddy dig shallow (but not too shallow) holes large enough to provide moderate fire level cover. You, your buddy, and your gear all fit in these holes. You stay there in the prone for hours and hours of daylight, posting and scanning for an enemy who never shows up. The DSs fired rounds to keep us on edge form time to time, but darn it, they never just got up and charged us. Not that they had issued us any ammunition to stop them, anyways.
When night falls, you stay there. And if you don’t have roaming night guard you roll over and sleep in the same spot. The moral of this story is that you dig a hole and you stay in it. For a long time, no matter what. So let’s take a leap of imagination and presume that our illustrious hero dug his hole next to a stump in a relatively defendable location. This dashing, roguishly-handsome hero may not have noticed that this stump was also a home for the 3rd Battalion, Man-eating Fire Ant Division. But around 0300, after a long Wednesday of field digging/painful-proning, the fireant recon team made contact with our ravishing hero and proceed to ravish him. I must have been delicious. I was like an ant Shangri-la, a free meal trapped in immobility by the constant interruptions of machine-gun fire. And for a while it was a vicious struggle of man v. ant. I’m telling you, sometimes the Army just blows my mind with the million ways they can cause you pain that you never thought of. The fire ants may have won the battle, but I won the war. DS “A” (rapidly becoming my favorite because he’s always making a point to check the men and make sure we all learn and repeat the lessons, whereas other DSs only seem to focus of trouble-soldiers) noticed the fireants the next morning and told me that I should try sprinkling foot powder on their nest. He had read somewhere that it worked and wanted to find out. So I did, and the ants gradually disappeared, and DS “A” checked on the progress whenever he passed by.
I can’t complain. A night of being the main course was nothing compared to the poor bastard who go poison ivy on his testicles. Not in our platoon. But godohgodohgod. Oh, God. They apparently swelled up like oranges and were draining so badly he had to change underwear four times a day. Oh, God. Whenever I think about this guy, I know that I’ll have to be in serious pain before I ever complain again. Just…oh, God.
Then again, maybe the fireants weren’t even trying to eat me. Maybe they were trying to huddle with me for warmth. On Wednesday night the temperature in GA plummeted to near freezing. We had all packed for warm weather, meaning light sleeping bags. And we’re out in the middle of a hole, anyway. So it got really, really cold. 2nd Platoon didn’t even pack their bags. Those guys had to huddle close enough to violate don’t ask/don’t tell policies in order to make it through the night. So really, I got off lucky.
The next night, after another day in the trenches, it got colder. I had expected this and had developed “fighting position castle” with my buddy Chong, assigned to be stuck with me for FTXII. Chong, by the way, is going well. He’s on track to graduate. And I have seen pictures of his wife; I know why he’s in such a hurry to get back to her. Hot like the heat of a thousand burning suns. Anyway, the two of us “fortified” our position in preparation for Thursday night by digging deeper and building a roof/floor for ourselves. We were going to trap every bit of warmth in there. It was awesome. But just before dusk, DS “A” told us to destroy the castle (far beyond the regs—this is a hasty fighting position, not a house) and move to our bivouac position. It was expected to dip below freezing, and the bivies were supposed to be warmers. Not warmer than the castle, but hey, rules are rules. And orders are orders. But whatever. So we were cold again. But to stave off hypothermia, the DSs had us build and maintain a fire pit throughout the night. Especially useful as we all had guard duty but no cold-weather clothes. So any complaints are silenced next to my memory of a night spent huddled around a fire with some other soldiers, propped back-to-back, crouching together for warmth under a clear night sky marked only by the occasional orange spark form the pit. A beautiful night. I hear some people talk about eh beauty of camping, enjoying their thermal-insulated tents and mobile coffee-makers complete with generators. Well, I’m glad they enjoy that. But I’ve come to discover that eh beauty of nature is linked to the hardship you endure to enjoy it. Look at a night sky while lying in a dirt hole in freezing weather after days fo practically no sleep. It is more beautiful than any other night sky on Earth.
“Wake-up” on Friday (were we expected to sleep?) was 0500 again. Surprise, surprise. The only difference between 0445 and 0515 is we had a fire at 0445. It was still dark and cold. But again, orders are orders. So we hurried up and waited. Eventually the sun rose and we enjoyed a full day of tactical maneuver training. To finish it off, we did the most dangerous training to date: we advanced in teams whiles laying covering fire…with live ammo. No more kiddy stuff, boys and girls. Well, all right, this isn’t all that crazy. But it basically involves running up to a position and taking cover as your buddy behind you fires live ammo maybe ten feet away to your right. We’re sleep deprived and dirty. One slip-up and your buddy could accidentally shoot you in the back. Or vice versa. When DS “W” was getting me prepped to go, he looked at me and asked if I was nervous. Now I always like to give the illusion of composure, so I told him, “Not much, DS. I have pretty good faith in my battle buddy over there.” DS “W” smiled knowingly while Cpt. “F”, who had come up behind me unnoticed, said, “Hell, soldier, I’m nervous. And I’m not even going out there.”
But long story short, I didn’t get shot. And we spent the rest of Friday cleaning/recovering, mostly recovering for me since the cold/sleep-deprivation had revived my sinus infection. It’s part of my commitment to be sick for all of BCT. The guys have some nicknames for me: “Tiger” when I’m going strong and all “hooah,” “Specialist Thesaurus” when they catch me using more…esoteric vocabulary, and my personal favorite, “Fungus.” Because it seems that I’ve always got something going wrong on my body. I’ve grown infamous as the anti-malingerer. Some soldiers shirk training by claiming to be sick. My battle buddies are constantly insisting that I go to sick call, but out of fear of missing training, I don’t. This has become a point of pride. “Sick call? Hell, real men don’t need lungs!” Fungus, indeed. It can’t be worse than poison ivy on your balls.
Saturday was mid-cycle testing, where we were all tested in our abilities to assess casualties and provide medical care, emplace claymore mines, use military maps, and check/clear/disassemble our weapons for speed. No sweat by now.
And Sunday was more cleaning. You know, like we do. So I won’t go into all of that, because the real fun was today. We got up at 0430 and rode out to play with hand grenades. Learn to throw from standing, kneeling, and alternate prone. And then we threw a live grenade. This is more nerve-racking than it may sound for a first timer. You are holding a piece of metal with an explosive tube inside, and if you treat it incorrectly, it will kill everything within 10 meters and maim everything for another 10. The shrapnel can go the length of two football fields, and one well-placed knick of your arteries will bleed you out.
So you slide off the first safety catch. Then you yank our the pin, leaving only the lever. And you…throw it? No, you hold it until you’re ready. It isn’t armed yet. But if you accidentally release a quarter pound of pressure on it, you will arm it. And you might not notice. And after a few seconds you won’t notice anything anymore. No, you hold it. And wait. And then throw. And then duck. Good times, good times. Those seconds where you stand there, holding the grenade, turn into hours. Did I hear it click? No. Wait…did I just arm it? Man, I could not throw that thing away fast enough.
Speaking of which, the DSs all say I throw like a girl. I was mocked a lot today. Apparently I just can’t throw to save my life. The practice grenades were marks of shame. One DS told me he would write my father and tell him about his son’s throwing. So Dad, just so you hear it form me first: you raised a namby-pamby girlythrower. Peyton Manning I am not. Regardless, the grenades I threw hit the targets consistently enough for me to be rated as Grenades: First Class. Not expert, but close. So take that, critics. A girly throw can still be accurate.
If that wasn’t enough danger for one day, we just returned form another night exercise: the Night Infiltration Course. I know some of you remember this. Wait till dark. Then get out of the trench and crawl over a hundred meters with live ammo being fired over your heads. Nervous and your head jerks up? A bad idea. Tonight was for real, no playing. There was a very real chance that a bullet would catch your head. More likely that you’ll exhaust your arms and move your knees up, or hsift too high climbing over a log, and you’ll catch on in the rear. Or you’ll wander too far our of line in the dark and get tangled in a TNT pit and have to be picked up in pieces the next morning. There have been a lot of flags sent home form this range. Everyone who’s gone through it can remember it. Tracers whizzing inches above your head. Explosions blurring your vision and shaking the ground. Flares breaking the dark. Barbed wire piercing your skin as you desperately push out of the trench. Your arms are drained by the end Go ahead, try and speed crawl through a few football fields. Tired? Don’t get up, you’ll get killed. Man. Lately this stuff has gotten a bit more…scary. And crazy exciting. I hauled like a demon tonight. Our platoon made it through far faster than the other two. We were moving.
But enough of that for now. It’s very late, I’m covered in filth, and I need to go clean the Captain’s office before I sleep. Also, I need to check on the squad for all equipment needed tomorrow. Because despite my best efforts, I was promoted to squad leader today. But more on that tomorrow. Sleep well, and remember, keep your butts down under the wire. I’ll write soon.
-Jeremy
