I realize that I have yet to make postings on the last two drills but I wanted to first do a posting on my general impression of the RSP Program since this month was my final drill before shipping to BCT. I will make sure to get the regular drill postings up as soon as possible. This may not be as interesting to most of you but I want it written down for my personal records.
I have learned a great during my eight drills with Bravo Company. I’m going to divide this posting into things that I have learned about the Army, things that I have learned about leadership and things that I have learned about myself.
First I want to comment on some of the things I have found about the organization that I was smart enough to join. One of the biggest things that I have noticed is that being in uniform and being at drill with everyone else led by competent people gives you the ability to be more than you normally could be. I now really buy into the idea of being strong vs. being “Army strong.” I’ve also been impressed with the variety of people that we take every drill and meld together to overcome fears and barriers and do a task. One of the things that I like is the efficient but stepwise manner in which we do training. In this last drill I was sometimes annoyed by the repetition of certain things as we went through different levels of training since we were doing things that I had done before. However, in the end I was impressed that we were able to take people who had just recently learned how to swim and who had a fear of doing so and had them jump blindfolded off of a seven foot platform into a pool in LBVs (Load Bearing Vests) and Kevlar helmets. That is an accomplishment. One of the things that MSG Gordeley told us was that one of the greatest assets we have in the Army is peer pressure and I have certainly found this to be true. One thing that I have also been impressed with is the professionalism and organization that is found in nearly everything we do. From collecting linens at the end of the day, to marching, to grounding gear there is a level of professionalism demanded of us that I really appreciate. However, one thing that has surprised me is the level of input the average soldier has in his own actions. Our cadre puts a lot more thought into our input than I would have imagined they would have and I am very glad of it.
Second I want to list some things that I have found about leading people, some of which were simply reaffirmed and others were new observations for me. The first thing that I found is that if you aren’t doing things yourself you have very little chance of people doing what you want them to do and doing them correctly and vise versa. I found that I’ve been able to have my squad overlook times when I’ve been screwed up because of taking fireguard shifts no one wants, waking up early, taking trash out etc. On the flip side I have found myself resenting a few of the guys in leadership positions who will simply delegate while sitting around BSing and acting superior. I have also found that you can’t get people to do things that they truly do not wish to do if you don’t have their respect first. Even with the advantage of being in a leadership position in the Army people are still people who will have trouble following orders of people they can’t stand. In all I’ve found that everything truly does reflect leadership and leading isn’t as easy as it may seem.
The final thing I want to list is things that I’ve learned about myself due to this program. I have found that I am far more capable as an individual than I thought that I could be. I have always thought of myself as mainly being an equipment operator. I have always been far less confident when acting personally than when acting on something. I have always been good at fixing things and driving things. I have always been far less capable when doing things physically as I don’t have as effective muscle control as some others. However, during every drill I have found that I can do far better than I had imagined I would be able to and that the biggest thing is simply being shown what to do. I’ve been happily surprised with my personal capacities and the more confident I become in my behaviors the better I have been getting. I have also found that I can generally gain the trust of my troops fairly quickly which has been nice. A couple of issues that I have found with myself are as follows. My main problem that I will run into is that I will frequently get so concerned with making sure that everyone else is squared away that I end up neglecting my own stuff and ending up jacked up. For example, last night I told everyone in my bay that the bottom bunks needed to have their pillows towards the aisle and the top needed to face the wall. I was on the bottom bunk and managed to then put my pillow facing the wall. Luckily one of the members of my squad corrected me and I was able to fix myself. Also, while building the fireguard roster I mixed up a man from another squad with a man from mine and ended up putting my guy down for fireguard twice simply because I got their names confused. Once again, one of my squad members caught my mistake. So luckily I have my squad to correct me at times. My other issue is that when someone does not follow an order or gives me trouble I don’t deal with it directly enough. I’m afraid I am often too anti-conflict which probably is not a good trait to possess in a military unit.
Overall I have found the RSP program to be invaluable to me thus far. I have gained far more from it than I would have believed I could considering the relatively short time I have spent actually with my unit doing training. I believe the effective planning of our leadership and the way that they present information is largely to blame. They manage to feed us an enormous amount of information and give us a great deal of guidance in a very short period of time but they do it in a manner that is efficient and clear enough that by taking a few notes one can easily absorb the info. Maybe instead of teaching degrees schools should start considering NCO ranks as a standard.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Goodbye Sergeant Walls
Today our company relinquished one of its greatest assets. This drill was our supply sergeant’s last with us. Sergeant Walls has spent three years with the RSP Battalion as supply sergeant for Bravo Company. She has guided some four hundred soldiers through RSP and IET and into their units. She has shown a dedication to her job and her troops that is truly admirable.
Ask anyone who has been to a drill or two or has taken the time to get to know her a bit. Sergeant Walls lives for her job. It is not uncommon for her to sleep on post because she’s busy making sure things go perfectly for us at all times. She gives her cell phone number to every new recruit and her number one rule that she reiterates every month is to keep her posted on everything that’s going on. Never in my time with the Guard have I called Sergeant Walls and not had her pick up within the first few rings. She has been available to any soldier who wishes to do extra PT with her on post and even took a group to do the Race for the Cure on her own time on Saturday. She has shown an impressive devotion to her troops that has done us a ton of good. As she gave her final speech at drill today she mentioned over and over again that she is still available as a resource for us and made it very clear that she still expects to be kept in the loop. Her tone was genuine and her track record proves that she truly does care and I have no doubt that she will still be around to help me if I need her like she said.
Not only is she a devoted NCO but an outstanding individual in her own right. She has energy and a demeanor that isn’t easy to forget and manages to command respect without demeaning her troops. When she took a group down to Race for the Cure I went down with her and even brought my girlfriend along. Despite my initial nervousness about introducing the two of them they got along very well and Sgt Walls is still a frequent topic of conversation and always in a positive way. I have greatly appreciated Sgt Walls’ contribution to our unit as a person as well as an NCO.
I realize that I am merely a PFC but I wanted to take the opportunity to thank Sergeant Walls for everything she has done for us and everything she has shown us.
Friday, May 1, 2009
They're Everywhere
The Tuesday after drill I walked into the tech center where I take auto tech and ran into two of my sergeants. Drill Sergeant Stace and Sgt Walls. They were doing a little recruiting thing because the #88 NASCAR racecar that Dale Earnheart Jr drives for the National Guard's team. I'm not a big NASCAR guy but it was really cool to see the car. They look pretty simple watching them on TV but up close you can really tell how complicated they are. They have more scoops, ducts, switches and dials then any other car I've seen. It was kinda funny too because the motor they race with is an 800hp monster but it's too expensive and too much of a pain to use on anything other than race day. The motor they had in it was just to pull the thing on and off the trailer and putt around a bit but it was still a 350hp small block chevy v-8. Kinda overkill in a car that light but it was pretty cool. It was nice seeing my sergeants and talking with them in a more casual environment. In the picture I'm kind of in an odd pose because I still felt like I needed to be at parade rest but felt like I'd look like a showoff and an idiot doing it so I'm fighting myself and it looks a bit weird. The jacket I'm wearing by the way is our PT jacket, we were issued PT uniforms last drill before doing PT and they're pretty sweet. That jacket is really nice. It'll be too warm to wear it soon but as it is now I really like it and I do like showing off a little bit since as I've said before, enlisting is one of the things I'm most proud of.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
April Drill Sunday
Again, sorry this took so long, we didn't have a computer for the first three weeks after drill due to a bad RAM card and this last week has been really busy. However, tomorrow's senior skip day so I have no homework and have time to finish tonight.
So Sunday morning I had an alarm set for 0345 since our wake up time was 0430. However, I found myself so anxious that I woke up 3 times between 0100 and 0230 and could not fall back to sleep after 0230 and instead just lay in bed trying to rest until it wast time for me to wake up. At 0345 I hopped out of bed, showered, shaved and quietly started dressing and had my bed stripped and was halfway in ACUs by 0430. This made the morning go very smooth. I was able to have spots set for each of the linens before anyone had stripped their beds and I was able to get my bay's linens squared away very quickly and efficiently and we were able to move on to helping the other bays. We were among the first people to have our bay swept and cleaned up and my squad was one of the first out despite being split between two bays. I believe that part of my leadership went very well and I hope the other men in my bay agreed.
After we formed up outside and our leadership arrived we moved out to chow. I have to mention that at the beginning of our march we performed what I believed was a very successful counter column especially for having our packs on. I had never led one before so it was a new experience and I was relieved to have pulled it off.
We then moved into our final stations of the weekend. My group had a very good class on setting up hasty checkpoints and searching detainees and cars. One thing that I didn't realize was how little equipment and how few troops you actually need to make a checkpoint. I hadn't realized they would leave one humvee as a checkpoint. The detainee searching class was cool as well. We learned the proper way to search and how to find things hidden on someone without putting yourself at risk although the butt and crotch searches were a little awkward to perform. The car search was entertaining to me. We used Drill Sergeant Zupancic's truck to search which was cool. It's a sweet truck. It kinda made me laugh though because PFC Schreiber had bet Sgt Lammers 50 pushups that he could find everything that Sgt Lammers put in the car since he goes to the tech school like me and knows what a car should look like. However, I knew he was hosed from the beginning, he works on diesels all day and this was a 4 cylinder Toyota and it's impossible to find everything in all of the nooks and crannies in a car if the person is smart. I'd bet money that I could build a car bomb nobody could pick out if I had a desire to. It was still good training though since it gives you the best chance possible of finding a problem.
After our last classes we cleaned up the drill hall and the halls and offices so that we could be presentable for an officer that came and spoke to us. He was a Lieutenant Colonel and was talking to us about college programs through the Guard and specifically the ROTC program and the benefits of becoming an officer. He was very cool and gave a good speech. I think that could be a good route to go for me as it is a very promising and obviously honorable route in general but I still believe I would be best off as a warrant officer instead of a commissioned officer. Nonetheless it was good to hear from him and it gave us a chance to practice how to behave around a commissioned officer.
After this we went and had the opportunity to do PT for the first time as a group at drill. We were a couple of hours ahead of schedule so we had time to do organized PT which was great. Some of us really needed it as we're not as fit as a unit as we should be. We started out be getting smoked because there was trash left in the barracks. We had to touch our arms above our heads and bring them back to level with our shoulders while keeping our arms straight and then he would have us hold them there as long as he felt like it. I believe we did 75 of these and if anyone had dropped we would have started over. One of the guys next to me was struggling and I was sure he would so I had my hand a few inches below his to catch it if he did but everyone was able to stay up which was good.
After being smoked we moved into what Drill Sergeant Stace referred to as muscle failure training. This simply meant lots of pushups and lots of situps and was not bad at all. I've found I need to work on strengthening my chest because I can do more tricep pushups than most of the guys in our battalion but I'm terrible at wide grip pushups.
After our strength training Drill Sergeant Stace gave us a quick lesson on loyalty then we moved into cardio training. We did a run that I really liked where we walked for 40 seconds and then sprinted for 20. We did this four times and I found it to be a pretty good run although rather mild as it was tailored to be doable by all of us. It was good though because the sprint was something where we could be competitive and work ourselves to our maximum for that time.
We still had time after this and decided to have some fun. We played ultimate frisbee which is always a good time. It was pretty windy which made it interesting. Unfortunately I've never been an amazing catch and I've always been even worse with a frisbee than with a ball. This time was even worse than normal. I missed a few catches and my only redemption was ripping it way from a guy when we both got it at the same time and had to fight it down to the ground. It was kind of a sad game for me though and I felt better when I played it the next weekend for MORP and did outstanding. I don't know if it's better to have my good game in front of my girlfriend or in front of my battalion and my Drill Sergeant.
After our PT session we went back to the drill hall and had our AAR and went home. I hurried out much faster than normal as I was still a bit embarrassed by my less than spectacular performance. I soon wished I hadn't though because I was reminded of one of the reasons I love drill. You're so pumped the whole time that nothing hurts and everything feels far better than normal. My arm felt great all of drill but as soon as I got off post and cooled down a bit it began to throb like crazy and my sinus headache at least doubled. Then I got home to a dead computer as well. I also only managed 8 pullups in a pullup contest some marines were doing before the vein structure in my left arm literally felt like it was going to explode. I wish I could keep that drill feeling all the time and I'm super excited to go back.
So Sunday morning I had an alarm set for 0345 since our wake up time was 0430. However, I found myself so anxious that I woke up 3 times between 0100 and 0230 and could not fall back to sleep after 0230 and instead just lay in bed trying to rest until it wast time for me to wake up. At 0345 I hopped out of bed, showered, shaved and quietly started dressing and had my bed stripped and was halfway in ACUs by 0430. This made the morning go very smooth. I was able to have spots set for each of the linens before anyone had stripped their beds and I was able to get my bay's linens squared away very quickly and efficiently and we were able to move on to helping the other bays. We were among the first people to have our bay swept and cleaned up and my squad was one of the first out despite being split between two bays. I believe that part of my leadership went very well and I hope the other men in my bay agreed.
After we formed up outside and our leadership arrived we moved out to chow. I have to mention that at the beginning of our march we performed what I believed was a very successful counter column especially for having our packs on. I had never led one before so it was a new experience and I was relieved to have pulled it off.
We then moved into our final stations of the weekend. My group had a very good class on setting up hasty checkpoints and searching detainees and cars. One thing that I didn't realize was how little equipment and how few troops you actually need to make a checkpoint. I hadn't realized they would leave one humvee as a checkpoint. The detainee searching class was cool as well. We learned the proper way to search and how to find things hidden on someone without putting yourself at risk although the butt and crotch searches were a little awkward to perform. The car search was entertaining to me. We used Drill Sergeant Zupancic's truck to search which was cool. It's a sweet truck. It kinda made me laugh though because PFC Schreiber had bet Sgt Lammers 50 pushups that he could find everything that Sgt Lammers put in the car since he goes to the tech school like me and knows what a car should look like. However, I knew he was hosed from the beginning, he works on diesels all day and this was a 4 cylinder Toyota and it's impossible to find everything in all of the nooks and crannies in a car if the person is smart. I'd bet money that I could build a car bomb nobody could pick out if I had a desire to. It was still good training though since it gives you the best chance possible of finding a problem.
After our last classes we cleaned up the drill hall and the halls and offices so that we could be presentable for an officer that came and spoke to us. He was a Lieutenant Colonel and was talking to us about college programs through the Guard and specifically the ROTC program and the benefits of becoming an officer. He was very cool and gave a good speech. I think that could be a good route to go for me as it is a very promising and obviously honorable route in general but I still believe I would be best off as a warrant officer instead of a commissioned officer. Nonetheless it was good to hear from him and it gave us a chance to practice how to behave around a commissioned officer.
After this we went and had the opportunity to do PT for the first time as a group at drill. We were a couple of hours ahead of schedule so we had time to do organized PT which was great. Some of us really needed it as we're not as fit as a unit as we should be. We started out be getting smoked because there was trash left in the barracks. We had to touch our arms above our heads and bring them back to level with our shoulders while keeping our arms straight and then he would have us hold them there as long as he felt like it. I believe we did 75 of these and if anyone had dropped we would have started over. One of the guys next to me was struggling and I was sure he would so I had my hand a few inches below his to catch it if he did but everyone was able to stay up which was good.
After being smoked we moved into what Drill Sergeant Stace referred to as muscle failure training. This simply meant lots of pushups and lots of situps and was not bad at all. I've found I need to work on strengthening my chest because I can do more tricep pushups than most of the guys in our battalion but I'm terrible at wide grip pushups.
After our strength training Drill Sergeant Stace gave us a quick lesson on loyalty then we moved into cardio training. We did a run that I really liked where we walked for 40 seconds and then sprinted for 20. We did this four times and I found it to be a pretty good run although rather mild as it was tailored to be doable by all of us. It was good though because the sprint was something where we could be competitive and work ourselves to our maximum for that time.
We still had time after this and decided to have some fun. We played ultimate frisbee which is always a good time. It was pretty windy which made it interesting. Unfortunately I've never been an amazing catch and I've always been even worse with a frisbee than with a ball. This time was even worse than normal. I missed a few catches and my only redemption was ripping it way from a guy when we both got it at the same time and had to fight it down to the ground. It was kind of a sad game for me though and I felt better when I played it the next weekend for MORP and did outstanding. I don't know if it's better to have my good game in front of my girlfriend or in front of my battalion and my Drill Sergeant.
After our PT session we went back to the drill hall and had our AAR and went home. I hurried out much faster than normal as I was still a bit embarrassed by my less than spectacular performance. I soon wished I hadn't though because I was reminded of one of the reasons I love drill. You're so pumped the whole time that nothing hurts and everything feels far better than normal. My arm felt great all of drill but as soon as I got off post and cooled down a bit it began to throb like crazy and my sinus headache at least doubled. Then I got home to a dead computer as well. I also only managed 8 pullups in a pullup contest some marines were doing before the vein structure in my left arm literally felt like it was going to explode. I wish I could keep that drill feeling all the time and I'm super excited to go back.
Monday, April 6, 2009
April Drill
Sorry it took so long to make this posting. I came home from drill to a dead computer and we weren't able to get it fixed until 2 days ago and I have to admit I was unexcited about writing about my failures. (If it seems odd to write everything I was hiding at drill on here it's because this blog is first and foremost a personal journal of what I do at drill and I have to put it honestly.)
So, this drill was IMT (Individual Movement Techniques). It was really well organized and a great time, but it ended up being a very difficult drill for me. I've decided drill is not near as much fun sick. I've had a really bad sinus infection for a few days now that totally screwed up my equilibrium and hearing which made marching really hard and my brain was a bit foggy so my posting might be a bit less detailed this month although it really was good training and I learned a lot.
This drill involved my first and my last ELP meeting. PFC Gluch told me last month to come to ELP because he liked what I did as squad leader. Unfortunately however, ELP ends for the summer so this month was the last meeting. It was good to see what goes on behind the scenes though. It seems our squad leaders do a lot more outside of drill than I realized. Sergeant Seader and Sergeant Lammers were in charge of the meeting and they're both really cool so it was good to get one meeting in with them.
After ELP we divided into squads and formed up to stretch and do PT. We had large (15 person) squads this drill so it was a little sloppier than I had hoped but it was fairly quick for a first formation. PT went better than I expected. I was worried about my push ups since I got thrombophlebitis due to making the mistake of changing tires less than 5 hours after giving blood. This means that I had a group of blood clots in my left arm that caused it to be very stiff and painful and slightly swollen. However, one of the great things about drill is that everything hurts less as a rule and I was still able to get out 42 in my minute which is respectable I guess. I managed 46 sit ups in a minute as well and I'm finally getting them fast enough that I'm starting to run out of steam before running out of time. My mile was terrible though. I gained 43 seconds off my best time which rather infuriated me. Although the sinus infection and phlegm cascading down my throat didn't help, they should not have hurt me that much.
However, more infuriating than my slow mile, was my general ineptitude and the fact that I proved very good at looking like an idiot this drill. While marching over to the track I realized my equilibrium was kinda off. I thought that I was marching straight until I felt PFC Garner pushing me sideways back into my spot. I proceeded to drift left slightly all of drill although I was able to make it better by intently staring at a reference point in front of me. Such a problem is not good while leading fourth squad but Garner did well enough about keeping me in line that I think only those directly behind me noticed.
Then once we reached the track we had to move off the road and ground our gear and since I was fourth squad I assumed the platoon would base off me and grounded my gear where there would be room for everyone. However, they based off of first squad which put me and the soldier who was next to my gear a few feat out of formation and I didn't notice until after Drill Sergeant Zupancic did.
After the PT test we moved over to the barracks where I was given the opportunity to be a bay leader which I haven't done before and was very excited to do. Here I believe I did well. We were able to get linens squared away very quickly and efficiently and we put together fire guard and had it posted far before we were checked on by our leadership. Luckily I also had a PFC Anderson in my bay who is a BCT grad and was able to help me with my hospital corners which was beneficial as well.
We then marched back to 521 where we drove HMMWV (humvee) simulators. Before we started I accidentally called one of the sergeants sir (which for me is something I normally call older men that I don't know well) which we aren't supposed to do but I don't think he noticed.
The simulators were really fun though. For whatever reason mine was faster than all of the other ones so I had to slow myself down the whole time but it was good. It showed how difficult it is to find people when you're being shot at too which was good to see. I also didn't realize how slow those things accelerated. I've heard they're dogs but the simulators made them seem even worse than I imagined. Overall, it was very good though.
After the simulators we went to drill and ceremony training. This was something that we drastically needed and something that I needed far more than I realized. We first worked with the four rest positions: parade rest, stand at ease, at ease, and rest. The difference in these positions involve where you place your hands and your freedom of movement from not moving at all to only having to have your base (right) foot in place. For this section Drill Sergeant Stace used me as the example and I believe I showed that I knew these well overall. However, I did not realize that my hands were slightly too far forward in parade rest so that was a very helpful thing for me. We then moved into facing movements which is the military's way of turning troops. Those I have no problem with at all while at a halt. However, I found that I actually had my timing very off while marching. I screwed that up multiple times before getting it right. It was very good for us to go over though and we had a much smoother drill because of it.
After D&C we went to a field to do Individual Movement Tactics (IMT) training. This involved the stuff you always see in movies- the crawling under wire type stuff in the form of low and high crawls. It's very simple and took very little time to do this portion. We also learned how to do what's called "scrolling a road." This is the proper way to cross a road when you run the risk of ending up under fire. The first man goes to whatever cover is available at the close side of the road to get a view of what's at the end of the road. After receiving a signal from the first man, a second man runs across the road and covers the direction down the road that the first man is not covering. After signals from the two men covering the road the rest of the team moves as quickly as possible across the road under the cover of the two men on the sides. The two men then rejoin the team and the team recounts to get accountability before continuing their mission.
After learning the basic techniques of movement we performed a basic exercise where we had to take a "machine gun nest" in a field where we had to move around a church, under some wire and across an irrigation stream. This was a fun but useful exercise and helped teach a great deal about teamwork and proper movement. It was kind of funny though; after we finished I asked Sgt Cole how he would have taken care of the nest if it was his fire team. He replied that he would stand about where we were (a few hundred yards away), note its position, and call in an artillery strike. I think that sounded like a good plan.
From IMT we moved into learning how to set up Claymore mines and throw grenades after a quick but very tasty sack dinner. The Claymores were very simple and we were informed they aren't really used anymore because of their crudeness. Very impressive destructive power though. They are every light and very simple put create a wall of BBs about 7 feet tall and 160 feet wide 100 feet. However, according to Sgt Goodman the simplicity of the Claymore often resulted in complacency and the Claymore caused a lot of friendly casualties.
The grenades were a good time to throw. They were also very simple and surprised me with the size of they're blast radius. The grenades we threw were practice dummies of M67 grenades and we threw them at orange dummy-people. We went over how to throw them, how to take cover, the importance of warning the other troops of the throw and taking cover and the basic characteristics of the grenade. An M67 can throw projectiles 230 meters and the average soldier can throw one 40 meters so taking cover is vastly important. At this station I failed again though. Our instructor asked us a question and I'm guessing I completely misheard him because when I answered the look he gave me told me I must have been way off base.
We returned to our barracks after this station and got everything there squared away. At this point I was rather disappointed with the way my leadership was going so I tried to think of what SPC McKenna had always done to be an effective bay leader since I had always liked him as bay leader. One thing that I could remember he did was he was always up and in ACUs already when he woke the rest of the bay up so I decided that I would do that so I was ready to help my guys instead of just worrying about myself. So I set one alarm for 0000 when I had fireguard and another for 0345 when I would wake up to shower and start getting ready.
During my fireguard shift I also decided I definitely need to get new running shoes. Our uniform for fireguard was our PT uniforms so I was in my running shoes while doing fireguard. One of the things that I do when I'm fireguard, which is probably unnecessary but feels right to me, is I cross the bay and recount my guys every 10 minutes. Since we're just on post and people very rarely leave the bay in the middle of the night this probably isn't needed but it helps to keep me awake and I like knowing that if asked I can give a very confident answer of who's in my bay. The only bad thing about this is that my running shoes squeak terribly. Even walking on my toes it sounded like I was walking on bubble wrap. Luckily we had three rather heavy snorers in our bay so I was decently covered up but I need to take care of that before next drill. Well, that's all for Saturday, I'll try to get a Sunday and a couple of other things up this afternoon or tomorrow.
So, this drill was IMT (Individual Movement Techniques). It was really well organized and a great time, but it ended up being a very difficult drill for me. I've decided drill is not near as much fun sick. I've had a really bad sinus infection for a few days now that totally screwed up my equilibrium and hearing which made marching really hard and my brain was a bit foggy so my posting might be a bit less detailed this month although it really was good training and I learned a lot.
This drill involved my first and my last ELP meeting. PFC Gluch told me last month to come to ELP because he liked what I did as squad leader. Unfortunately however, ELP ends for the summer so this month was the last meeting. It was good to see what goes on behind the scenes though. It seems our squad leaders do a lot more outside of drill than I realized. Sergeant Seader and Sergeant Lammers were in charge of the meeting and they're both really cool so it was good to get one meeting in with them.
After ELP we divided into squads and formed up to stretch and do PT. We had large (15 person) squads this drill so it was a little sloppier than I had hoped but it was fairly quick for a first formation. PT went better than I expected. I was worried about my push ups since I got thrombophlebitis due to making the mistake of changing tires less than 5 hours after giving blood. This means that I had a group of blood clots in my left arm that caused it to be very stiff and painful and slightly swollen. However, one of the great things about drill is that everything hurts less as a rule and I was still able to get out 42 in my minute which is respectable I guess. I managed 46 sit ups in a minute as well and I'm finally getting them fast enough that I'm starting to run out of steam before running out of time. My mile was terrible though. I gained 43 seconds off my best time which rather infuriated me. Although the sinus infection and phlegm cascading down my throat didn't help, they should not have hurt me that much.
However, more infuriating than my slow mile, was my general ineptitude and the fact that I proved very good at looking like an idiot this drill. While marching over to the track I realized my equilibrium was kinda off. I thought that I was marching straight until I felt PFC Garner pushing me sideways back into my spot. I proceeded to drift left slightly all of drill although I was able to make it better by intently staring at a reference point in front of me. Such a problem is not good while leading fourth squad but Garner did well enough about keeping me in line that I think only those directly behind me noticed.
Then once we reached the track we had to move off the road and ground our gear and since I was fourth squad I assumed the platoon would base off me and grounded my gear where there would be room for everyone. However, they based off of first squad which put me and the soldier who was next to my gear a few feat out of formation and I didn't notice until after Drill Sergeant Zupancic did.
After the PT test we moved over to the barracks where I was given the opportunity to be a bay leader which I haven't done before and was very excited to do. Here I believe I did well. We were able to get linens squared away very quickly and efficiently and we put together fire guard and had it posted far before we were checked on by our leadership. Luckily I also had a PFC Anderson in my bay who is a BCT grad and was able to help me with my hospital corners which was beneficial as well.
We then marched back to 521 where we drove HMMWV (humvee) simulators. Before we started I accidentally called one of the sergeants sir (which for me is something I normally call older men that I don't know well) which we aren't supposed to do but I don't think he noticed.
The simulators were really fun though. For whatever reason mine was faster than all of the other ones so I had to slow myself down the whole time but it was good. It showed how difficult it is to find people when you're being shot at too which was good to see. I also didn't realize how slow those things accelerated. I've heard they're dogs but the simulators made them seem even worse than I imagined. Overall, it was very good though.
After the simulators we went to drill and ceremony training. This was something that we drastically needed and something that I needed far more than I realized. We first worked with the four rest positions: parade rest, stand at ease, at ease, and rest. The difference in these positions involve where you place your hands and your freedom of movement from not moving at all to only having to have your base (right) foot in place. For this section Drill Sergeant Stace used me as the example and I believe I showed that I knew these well overall. However, I did not realize that my hands were slightly too far forward in parade rest so that was a very helpful thing for me. We then moved into facing movements which is the military's way of turning troops. Those I have no problem with at all while at a halt. However, I found that I actually had my timing very off while marching. I screwed that up multiple times before getting it right. It was very good for us to go over though and we had a much smoother drill because of it.
After D&C we went to a field to do Individual Movement Tactics (IMT) training. This involved the stuff you always see in movies- the crawling under wire type stuff in the form of low and high crawls. It's very simple and took very little time to do this portion. We also learned how to do what's called "scrolling a road." This is the proper way to cross a road when you run the risk of ending up under fire. The first man goes to whatever cover is available at the close side of the road to get a view of what's at the end of the road. After receiving a signal from the first man, a second man runs across the road and covers the direction down the road that the first man is not covering. After signals from the two men covering the road the rest of the team moves as quickly as possible across the road under the cover of the two men on the sides. The two men then rejoin the team and the team recounts to get accountability before continuing their mission.
After learning the basic techniques of movement we performed a basic exercise where we had to take a "machine gun nest" in a field where we had to move around a church, under some wire and across an irrigation stream. This was a fun but useful exercise and helped teach a great deal about teamwork and proper movement. It was kind of funny though; after we finished I asked Sgt Cole how he would have taken care of the nest if it was his fire team. He replied that he would stand about where we were (a few hundred yards away), note its position, and call in an artillery strike. I think that sounded like a good plan.
From IMT we moved into learning how to set up Claymore mines and throw grenades after a quick but very tasty sack dinner. The Claymores were very simple and we were informed they aren't really used anymore because of their crudeness. Very impressive destructive power though. They are every light and very simple put create a wall of BBs about 7 feet tall and 160 feet wide 100 feet. However, according to Sgt Goodman the simplicity of the Claymore often resulted in complacency and the Claymore caused a lot of friendly casualties.
The grenades were a good time to throw. They were also very simple and surprised me with the size of they're blast radius. The grenades we threw were practice dummies of M67 grenades and we threw them at orange dummy-people. We went over how to throw them, how to take cover, the importance of warning the other troops of the throw and taking cover and the basic characteristics of the grenade. An M67 can throw projectiles 230 meters and the average soldier can throw one 40 meters so taking cover is vastly important. At this station I failed again though. Our instructor asked us a question and I'm guessing I completely misheard him because when I answered the look he gave me told me I must have been way off base.
We returned to our barracks after this station and got everything there squared away. At this point I was rather disappointed with the way my leadership was going so I tried to think of what SPC McKenna had always done to be an effective bay leader since I had always liked him as bay leader. One thing that I could remember he did was he was always up and in ACUs already when he woke the rest of the bay up so I decided that I would do that so I was ready to help my guys instead of just worrying about myself. So I set one alarm for 0000 when I had fireguard and another for 0345 when I would wake up to shower and start getting ready.
During my fireguard shift I also decided I definitely need to get new running shoes. Our uniform for fireguard was our PT uniforms so I was in my running shoes while doing fireguard. One of the things that I do when I'm fireguard, which is probably unnecessary but feels right to me, is I cross the bay and recount my guys every 10 minutes. Since we're just on post and people very rarely leave the bay in the middle of the night this probably isn't needed but it helps to keep me awake and I like knowing that if asked I can give a very confident answer of who's in my bay. The only bad thing about this is that my running shoes squeak terribly. Even walking on my toes it sounded like I was walking on bubble wrap. Luckily we had three rather heavy snorers in our bay so I was decently covered up but I need to take care of that before next drill. Well, that's all for Saturday, I'll try to get a Sunday and a couple of other things up this afternoon or tomorrow.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
March Drill (Sunday)
So Sunday was our big hands on day. We did tons of classes on Saturday (see Saturday posting) so that we could just do hands on and get out as early as possible on Sunday. Our goal Sunday was to practice all of our bleeding control techniques, put IVs in each other and completer our AARs.
We woke up at 0445 and cleaned up the barracks. This went decently smoothly although I had to count our sheets three times because I found a pillowcase in one of the bundles during my first recount. That kinda sucked but it didn't take too much longer and we still were able to get our barracks totally squared away and had accountability for everyone a good half hour before the drill sergeants showed up.
After a quick breakfast in the chow hall we marched back to building 521 to begin practicing. We started with going over evaluating casualties and treating hemorrhaging, flail chests, etc. Then we had a long time to ask questions and go over mock situations which was very helpful. We also got to hear some more crazy stories from the medic which was cool.
We then had a pretty intense demonstration from the medics on how to put in an IV. They did it with a 14 gauge needle (which is big enough to fit an 18ga inside which is what they use when you give blood) so that we could see better. It bled a lot simply because it was so big and was dripping all down his arm. It was kinda gross and one kid started having problems due to seeing so much of it. Then, to illustrate the importance of taping down your IV line properly, she taped it to his arm and then started to throw the bag. Luckily it just bounced from the tape instead of yanking catheter out of his arm. It made one kid pass out though.
I asked Private Ware to stick me since she seems to be a very stable, steady person and I thought she'd be good at figuring it out. We were the second pair at our table and I ended up being right. She stuck me perfectly and barely made me bleed at all. It was pretty cool. She hooked me up to a 500mL bag of some Sodium Phosphate fluid or something that they use to rehydrate people. It was cool because it all just kinda drips in and you have to keep the bag held up high to keep enough pressure to put fluids into your vein instead of having the line and bag fill with blood. I don't know if it's a bad thing at all but I kinda thought it was fun to bring it up and down and watch the blood flow in and out of my arm. Kinda cool for some reason.
My bag finished emptying just in time to pull the catheter as all of the squad leaders left to my first ELP (Emerging Leaders Program) AAR (After Action Review for those who forgot). We went over how we did things and whether or not we did well in leading everyone and figuring out where everyone needed to be. One person who I didn't really know couldn't seem to shut up and made the AAR a bit of a mess but it was cool to be involved in the process. After AAR, PFC Gluch told me that I did well enough as squad leader that they want me coming to ELP from now on which is way cool. I don't know if they have enough spots to have me as a squad leader but PVT Majors was one and he just shipped so maybe I'll get a chance again. Either way, I'll get to go to ELP meetings and learn how they do things.
When we left ELP I got to start trying to stick people myself. The first guy I did already had two holes in him when I got to him and I only managed to stick another hole in him and couldn't get anything. The medic thought I was too nervous so he had me take a break and try again on someone else but I just couldn't see his veins. I also think I need to start eating with chop sticks because the way you have to hold those needles was kinda awkward and I wasn't very steady. I ended up missing on the second guy too but I was finally able to hit PFC Goodman and she said that no one has been able to successfully stick her before since she's so small (5'1" 111lb) PFC Goodman stuck me as well since I have such easy veins and she did really well. It bled quite a bit for some reason but it wasn't a painful stick at all. It actually hurt even less than PVT Ware's did on my other arm. For some reason both arms showed a bruise starting Tuesday or Wednesday but they were both very good sticks.
Once everyone successfully stuck somebody we did a quick AAR and we were able to get out around 1530. It was a great drill overall and I learned a ton about not only CLS duties but how to try to help lead people as well albeit in a limited leadership role. Very fun though and I can't wait to go back.
We woke up at 0445 and cleaned up the barracks. This went decently smoothly although I had to count our sheets three times because I found a pillowcase in one of the bundles during my first recount. That kinda sucked but it didn't take too much longer and we still were able to get our barracks totally squared away and had accountability for everyone a good half hour before the drill sergeants showed up.
After a quick breakfast in the chow hall we marched back to building 521 to begin practicing. We started with going over evaluating casualties and treating hemorrhaging, flail chests, etc. Then we had a long time to ask questions and go over mock situations which was very helpful. We also got to hear some more crazy stories from the medic which was cool.
We then had a pretty intense demonstration from the medics on how to put in an IV. They did it with a 14 gauge needle (which is big enough to fit an 18ga inside which is what they use when you give blood) so that we could see better. It bled a lot simply because it was so big and was dripping all down his arm. It was kinda gross and one kid started having problems due to seeing so much of it. Then, to illustrate the importance of taping down your IV line properly, she taped it to his arm and then started to throw the bag. Luckily it just bounced from the tape instead of yanking catheter out of his arm. It made one kid pass out though.I asked Private Ware to stick me since she seems to be a very stable, steady person and I thought she'd be good at figuring it out. We were the second pair at our table and I ended up being right. She stuck me perfectly and barely made me bleed at all. It was pretty cool. She hooked me up to a 500mL bag of some Sodium Phosphate fluid or something that they use to rehydrate people. It was cool because it all just kinda drips in and you have to keep the bag held up high to keep enough pressure to put fluids into your vein instead of having the line and bag fill with blood. I don't know if it's a bad thing at all but I kinda thought it was fun to bring it up and down and watch the blood flow in and out of my arm. Kinda cool for some reason.
My bag finished emptying just in time to pull the catheter as all of the squad leaders left to my first ELP (Emerging Leaders Program) AAR (After Action Review for those who forgot). We went over how we did things and whether or not we did well in leading everyone and figuring out where everyone needed to be. One person who I didn't really know couldn't seem to shut up and made the AAR a bit of a mess but it was cool to be involved in the process. After AAR, PFC Gluch told me that I did well enough as squad leader that they want me coming to ELP from now on which is way cool. I don't know if they have enough spots to have me as a squad leader but PVT Majors was one and he just shipped so maybe I'll get a chance again. Either way, I'll get to go to ELP meetings and learn how they do things.
When we left ELP I got to start trying to stick people myself. The first guy I did already had two holes in him when I got to him and I only managed to stick another hole in him and couldn't get anything. The medic thought I was too nervous so he had me take a break and try again on someone else but I just couldn't see his veins. I also think I need to start eating with chop sticks because the way you have to hold those needles was kinda awkward and I wasn't very steady. I ended up missing on the second guy too but I was finally able to hit PFC Goodman and she said that no one has been able to successfully stick her before since she's so small (5'1" 111lb) PFC Goodman stuck me as well since I have such easy veins and she did really well. It bled quite a bit for some reason but it wasn't a painful stick at all. It actually hurt even less than PVT Ware's did on my other arm. For some reason both arms showed a bruise starting Tuesday or Wednesday but they were both very good sticks.
Once everyone successfully stuck somebody we did a quick AAR and we were able to get out around 1530. It was a great drill overall and I learned a ton about not only CLS duties but how to try to help lead people as well albeit in a limited leadership role. Very fun though and I can't wait to go back.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Drill Hangover
I'm finding that I come home from drill with what I will describe as a drill hangover. On Monday, I had to avoid answering questions to avoid replying hooah to almost everything which sounds really weird if you've never been to drill. I almost snapped to parade rest when talking to my auto tech teacher (who kinda reminds me of a cranky version of Sgt Walls), I nearly yelled, "make a hole" when my friends mom had to squeeze through a group of my other friends, I felt entirely wrong standing in front of doors and defaulted to parade rest while waiting for my girlfriend to come to the door. I'm finding my only wish with the Guard is that I could spend more time on post. And of course, by the time next drill rolls around I'll have to recondition myself to do all those things again although that is becoming easier and easier the more drills I do.
More Reasons I'm Proud to be Part of This
I am constantly given more reasons to be proud of the US military. The stories and attitudes of the men who have been deployed are often awe inspiring.
There is a very obvious difference between us and those we fight and this was illustrated in the stories from the medics who came to drill to teach us. All of our instructors have been deployed to either Iraq and Afghanistan and I'm sure they could sit and tell stories for days. I usually give names but I don't know how to spell some of them so I'll just refer to all of them in general terms to avoid messing them up.
The most striking story was that of one of the guys one of our medics served with. There is a video of him being shot in the butt and scrambling behind a Humvee which I'm sure is simply seen as either sad or comical to most who see it. However, what the video doesn't show is what happened later. Shortly after the medic was shot, the other guys who were with him found and shot his assailant. He was wounded but did not die and the medic who got shot treated the man who had just shot him in an attempt to kill him. If that isn't noble I don't know what is. SFC Stace says he has a picture of the two at their aid station. I don't believe anyone could argue with SFC Stace when he said that although we kick butt, we do it in an honorable way.
On the flip side, one of the other combat medics that came in and taught us told a story about a young (I think he said 10yr old) kid that he worked on over in Afghanistan. The Army was test firing a weapon in a huge open field and an insurgent group decided to take advantage of it and mortared a local village nearby in hopes of blaming it on the Americans. Where we save as many lives as we can while still providing security, they repeatedly show their willingness to slaughter anyone and everyone if they can possibly use it to make a point. If we are unwilling to stand up against that grade of men, I would hate to meet the people who would be a war worth fighting.
That same medic told a story of a local man who's entire family was killed by the Taliban. He ended up becoming a gate guard at the American base and was fiercely pro-US. He carried around a stick which the Sergeant motioned to be about 5 inches across and would promptly take care of any of the locals who would come to the base and do things they weren't supposed to. He said he often had to go out and treat locals who he had bopped on the head. Stories like that are the reason I believe both these wars were winnable from the start. In general, our soldiers are admirable men and women and our way of life and our ideals are good. I have a hard time believing the Afghan people would rather live under the Taliban or the Iraqis under Saddam.
We had one other experience with another soldier who was there on other business when we were in the chow hall. He came up behind us in line for chow and when told that he was welcome to go ahead of us (there were probably more than 40 of us ahead of him) he responded that he had all the time in the world. He was on post to request another deployment. He has bee on three voluntary deployments thus far and told us that he has another one in him before he retires. He said though, that the army doesn't seem to agree which is "why they game [him] that stupid purple heart." He commented that for some reason, "when your vehicle explodes and you wake up naked in a Blackhawk (I'm guessing MEDEVAC) the army thinks its a bad thing. To me that just sounds like a good Friday night." One deployment is honorable, volunteering for more is admirable, doing so despite being a casualty, shows a level of commitment that few people have to anything.
There is a very obvious difference between us and those we fight and this was illustrated in the stories from the medics who came to drill to teach us. All of our instructors have been deployed to either Iraq and Afghanistan and I'm sure they could sit and tell stories for days. I usually give names but I don't know how to spell some of them so I'll just refer to all of them in general terms to avoid messing them up.
The most striking story was that of one of the guys one of our medics served with. There is a video of him being shot in the butt and scrambling behind a Humvee which I'm sure is simply seen as either sad or comical to most who see it. However, what the video doesn't show is what happened later. Shortly after the medic was shot, the other guys who were with him found and shot his assailant. He was wounded but did not die and the medic who got shot treated the man who had just shot him in an attempt to kill him. If that isn't noble I don't know what is. SFC Stace says he has a picture of the two at their aid station. I don't believe anyone could argue with SFC Stace when he said that although we kick butt, we do it in an honorable way.
On the flip side, one of the other combat medics that came in and taught us told a story about a young (I think he said 10yr old) kid that he worked on over in Afghanistan. The Army was test firing a weapon in a huge open field and an insurgent group decided to take advantage of it and mortared a local village nearby in hopes of blaming it on the Americans. Where we save as many lives as we can while still providing security, they repeatedly show their willingness to slaughter anyone and everyone if they can possibly use it to make a point. If we are unwilling to stand up against that grade of men, I would hate to meet the people who would be a war worth fighting.
That same medic told a story of a local man who's entire family was killed by the Taliban. He ended up becoming a gate guard at the American base and was fiercely pro-US. He carried around a stick which the Sergeant motioned to be about 5 inches across and would promptly take care of any of the locals who would come to the base and do things they weren't supposed to. He said he often had to go out and treat locals who he had bopped on the head. Stories like that are the reason I believe both these wars were winnable from the start. In general, our soldiers are admirable men and women and our way of life and our ideals are good. I have a hard time believing the Afghan people would rather live under the Taliban or the Iraqis under Saddam.
We had one other experience with another soldier who was there on other business when we were in the chow hall. He came up behind us in line for chow and when told that he was welcome to go ahead of us (there were probably more than 40 of us ahead of him) he responded that he had all the time in the world. He was on post to request another deployment. He has bee on three voluntary deployments thus far and told us that he has another one in him before he retires. He said though, that the army doesn't seem to agree which is "why they game [him] that stupid purple heart." He commented that for some reason, "when your vehicle explodes and you wake up naked in a Blackhawk (I'm guessing MEDEVAC) the army thinks its a bad thing. To me that just sounds like a good Friday night." One deployment is honorable, volunteering for more is admirable, doing so despite being a casualty, shows a level of commitment that few people have to anything.
National Guard Punishment
I have to say, I love the way the Guard does things. The way we do discipline is great. As background our Staff Sergeant, Sgt Walls, is a woman a little unlike any I've ever met. She's incredibly thorough, super dedicated and a she certainly commands respect. She's very helpful to us and in return she asks for four things in a way that only she could. These are 1. Checking our mypay accounts, 2. Checking our GRAP accounts, 3. Checking our AKO accounts and most importantly, keeping her in the loop. Every month she calls us to make sure we're coming out to drill and got our drill letters and leaves the same message every month if we don't answer and tells us to call her back. She also checks the ADA County Sheriff website every day to make sure none of us got arrested and will call us if we didn't call her before she saw our picture on the site. Each drill at AAR we get to here her speech about keeping her in the loop, calling her back, etc. It's really not that hard and she's not a scary person but for some reason people don't do it. I don't get it.
We are also generally able to get out of drill for a while for things like dances and whatnot if we let them know ahead of time because it is understood that many of us are still in school and you can't get those experiences back. However, going along with Sgt. Walls's "keep me in the loop" mantra, we have to let them know ahead of time.
Three of our soldiers, who are referred to as the "Three Amigos" were all going to their school's "Sweetheart's" dance Saturday night during drill. However, they made the mistake of not telling our cadre until Friday. They were still allowed to go but they had the opportunity to pay for it.
Instead of doing something mundane like pushups the three amigos were required to carry around Slagathor (a fake Christmas tree w/lights), the Baseplate (a Christmas tree stand), and the Bombshell (a bowling-ball-sized river rock painted to look like a bomb with a fuse) for all of drill. During our class on tourniquets Slagathor inevitably started bleeding profusely and had to be fixed up, pictures of which will assuredly be in the next drill letter. We had a great time messing with them all of drill as they had to keep accountability of their items.
To cap it off, they had to take said items to the dance and get pictures of themselves and their dates with their items. Unfortunately, Slagathor, the Baseplate, and the Bombshell were not allowed into the dance due to their high schools apparent racism against green, gold, and fused people but they did get photographic evidence as instructed.
During AAR I asked MSG Gordley if their was any chance I could get those pictures for the blog. (I found out last month that they read the blog although I never even told them it existed. They are the government I guess. Luckily I honestly don't have anything bad to say about the Guard or my cadre so I didn't get myself busted in the three months of postings before I knew they read it.) He likes the blog so he made the three amigos get my email address and they were told to email me the picture so I will post that as soon as I get it from them. I'm looking forward to seeing it myself as well.
GOT THE PICTURES
Sunday, March 1, 2009
March Drill (Saturday)
Okay, lots to post this month so bear with me. I'll break this up as best I can to keep it from just being a big boring block of text.
This month consisted of Combat Life Saver Hands on Tasks and Tactical Casualty Care. Every team out in the field will have a Combat Life Saver who is responsible for administering emergency first aid to casualties, assist medics if available, and arrange of evacuation of the casualty if needed. We did not have the time to become completely CLS certified but we did get through some great stuff. According to the ppt we used as a visual which I was able to find on Google “If during the next war you could do only two things, 1) place a tourniquet and 2) treat a tension pneumothorax, then you can probably save between 70 and 90 percent of all the preventable deaths on the battlefield.” -COL Ron Bellamy
We learned how to do both of these things as well as other pressure dressings, pressure points, IVs, 9-line MEDEVACs, casualty evaluation, nasopharyngeal airways, etc. Due to the technical nature and extent of what we learned I will post the things we learned in a separate posting for those who want to read it and for my own benefit in rewriting what we learned. For those who are uninterested in the specifics however, I will make this posting simply the meat and potatoes of what happened at drill.
As before, I showed up on post at 0825 to get my Goretex and MRE (grilled chicken this time, my second favorite). Just before we started dividing into squads, PFC Gluch, Platoon 2s Platoon Guide, informed me that I would be squad leader for fourth squad, second platoon. During drill this is obviously a much easier job than it would be in a field environment and basically just consists of keeping accountability for those in your squad, leading your squad while marching, creating details when tasks need to be done and just helping out your troops when needed. I also had a patch for my right arm to denote that I was squad leader. My squad consisted of PVT Barta, PVT Bennet, PVT Knudsen, PVT Stock, PVT McKie, PVT Lee-Harkins, PVT Gable, PVT Ware (who was a huge help), myself and one other soldier who's name I'll remember eventually. I was also supposed to have PVT Clack but he was unable to be at drill.
At first I didn't know my squad's names at all but after checking all of them off on my sheet so many times I was eventually able to get their names down. Our first formation took a little long because of name recognition problems and such but starting next month we're changing the way we do our first formation and it will be much more efficient.
After our first formation we moved to our standard PT test. I've continued to improve in PT due to working out with Norah every day (except for sit-ups, I can't get those to go faster.). I'm now at 48 pushups/minute, 44 sit-ups/minute and a 6:14 mile. This month we ran on the track instead of our road course so we had to do 4 laps instead of just 1. Normally I hate track running because it's so repetitive and their doesn't seem to be an end in sight but it worked pretty well this time. It was nice being able to hear our times from SGT Seader and it was cool to be able to lap people as we ran. The track we ran is somewhat dynamic (not a lot but it's not just a pure oval and it was made vastly more interesting by the huge gap between the front and back of the pack. It was a good PT test overall and I'm glad to see that my running is helping since I really do not like running.
After PT we went back to the barracks and had chow, got our linens, and had our time to get cleaned up. Luckily I had Grilled Chicken for my lunch which is very good and I think there was a bag of m&ms if I remember right. I also got to freshen up on my hospital corners with SPC McKenna's help.
We then left the barracks and marched over to room 440 where we had our classroom instruction time on how to be a CLS (Combat Life Saver). I don't remember exactly how long we ended up being in there but it was a very long time. We were having some trouble with people starting to fall asleep and having to get up but I didn't think it was that bad. We had breaks to get up for a bit and had a short hands on section to break things up so it wasn't that difficult. I think the main thing that helped me though was the fact that I was taking notes. I have about 8 pages worth in a notepad that came in our Battlebooks. I think that made a big difference in keeping me awake. (Everything in bold is what we learned, if you don't care, just skip it and go to what we did.)
We started out learning how to clear airways and fix breathing problems then moved into different ways of controlling bleeding. We started with Emergency Trauma Dressings, moved into tourniquets (army has cool tourniquets btw) and learned the different ways to use them and other things to do with hemorrhaging extremities. We also went over a really cool new thing that the army just started using called Chitosan bandages which I had never heard of before. They're made for massive arterial bleeding and are made out of the chitin in shrimp shells (people with shrimp allergies are allergic to the shrimp proteins, chitin is hypoallergenic). None of our instructors had used one before since they're very new but it turns out a good family friend of ours had one used on an injury to his wrist once and it worked very well.
One of the coolest things we learned was how to treat collapsed lungs and tension pneumothoraxes caused by puncturing chest wounds. This section included diagnosing cyanosis (deoxygenated blood basically) and identifying sternum separation which causes what's called a "flail chest". We during these classes we also learned about the different recovery positions to put the casualties in after treating them. (Again, I'll go into what we learned in detail in the other posting.)
We then went into basic combat casualty care and our responsibilities as a CLS. One thing that was very highly stressed was the fact that, as much as it sucks, you don't fix your buddy until you have fire superiority and the fact that you're a soldier first and a CLS second. The three responsibilities we have are to 1. Save preventable deaths, 2. Prevent additional casualties and 3. Complete the mission and we have to remember that the care we can administer on a battlefield is going to be limited and that's just the nature of the beast. Our priorities when giving care are bleeding, then traumatic chest wounds, IV, splinting fractures to prep for EVAC, communicating status, starting a field medical card and transmitting a 9-line MEDEVAC request (last one isn't necessarily in that order). All of this is done after checking for ABC's (airway, breathing, circulation).
We then went through how to evaluate and classify a casualty while dealing with the complications of being on a battlefield.
Our final class for the day was the 9-line MEDEVAC request. The lines are 1. location, 2. radio frequency, call signal (basically how to get a hold of you while EVAC is en route), 3. # of casualties by precedence, 4. Special equipment required, 5. # of casualties by type, 6. Security level of pickup site, 7. Method of marking the pickup site, 8. Casualty nationality and status, 9. Nuclear, Biological, Chemical contamination (not really used).
During a break in our classroom time MSG Gordley called me out into another room and promoted me which was kinda cool. One of the nice things the National Guard does is massively incentivize recruiting (although that may change since we're doing so well) and we have a program called "Stripes for Buddies". I just had a friend join up and through this program I was able to get promoted. I am now a Private First Class (PFC) and will remain PFC until after Basic Training, unfortunately you can only go as high as PFC (which is an E-3) before going to BCT.
After our classroom time we went to the chow hall for a hot dinner which was very nice. The food is actually surprisingly good in the chow hall, it's kinda like going to scout camp. This was where we met the guy going for a fourth deployment that I mentioned in my other posting. I ate dinner with PVT Ware, PFC Gluch and PFC Markle; all of whom are great soldiers. PVT Ware was in my squad, PFC Gluch was my Patrol Guide, and PFC Markle is another one of the squad leaders. During dinner I found out tat PVT Ware's father is Command Sergeant Major of a Special Forces unit and she's one of 17 kids. That's a pretty intense story if you ask me.
After chow we went to another suicide prevention briefing that the army mandated everyone do. This one involved a video of a soldier who's life essentially just sucked (it was a fake story but a very plausible one). He made the mistake of getting engaged one month before deployment (it's amazing how many people do stuff like that and expect things to work out) and it went terribly for him. His fiancee got impregnated by his good friend from high school who then spent one of his paychecks and was driving his car and essentially took his spot in life while he was stuck 10,000 miles away. He of course became rather depressed and it affected his performance on the job. He was finally able to get things together a little by talking to his battle buddy but his battle buddy got shot and killed. When he finally started getting over that he got an email that his old fiancee had married the guy who impregnated her.
After watching the video we went through and watched it again and it was broken up and we put in choices on how the poor guy should react to each change in his situation. We guided him through the process of talking to his chaplain, then a guy on the Combat Stress Prevention Team, and eventually getting a grasp on his situation without endangering himself or anyone else. It was actually a very well-done briefing although by the end of it all of us wanted to see the fiancee get what was coming to her.
After the briefing we were able to go back to the barracks and retire for the night. This month I volunteered for the 0100-0200 fireguard shift with PVT Noteboom since for the last few months I've taken the first fireguard shift and it was time for me to take a bad one. After my shift we woke up PFC Barnett and PVT Hobbes and that was the end of my Saturday at drill. I'll post Sunday tomorrow, I don't think it will be as long.
This month consisted of Combat Life Saver Hands on Tasks and Tactical Casualty Care. Every team out in the field will have a Combat Life Saver who is responsible for administering emergency first aid to casualties, assist medics if available, and arrange of evacuation of the casualty if needed. We did not have the time to become completely CLS certified but we did get through some great stuff. According to the ppt we used as a visual which I was able to find on Google “If during the next war you could do only two things, 1) place a tourniquet and 2) treat a tension pneumothorax, then you can probably save between 70 and 90 percent of all the preventable deaths on the battlefield.” -COL Ron Bellamy
We learned how to do both of these things as well as other pressure dressings, pressure points, IVs, 9-line MEDEVACs, casualty evaluation, nasopharyngeal airways, etc. Due to the technical nature and extent of what we learned I will post the things we learned in a separate posting for those who want to read it and for my own benefit in rewriting what we learned. For those who are uninterested in the specifics however, I will make this posting simply the meat and potatoes of what happened at drill.
As before, I showed up on post at 0825 to get my Goretex and MRE (grilled chicken this time, my second favorite). Just before we started dividing into squads, PFC Gluch, Platoon 2s Platoon Guide, informed me that I would be squad leader for fourth squad, second platoon. During drill this is obviously a much easier job than it would be in a field environment and basically just consists of keeping accountability for those in your squad, leading your squad while marching, creating details when tasks need to be done and just helping out your troops when needed. I also had a patch for my right arm to denote that I was squad leader. My squad consisted of PVT Barta, PVT Bennet, PVT Knudsen, PVT Stock, PVT McKie, PVT Lee-Harkins, PVT Gable, PVT Ware (who was a huge help), myself and one other soldier who's name I'll remember eventually. I was also supposed to have PVT Clack but he was unable to be at drill.
At first I didn't know my squad's names at all but after checking all of them off on my sheet so many times I was eventually able to get their names down. Our first formation took a little long because of name recognition problems and such but starting next month we're changing the way we do our first formation and it will be much more efficient.
After our first formation we moved to our standard PT test. I've continued to improve in PT due to working out with Norah every day (except for sit-ups, I can't get those to go faster.). I'm now at 48 pushups/minute, 44 sit-ups/minute and a 6:14 mile. This month we ran on the track instead of our road course so we had to do 4 laps instead of just 1. Normally I hate track running because it's so repetitive and their doesn't seem to be an end in sight but it worked pretty well this time. It was nice being able to hear our times from SGT Seader and it was cool to be able to lap people as we ran. The track we ran is somewhat dynamic (not a lot but it's not just a pure oval and it was made vastly more interesting by the huge gap between the front and back of the pack. It was a good PT test overall and I'm glad to see that my running is helping since I really do not like running.
After PT we went back to the barracks and had chow, got our linens, and had our time to get cleaned up. Luckily I had Grilled Chicken for my lunch which is very good and I think there was a bag of m&ms if I remember right. I also got to freshen up on my hospital corners with SPC McKenna's help.
We then left the barracks and marched over to room 440 where we had our classroom instruction time on how to be a CLS (Combat Life Saver). I don't remember exactly how long we ended up being in there but it was a very long time. We were having some trouble with people starting to fall asleep and having to get up but I didn't think it was that bad. We had breaks to get up for a bit and had a short hands on section to break things up so it wasn't that difficult. I think the main thing that helped me though was the fact that I was taking notes. I have about 8 pages worth in a notepad that came in our Battlebooks. I think that made a big difference in keeping me awake. (Everything in bold is what we learned, if you don't care, just skip it and go to what we did.)
We started out learning how to clear airways and fix breathing problems then moved into different ways of controlling bleeding. We started with Emergency Trauma Dressings, moved into tourniquets (army has cool tourniquets btw) and learned the different ways to use them and other things to do with hemorrhaging extremities. We also went over a really cool new thing that the army just started using called Chitosan bandages which I had never heard of before. They're made for massive arterial bleeding and are made out of the chitin in shrimp shells (people with shrimp allergies are allergic to the shrimp proteins, chitin is hypoallergenic). None of our instructors had used one before since they're very new but it turns out a good family friend of ours had one used on an injury to his wrist once and it worked very well.
One of the coolest things we learned was how to treat collapsed lungs and tension pneumothoraxes caused by puncturing chest wounds. This section included diagnosing cyanosis (deoxygenated blood basically) and identifying sternum separation which causes what's called a "flail chest". We during these classes we also learned about the different recovery positions to put the casualties in after treating them. (Again, I'll go into what we learned in detail in the other posting.)
We then went into basic combat casualty care and our responsibilities as a CLS. One thing that was very highly stressed was the fact that, as much as it sucks, you don't fix your buddy until you have fire superiority and the fact that you're a soldier first and a CLS second. The three responsibilities we have are to 1. Save preventable deaths, 2. Prevent additional casualties and 3. Complete the mission and we have to remember that the care we can administer on a battlefield is going to be limited and that's just the nature of the beast. Our priorities when giving care are bleeding, then traumatic chest wounds, IV, splinting fractures to prep for EVAC, communicating status, starting a field medical card and transmitting a 9-line MEDEVAC request (last one isn't necessarily in that order). All of this is done after checking for ABC's (airway, breathing, circulation).
We then went through how to evaluate and classify a casualty while dealing with the complications of being on a battlefield.
Our final class for the day was the 9-line MEDEVAC request. The lines are 1. location, 2. radio frequency, call signal (basically how to get a hold of you while EVAC is en route), 3. # of casualties by precedence, 4. Special equipment required, 5. # of casualties by type, 6. Security level of pickup site, 7. Method of marking the pickup site, 8. Casualty nationality and status, 9. Nuclear, Biological, Chemical contamination (not really used).
During a break in our classroom time MSG Gordley called me out into another room and promoted me which was kinda cool. One of the nice things the National Guard does is massively incentivize recruiting (although that may change since we're doing so well) and we have a program called "Stripes for Buddies". I just had a friend join up and through this program I was able to get promoted. I am now a Private First Class (PFC) and will remain PFC until after Basic Training, unfortunately you can only go as high as PFC (which is an E-3) before going to BCT.
After our classroom time we went to the chow hall for a hot dinner which was very nice. The food is actually surprisingly good in the chow hall, it's kinda like going to scout camp. This was where we met the guy going for a fourth deployment that I mentioned in my other posting. I ate dinner with PVT Ware, PFC Gluch and PFC Markle; all of whom are great soldiers. PVT Ware was in my squad, PFC Gluch was my Patrol Guide, and PFC Markle is another one of the squad leaders. During dinner I found out tat PVT Ware's father is Command Sergeant Major of a Special Forces unit and she's one of 17 kids. That's a pretty intense story if you ask me.
After chow we went to another suicide prevention briefing that the army mandated everyone do. This one involved a video of a soldier who's life essentially just sucked (it was a fake story but a very plausible one). He made the mistake of getting engaged one month before deployment (it's amazing how many people do stuff like that and expect things to work out) and it went terribly for him. His fiancee got impregnated by his good friend from high school who then spent one of his paychecks and was driving his car and essentially took his spot in life while he was stuck 10,000 miles away. He of course became rather depressed and it affected his performance on the job. He was finally able to get things together a little by talking to his battle buddy but his battle buddy got shot and killed. When he finally started getting over that he got an email that his old fiancee had married the guy who impregnated her.
After watching the video we went through and watched it again and it was broken up and we put in choices on how the poor guy should react to each change in his situation. We guided him through the process of talking to his chaplain, then a guy on the Combat Stress Prevention Team, and eventually getting a grasp on his situation without endangering himself or anyone else. It was actually a very well-done briefing although by the end of it all of us wanted to see the fiancee get what was coming to her.
After the briefing we were able to go back to the barracks and retire for the night. This month I volunteered for the 0100-0200 fireguard shift with PVT Noteboom since for the last few months I've taken the first fireguard shift and it was time for me to take a bad one. After my shift we woke up PFC Barnett and PVT Hobbes and that was the end of my Saturday at drill. I'll post Sunday tomorrow, I don't think it will be as long.
Pictures
By the way, I feel like my posts should have pictures to go with the text. If anyone reading this has pictures that would be usable please email them to me.
Stories from Drill (#3-Sgt Waters)
So Sgt Waters is one of my favorite guys in our platoon. I met with him when I was first looking at joining up and he gave me a tour of Gowen Field which is my base. He was an MP(military police) when he started and then became a security specialist later on. He also spent time driving in a convoy but I don't know if this was during his time in one of these MOSs or if it was separate. We had a great time going around the base and meeting with Mr. Queen (one of the Apache pilots), one of the fixed wing pilots (whose name escapes me), and some of the other guys on post. Very nice guy.
He's told a few stories about his time in Iraq which I found interesting.
The first story that I remember from him he told when I asked something about whether or not they ever had a problem with rocket attacks or something. He told me of a time when he and a few other guys were driving a suburban around the perimeter of the base. Their base in Iraq had a 2.5 mile perimeter making it a fairly sizable compound. As they were driving around a rocket was fired at the base. It went completely over the base and landed outside the perimeter, about 6-8 feet from Sgt Waters Suburban. They were obviously shaken but when they returned to base he said it was comforting to find the rocket hadn't even scratched the paint and it was nice to think that the people he was fighting couldn't even hit that large a base and their weapons had that small of an effective radius. Now, the point of this story isn't to diminish the fact that the people we're fighting are dangerous and the war in Iraq is certainly no picnic by any means. It's simply nice to know that 90% of the time our enemies succeed it's through luck and we can win this war simply because we are good at what we do.
Sgt Waters told many stories of his time as a driver in Iraq. His job mainly involved driving high powered people from one side of Iraq to the other. He said it was pretty nice driving people of high rank and dignitaries because it allowed him to get good equipment more easily than the other guys. He said it was also cool going around with them because it gave him a different look into what was going on in the area as he drove from meeting to meeting and negotiation to negotiation. He talked about how his favorite thing from his deployment was gaining that perspective and talked about how you can listen to talk show hosts babble all day long and never really know what goes on in the way he does from being there. His stories are very interesting and he's great to talk to because he really seems to have learned a ton while he was over there.
We also spoke for a while about IEDs and the affect that they have. I guess over in Iraq the convoys go absolutely everywhere going as fast as they can (which, for a fully armored Humvee, is about 80mph). They do this because people are smart enough that they no longer attempt to fight us directly except on rare occasions. The fighting is now done simply be a guy with a button who's trying to hit it at the right time to do some damage. This timing is obviously made more difficult as a convoys speed increases. He said they actually had the road explode behind him fairly often. There were a few times though where an IED went off in the middle of the convoy and disabled them and they were ambushed on some of these occasions. Luckily he was there later in the war and our strategies and equipment is much better at dealing with IEDs then when we first went in. The new Humvees are about 2000 pounds heavier than the old ones and have much better protection. One big problem was that the flames from the IEDs would come through the transmission tunnel and the firewall and into the vehicle. This problem has been addressed and that has drastically reduced casualties. They also have changed tactics to where when a Humvee is disabled, the soldiers very rarely get out for very long. Instead they have tow bars they just slap onto the dead Humvee and they drag it to somewhere safe to avoid a second, generally larger IED which is popular after the convoy has been stopped. Because of such improvements his convoy only had two casualties despite multiple IED hits. One man went home due to a piece of shrapnel in his wrist and one with a piece of shrapnel in his ankle. Again, that's comforting to hear. Of course, the insurgencies methods are improving as well but I have faith in our organization and our commanders to stay ahead of the curve.
Well, Sgt Waters has told more stories than that but I'll leave this posting there, maybe I'll have time to put up more later. I still have a few more people's stories to do though.
He's told a few stories about his time in Iraq which I found interesting.
The first story that I remember from him he told when I asked something about whether or not they ever had a problem with rocket attacks or something. He told me of a time when he and a few other guys were driving a suburban around the perimeter of the base. Their base in Iraq had a 2.5 mile perimeter making it a fairly sizable compound. As they were driving around a rocket was fired at the base. It went completely over the base and landed outside the perimeter, about 6-8 feet from Sgt Waters Suburban. They were obviously shaken but when they returned to base he said it was comforting to find the rocket hadn't even scratched the paint and it was nice to think that the people he was fighting couldn't even hit that large a base and their weapons had that small of an effective radius. Now, the point of this story isn't to diminish the fact that the people we're fighting are dangerous and the war in Iraq is certainly no picnic by any means. It's simply nice to know that 90% of the time our enemies succeed it's through luck and we can win this war simply because we are good at what we do.
Sgt Waters told many stories of his time as a driver in Iraq. His job mainly involved driving high powered people from one side of Iraq to the other. He said it was pretty nice driving people of high rank and dignitaries because it allowed him to get good equipment more easily than the other guys. He said it was also cool going around with them because it gave him a different look into what was going on in the area as he drove from meeting to meeting and negotiation to negotiation. He talked about how his favorite thing from his deployment was gaining that perspective and talked about how you can listen to talk show hosts babble all day long and never really know what goes on in the way he does from being there. His stories are very interesting and he's great to talk to because he really seems to have learned a ton while he was over there.
We also spoke for a while about IEDs and the affect that they have. I guess over in Iraq the convoys go absolutely everywhere going as fast as they can (which, for a fully armored Humvee, is about 80mph). They do this because people are smart enough that they no longer attempt to fight us directly except on rare occasions. The fighting is now done simply be a guy with a button who's trying to hit it at the right time to do some damage. This timing is obviously made more difficult as a convoys speed increases. He said they actually had the road explode behind him fairly often. There were a few times though where an IED went off in the middle of the convoy and disabled them and they were ambushed on some of these occasions. Luckily he was there later in the war and our strategies and equipment is much better at dealing with IEDs then when we first went in. The new Humvees are about 2000 pounds heavier than the old ones and have much better protection. One big problem was that the flames from the IEDs would come through the transmission tunnel and the firewall and into the vehicle. This problem has been addressed and that has drastically reduced casualties. They also have changed tactics to where when a Humvee is disabled, the soldiers very rarely get out for very long. Instead they have tow bars they just slap onto the dead Humvee and they drag it to somewhere safe to avoid a second, generally larger IED which is popular after the convoy has been stopped. Because of such improvements his convoy only had two casualties despite multiple IED hits. One man went home due to a piece of shrapnel in his wrist and one with a piece of shrapnel in his ankle. Again, that's comforting to hear. Of course, the insurgencies methods are improving as well but I have faith in our organization and our commanders to stay ahead of the curve.
Well, Sgt Waters has told more stories than that but I'll leave this posting there, maybe I'll have time to put up more later. I still have a few more people's stories to do though.
Stories from Drill (#2-Sgt Barrier)
OK, so Sgt Barrier isn't actually in the National Guard, he's a Reservist who works in the ADA County Sheriff's Office where I worked until just recently until their budget ran out. It's still a good story though.
So, first off, to me Sgt Barrier is Johnny so I'll just refer to him as that from now on since my foremost relationship with him is not military and we're not in the same branch. He has two stories that I thought were shareable on the blog.
The first was of the very beginning of his deployment to Iraq. He was a mechanic and was in Iraq a couple years back. He said the first few days they were really freaked out a few times when mortars hit the compound and they thought it was weird that they didn't really scare the guys who were already there. A few days in Johnny got called into his CO's office and while he was waiting he notice a pegboard on the wall with a map of the base on it. It was completely covered in little red thumbtacks. He asked his CO what they meant and was informed the little read tacks indicated all of the places where a mortar had hit in the last year. That freaked him out a bit.
Luckily though, the Iraqi's can't aim. Despite being there during a period where they had dozens and dozens of mortars hit his base the only had one casualty- another soldiers X Box. He said after a while you learned really well where the things would hit and they weren't really a problem although they were pretty ticked about the X Box.
He also told a story about an awesome picture they had in their shop. In it was a Talibani man on a camel. This man's eyes were all bug-eyed and he was obviously beating the camel trying to go faster. Right behind him, was an American F-16. Kinda reminds me of the saying they have about the Apache's, "Never run from an Apache, it just makes you die tired." I have to say, I'm glad to be on our side.
So, first off, to me Sgt Barrier is Johnny so I'll just refer to him as that from now on since my foremost relationship with him is not military and we're not in the same branch. He has two stories that I thought were shareable on the blog.
The first was of the very beginning of his deployment to Iraq. He was a mechanic and was in Iraq a couple years back. He said the first few days they were really freaked out a few times when mortars hit the compound and they thought it was weird that they didn't really scare the guys who were already there. A few days in Johnny got called into his CO's office and while he was waiting he notice a pegboard on the wall with a map of the base on it. It was completely covered in little red thumbtacks. He asked his CO what they meant and was informed the little read tacks indicated all of the places where a mortar had hit in the last year. That freaked him out a bit.
Luckily though, the Iraqi's can't aim. Despite being there during a period where they had dozens and dozens of mortars hit his base the only had one casualty- another soldiers X Box. He said after a while you learned really well where the things would hit and they weren't really a problem although they were pretty ticked about the X Box.
He also told a story about an awesome picture they had in their shop. In it was a Talibani man on a camel. This man's eyes were all bug-eyed and he was obviously beating the camel trying to go faster. Right behind him, was an American F-16. Kinda reminds me of the saying they have about the Apache's, "Never run from an Apache, it just makes you die tired." I have to say, I'm glad to be on our side.
Stories from Drill (#1-SFC Stace)
So, I thought it might be fun to share some stories I've heard from the guys during my drill weekends. Military stories are always interesting.
I'll start with my favorite story from my drill sergeant/recruiter. I think it's his favorite as well when talking about how we really are making a difference over in Iraq. He was a medic while he was in Iraq (another cool thing about the military, you aren't stuck in one job all the time, my drill sergeant is also a recruiter and a combat medic which is pretty cool). He was on post and a man came in with a little girl in his arms who was obviously having issues. He couldn't speak English and just kinda put her in the arms of one of the soldiers there (I don't remember if it was SFC Stace or not, I'm writing these from memory so details may be off). They got him an interpreter while checking out the baby. One of the medics in the group there was a pediatrician and was able to address her properly. (That's another thing I like about the Guard- you can have a regular job as well which allows for a huge mix of skill sets. I'm not positive but I doubt the military specifically trains in pediatrics since we don't have our kids fight but in the Guard it totally makes sense.) They found an abscess on her side and were able to treat it before putting her and her father on a Blackhawk to Baghdad for surgery. After the operation the doctors were sure that the abscess had been within hours of bursting and would have shot toxic crud into her abdomen and almost certainly killed her. In short, they without a doubt saved the life of this young girl. All of this of course was done with no charge to the father. Now, I don't care who you are, that's pretty cool. The only thing I don't like about that story is the fact that it was never reported. A group of Idaho soldiers did that and not even our local paper reported it. That's life I guess but it's still too bad.
I've decided to divide these stories individually so this post doesn't end up too long, so there's going to be a lot more to come.
I'll start with my favorite story from my drill sergeant/recruiter. I think it's his favorite as well when talking about how we really are making a difference over in Iraq. He was a medic while he was in Iraq (another cool thing about the military, you aren't stuck in one job all the time, my drill sergeant is also a recruiter and a combat medic which is pretty cool). He was on post and a man came in with a little girl in his arms who was obviously having issues. He couldn't speak English and just kinda put her in the arms of one of the soldiers there (I don't remember if it was SFC Stace or not, I'm writing these from memory so details may be off). They got him an interpreter while checking out the baby. One of the medics in the group there was a pediatrician and was able to address her properly. (That's another thing I like about the Guard- you can have a regular job as well which allows for a huge mix of skill sets. I'm not positive but I doubt the military specifically trains in pediatrics since we don't have our kids fight but in the Guard it totally makes sense.) They found an abscess on her side and were able to treat it before putting her and her father on a Blackhawk to Baghdad for surgery. After the operation the doctors were sure that the abscess had been within hours of bursting and would have shot toxic crud into her abdomen and almost certainly killed her. In short, they without a doubt saved the life of this young girl. All of this of course was done with no charge to the father. Now, I don't care who you are, that's pretty cool. The only thing I don't like about that story is the fact that it was never reported. A group of Idaho soldiers did that and not even our local paper reported it. That's life I guess but it's still too bad.
I've decided to divide these stories individually so this post doesn't end up too long, so there's going to be a lot more to come.
February Drill
Another drill, another posting. This month we did Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT). This involved going out and learning how to breach and raid buildings as well as how to maneuver while on a combat patrol. Before we got into our training we did our obligatory PT test. For those of us who have yet to go to basic training we do as many push-ups as possible in 1 minute then as many sit ups as possible in one minute and finished with as fast a mile as possible. For those who have already been to basic everything is doubled. I'm up to 44 pushups in a minute and 42 situps. Unfortunately, my legs were really sore from running and skiing this week so I added 23 seconds to my run and ended up with a time of 6:49. Kinda sad, but it'll improve. One thing I like about the National Guard is that our fitness is on our shoulders. It can be a bad thing for some people who end up just not working out and do 24 pushups and 11 situps and get chewed out at drill instead of working out. They'll get fixed in basic training though.
After our PT test we ate a quick MRE lunch and moved into our day. We started by prepping with M16A2 mock-ups which we call "rubber-ducks". We went through the fundamentals of room clearing and then got into fire teams of 4 or 5 to do drills in "glass houses" which are just rooms mocked up with black tape on the floor. The glass houses taught us basic movements but obviously you can only do so much with mock-ups.
After some glass house training we moved into some of the old barracks and discussed how we would clear such a building if we had to. These barracks had a total of 44 windows and 3 doors between the two floors and had lockers and bunks spread throughout as well as some half-a-dozen rooms and a latrine. Such a building makes for a very dynamic raid since you have so many "fatal funnels" (openings where people are easy targets). This, unfortunately, took forever since we are up to 97 troops showing up at drill and we still only have under a dozen people rank E-4 or higher who know what's going on and can lead everyone through. We also have a shortage of buildings and equipment which makes equipment intensive drills such as this very time consuming. Because of this we ended pretty early that night and hit the barracks to rest before we put what we learned into action by clearing rooms with paintball M4s.
At 0200 the next morning we woke up and were in the drill hall starting to run teams through our mock village by 0230. My fire-team had a visiting civilian added to it around 0500 and we practiced with him to get team cohesion until we moved out sometime around 0600. (Yes, that does add up to 3 and a half hours of waiting in the drill hall. When you have to move 97 people through a 15-20 minute exercise 9 at a time things go REALLY slow. Some people took advantage of the break to nap but I wasn't able to do so since the drill hall was kinda loud.)
When we got to our "village" we were surprised to find that the buildings were nothing like the buildings we had been training in although we had been made to believe we would be clearing the same sort of structures. I'm sure this was done on purpose as it forced us to scrap all of our plans and adjust on the fly. The buildings we cleared looked like stacked cargo containers with doors and walls added to create buildings. Each building had between 6 and 9 rooms per floor, a staircase to the second floor and a balcony on the second floor. The lights were all off when we entered and at 0600 it was pitch dark which made clearing the buildings very difficult since noone thought to check for light switches once we had secured a room. Our first building was very sloppy since we were brand new, weren't use to being unable to see and were trying to do the building without any verbal signals which didn't work as well as we had hoped. Luckily, the first building we picked to go into happened to be the one with no one in it and we were able to get away with it.
Our second building we decided to scrap the stealth approach since we weren't really kidding anyone anyways. We're newbies, everyone knew we were coming. When we started into the room with the staircase in the second building we suddenly had rounds flying all around us. We could hear them bouncing all over but couldn't pinpoint them since there were three rooms across the hall from us after we passed the staircase and the rounds we were using were rubber bullets instead of paintballs to avoid a mess. I thought I saw a shadow up on the second floor and went to fire at it while entering the room and got quite the surprise when my gun didn't react at all. Of course, being a stupid newbie, I backed around the wall again to get cover. Since I was point, the three other guys behind me followed and took cover in the other room. Unfortunately, our third man, the door breacher, was not directly behind me since he was going the other direction through the door after breaching it. He didn't realize we had left and ended up stranded in the other room for a good five seconds before he was able to get out. Luckily, he did get out since the enemy upstairs was just blind-firing around the staircase but I very nearly got him "killed". Once we got into the other room I switched out my gun with our number 2 man since, as point, I kinda needed a gun that worked. However, shortly after we switched and before we had re entered the room we realized my gun had just been uncharged by the soldier who had used it last for some reason. We hadn't checked that because all of the guns were charged on the first round and remain charged until they were manually uncharged so our cadre hadn't even told us we had to charge the weapons. Having never been paintballing before I didn't realize a paintball gun even had a charging handle like a real gun.
Switching kinda stunk though because I now had Private Gallaher's gun which only had 4 rounds in it to start the game. We reentered the room and the civilian and I charged the staircase while the other three covered us from below. We noticed SSG Walls' head sticking out around the corner of the doorway to the balcony and the civilian and I opened fire on her but she ducked back onto the stairwell before we got her. We then posted on either side of the door to the balcony and Gallaher came around and we attacked the balcony. Gallaher got the first look and got her three times as she tried to run for cover which left us with a clear building.
When we entered our third building we ran into a similar rain of fire at the staircase. Gallaher got shot in the back while moving behind the staircase to cover the men going up. The civilian was supposed to cover him while he moved around but it didn't work for whatever reason. I didn't see whether the civilian failed to watch his opening or if Drill Sergeant Zupancic simply got a good shot in. At this point I found that I hadn't done a very good job of keeping aware of my weapon again and was out of ammo since I had used four rounds getting Walls to duck back in. Thus, I had to charge the staircase with an empty weapon hoping that maybe I could help keep the Drill Sergeant's head down while the other two who were going up with me got around to where they could kill him. Luckily, it succeeded and I was able to take his gun after he died which had a good 45 rounds in it. When I popped around the corner to the balcony I saw someone lying on the ground with a gun pointed at me but managed to shoot him twice before he got me. I thought I hit him and thought he put his gun down but he was back lit and I couldn't quite tell so I shot him three more times. I probably shouldn't have done that but I did and he didn't say anything. Luckily it was SGT Cole who is huge and probably didn't care at all.
After that we simply cleaned up and did our AAR (After Action Report) and took off early because the cadre all wanted to get home for Super Bowl Sunday and I was even able to make it to 2/3 of sacrament meeting. It was a pretty good drill I think.
P.S. I should make a correction to an earlier post. I spoke before of Colonel Goodale telling the guys at Gowen to make sure to mess with "the other" Private Goodale. I realized that when I had heard this I had flipped it in my head. When I heard "the other" I thought it was from Colonel Goodale's perspective and not mine so he was really telling them to mess with his son which makes more sense.
National Guard January Drill
Alrighty then, the pictures to the left are obviously me in uniform, I swear it looks a whole lot less dorky when we're in formation with all 100 of us. Normally there would be a rank patch in the center of my chest but they ran out of patches for my rank and I will not receive one until next drill.
For January's drill we did what was called weapons immersion which consisted of weaponry mechanics and BRM (by the way, if you haven't read my other post yet do that first). When I arrived at 0845 I was directed to get a Gortex (ACU jacket) and an MRE from Private Biggins (the girl I accidentally hurt at last drill). When I reached her she informed me in a very polite and friendly manner that no matter how much crap I got at drill there were no hard feelings between us and that we were all squared away. She then warned me that I would be getting a lot of crap that drill.
We then moved in to the PT phase of drill at 0900 and I did 43 push ups in my minute which is still not amazing but is 6 more than last month and I didn't run out of steam even at the very end. When I moved to the back of the line after my push ups my MSG (Master Sergeant) MSG Gordley (also an awesome guy, he's the highest rank we see at drill) and he informed me that the "other" PVT Goodale had come to drill. This other PVT Goodale is someone who I have heard about every time I do something new on post and who I receive calls about on a fairly regular basis. His father is a West Point grad and a colonel in the IDARNG. He is also named Christopher and Colonel Goodale's first name is ironically John as well. I've never met him but I've heard about him all the time. MSG Gordeley than told me that he was going to have the two of us fight and then the winner would fight PVT Biggins. He then said, "You hurt her last month by the way. Even if they don't tap out, when the tears start, you usually stop. You underestimate your own strength PVT Goodale." There are few things that are better than having your MSG tell you that you underestimate your own strength, even if it's preceded by a tongue-in-cheek chastisement.
During the sit up portion of the PT test I did 36 sit ups, down two from last month. Not because I was tired, I had energy to go at the same pace for another 30 seconds without slowing but I could not figure out how to do full sit ups faster than I was already doing them. It was frustrating. When we went out to do our run I met PVT Goodale for the first time. He graduated from Bishop Kelly High School (a local Catholic school) last year and is now attending ISU and is in the ROTC. He was accepted to West Point but decided he didn't want to be in that atmosphere. He is a couple of inches taller than me and outweighs me by 34 pounds but we have a very similar build, a similar facial structure and about the same haircut. We even have the same model of cell phone. Kinda weird. We got along very well though. However, he had gotten 51 push ups and 57 sit ups so I wanted to stay as close to him as possible in the run which resulted in my dropping 12 seconds to 6:26 which put me 10 seconds behind him which isn't bad. Cool guy though.
We then were sent to our barracks to eat and change into ACUs and we had 43 minutes to do that and be back in formation. We had to change barracks once and had trouble getting our linens squared away so by the time I was dressed I only had time to crack open my MRE and eat a small amount of each part of the MRE. I then rushed back outside to get back in formation since we were all supposed to be formed up, accounted for and ready to move out at either 1110 or 1210. I arrived outside at about whatever:00 and was accounted for and ready to move about 5 minutes later. However, some of the people in our battalion treat RSP as they do school and not as a military unit. Therefore, we had people running out at 12:12 improperly dressed (no caps, unzipped Gortexs, etc.). MSG Gordley and SFC (Sergeant First Class) Stace (my recruiter and drill sergeant) were both VERY unhappy. Especially since they had informed us on the way to the barracks that this month's drill would focus on getting our discipline back. Because of this we received a half-decent amount of yelling since the first time since I joined and we were smoked since the first time since I joined. (Being smoked by the way is when you are punished with PT). We were required to stay in the push-up position until we were all accounted for by our squad leaders but he had us flip over and do flutter kicks after a while because some people could not hold themselves anymore. It was difficult but I've had worse at water polo and football practices and we desperately needed to be smoked. You should not ever be running out half-dressed to formation after the departure time. But we eventually moved out and went to our first stations.
Our first station was going over the M249. It is the fully automatic rifle to the left. It was created in the 1980s as a replacement to the M16A1 (the automatic version of the M16)which was found to be a poor replacement for the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). It fires a 5.56mm round 850 rounds per minute with a maximum effective range of 1000 meters with open sights which means that at 1000 meters the M249 is accurate with only the sights you see in the picture to the left. The M249 has a maximum range of 3600 meters (that range is essentially pure flight distance). We learned how to clear, disassemble, reassemble, load and fire this weapon along with all the other weapons we worked with. These weapons are surprisingly easy to take apart and I was shocked that the M249 only weighs 17.5 pounds.
We then moved to a class where we essentially just updated our info with the Guard and made sure our military emails and other sites were squared away. We were with MSG Gordley and PVT Biggins again at this point and when MSG Gordley found out that the other Goodale outweighed me and outperformed me in PT he informed me that I still had the upper hand because I had the ability to say that I had kicked Biggins' butt and he didn't. He also told me I was still PVT Goodale 1 to him and would always be the original PVT Goodale despite his fathers' rank. He also told me that Col. Goodale had told the guys at Gowen that if they were to mess with a PVT Goodale to make sure it was PVT Christopher D. Goodale (him) and not PVT Christopher J. Goodale (me) which everyone found funny especially since his son belongs to A Company and B Company has a nice rivalry with A Company. I'm glad I was first though because it allowed me to get the right email and he got screwed up. I am christopher.goodale and he had to be c.d.goodale.
We then moved to an M4 carbine class. The M4 is the same as the M16A2 (the Army staple) and shares about 80% of its parts with the M16A2 but has a shorter barrel and a telescoping butt stock for short-range combat. Both guns weigh 7.5 pounds. We did the same clearing, disassembling, reassembling and firing procedures as on the M249 and went into the proper way to clean a weapon. We then listened to some awesome war stories from SGT Waters (SFC Stace's brother-in-law and my second favorite soldier in our platoon).
We then moved on to the M16A2 class where we briefly covered the same procedures as with the other weapon and then moved on to marksmanship fundamentals (Position, Aiming, Breathing, Trigger Squeeze). We then learned how to aim properly and were required to squeeze the trigger to fire an unloaded M16A2 with a dime balancing on the front sight to make sure our trigger pull was good. We proceeded from there to do a training exercise where we shot targets in the building with a laser mounted in the barrel which was recorded by the targets we were shooting. My sight picture was not the greatest at first but by the end I was finishing withing the top three soldiers in my 12 man squad and hitting nearly dead-center mass at 250 yards very consistently.
We finished up there and were back in our barracks around 2130 with lights out at 2200. I was smart enough to volunteer early for fireguard and got the first shift so I was in bed about 2300 with lights on at 0400 so that we could be in formation and ready to go by 0530 to make chow at 0600. I slept in my boots, pants and shirt on top of the covers in case one of the morons outside got caught smoking and we had to go out and get smoked in the middle of the night and to save myself some time for sleeping. I would have slept very well except for the antics of PVT Grzadzieleski (no I'm not kidding) who woke up the whole barracks at 0215 running around the bay pretending to be MSG Gordley. Despite this however, I slept well enough to be wide awake the next morning and still going right now at 2148. Luckily, our battalion learned its lesson and we were all present and accounted for before the drill sergeants even showed up.
We then traveled down to the FATS (Fire Arms Training System), where they had modified M16A2s to fit air hoses into them that made them kick like a real M16A2 while we fired them down a digital BRM qualifying range. At this range we had targets pop up from 50-300 meters away (simulated) and we had a certain amount of time to hit them depending on how far out they were. We had 20 shots in the prone supported position, 10 in the prone unsupported position and 10 in the kneeling position. We had to hit 23 out of 40 to qualify and I had 21 after the first 30 but only was able to hit one while kneeling. Unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties and I did not get a chance to try again but I am nonetheless fairly confident with the M16A2 now.
Our next class was the M240B class. The M240B is the largest rifle we have that is carried by a single soldier as far as I know. It is different from the other three in that it is the only one that does not use 5.56mm ammo. Instead it uses 7.62mm ammo which is NATO ammo and can be interchanged with most NATO weapons and AK-47s. It is the heaviest gun we worked with at 27.6 pounds and unless you are carrying it with the carrying handle in the center it feels like a heck of a lot more than that. This gun fires as much as 950 rounds per minute but the heat is so much that if more than 200 are fired in one minute the weapon must be allowed to cool for 15 minutes to prevent a "cook off" which causes rounds to go off prematurely due to the heat of firing the previous shells. We also timed ourselves in the clearing, disassembly, reassembly, functions check and loading and I was the fastest in our squad with a time of 3 minutes 51 seconds when starting with a loaded weapon. Not bad for a newbie I think.
When we finished our final station we returned to building 521 which is themain building for the RSP. While we were waiting for the other guys to finish up we sat around and talked and the sergeants told stories and argued about things like the necessity of an NCAA championship. Once the other squads arrived we started our major cleanup of the base, our barracks, and our weapons. However, the 15 series guys (people with my MOS and other MOSs in my area) were pulled out because the 183rd commander had come to talk to us and meet the troops who would be joining his unit after training was complete. There were six of us who went to talk to him. I am one of four 15Xs in our battalion. We will all have the job of fixing the electrical systems on the AH-64 Apache. We are also responsible for loading the weapons systems on the Apaches. The other two soldiers were both MOS 15R and will be responsible for the mechanical systems on the Apaches. All six of us wish to eventually become pilots. According to the Captain, 15X is the busiest MOS because the electrical systems are constantly failing on the Apaches. He says we also get a lot of respect from, and correspondence with, the pilots. One of the reasons for this is that we load and ready their weapons systems which is cool. He said we have a lot more to do than the 15Rs and we'll feel like we are drinking out of a fire hose for the first couple years but that we'll have a blast doing it. He also told us that we have a tendency to gain the first few ranks after basic more quickly than he'd like and that sometimes hurts us since we haven't learned enough yet. I can see where he's coming from but I'm not going to complain about gaining rank. We also talked about the path to being a pilot and he said there's generally about 10 spots per year and all six of us that were new are interested in being a pilot eventually. So it'll be competitive but not too terrible I hope. I'm glad to be a part of the 183rd though because we have the best flight record in the nation and we've received tons of accolades from other commanders including Iraqi generals. So I'm lucky to be where I'm at. After this we did a quick AAR (which my dad's half-brother informed me means After Action Report) and I was able to come home.
Drill
I thought I should give an update on my joining the Idaho Army National Guard since I have yet to do this. First off, I have to say that I believe it is one of the best things that I have done in my life thus far. There is no decision that I am more proud of. I am part of one of the greatest organizations in the world and I spend my weekends having the time of my life with the some of the noblest and coolest people on Earth. Some have called me stupid for my decision to join (which surprises me in Idaho, one of the reddest states in existence) but if they understood the National Guard and its mission they would never assume that my decision was wrong.
I am currently an E2 (PV2-Private) in the Battalion B which is the Idaho National Guard's Recruiting and Retention battalion. I was promoted from E1 to E2 due to the fact that I am an Eagle Scout. My battalion is part of what is called the RSP (Recruitment Sustainment Program). The RSP was created during a time when the BCT (Basic Combat Training) failure rates were hovering around 20% for all parts of the military. This was due to physical ineptitude, failing the BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) qualifying test, or various misconduct or aptitude issues which caused the soldiers to wash out. After the RSP was instituted, soldier readiness vastly improved and the National Guard failure rate has fallen to 4% nationally and under 2% for some units (I don't remember our exact failure rate but I've never heard of anyone washing out and we have 156 men currently in my battalion with more coming every month).
So, enough history, I should probably say what it is exactly that I do. I go out to Gowen Field for one weekend each month to drill with my battalion and do the things which a typical National Guard soldier would do. My first drill was in November; we flew on UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to a place called Big Willow which is past Payette. The rest of the battalion had hours of classes on Saturday (the day before the Blackhawk flight) but I had the district swim meet and the Sadie Hawkins Dance that day so my friendly NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) let me skip Saturday's portion. Once we reached Big Willow we did a Land-Navigation course which consisted of finding your way from place to place with a map and a compass and coordinates which were specific enough to be accurate within 10 meters. We then hopped back on the Blackhawks and flew back to base. If you've never been on a helicopter, do your best to try to get on one, even if you have to build it yourself out of parts from your neighbors cars. It is the coolest thing ever (especially when the helicopter is a military transport and the pilots aren't afraid to play around a bit:) . We then did what is called AAR (not sure what that stands for), where we essentially discuss the various goods and bads at drill that day with the NCOs. We returned home at about 1600 (have to use proper military time when talking about drill, sorry).
My second drill was my first full drill. I arrived at 0545 and started a class at 0630 after some time with my SSG (staff sergeant) SSG Walls (funniest lady ever). The class was what is called Red Phase where we learn the various basics of being a soldier (creed, values, general orders, time, rank structure, saluting, etc.). At 0900 I then had my first PT (Physical Training Test). Because I have not been to BCT yet I had to do as many push ups as possible in one minute, as many sit ups as possible in one minute and a one mile run in as little time as possible. My scores were 37, 38 and 6:38. Not terrible, but not amazing although I'm happy with them since it was my first drill. We then ate MREs for lunch (which are actually dang good) and started the bulk of our training. We were learning the basics of Modern Army Combatives. I will not give you the history of Combatives since this is already really long but it essentially is just fighting. If you watch UFC, much of our technique is shared with UFC as both use large amounts of Brazilian Jujitsu. We learned holds, escapes, arm bars, arm breaks, chokes and how to stand up without letting your guard down after a fall or take down. We also had about 10-15 2 minute sparring sessions where we were trying to pin each other but had to make sure no one got hurt. My first partner kicked my butt (I didn't know until later that he scores higher in PT than anyone else in our battalion, he's done as many as 107 push ups in one minute). I jammed all the fingers on my second partner's right hand about 30 seconds into our round when he tried to charge me and I flipped him which should have made me feel bad but actually was pretty sweet since I had just been pinned 4 times in 2 minutes. My third partner was PVC Biggins, who is SSG Walls' assistant. I didn't want to go against her since she's pretty tough, about my size and has been in the RSP far longer than me and I really didn't want a girl to beat me. However, I ended up making her cry on accident when she wouldn't release me from a headlock and I slammed her into the ground to try to throw her off. I didn't think it would be too bad since we were on mats but I ended up hurting her head. She didn't let go though and I didn't notice her crying until she screamed after I did it a few times. I really did feel bad and changed tactics after that and would have stopped if she had let go.
I'll let that be it for combatives and put this month's drill in a separate posting. Sorry that was so long.
I am currently an E2 (PV2-Private) in the Battalion B which is the Idaho National Guard's Recruiting and Retention battalion. I was promoted from E1 to E2 due to the fact that I am an Eagle Scout. My battalion is part of what is called the RSP (Recruitment Sustainment Program). The RSP was created during a time when the BCT (Basic Combat Training) failure rates were hovering around 20% for all parts of the military. This was due to physical ineptitude, failing the BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) qualifying test, or various misconduct or aptitude issues which caused the soldiers to wash out. After the RSP was instituted, soldier readiness vastly improved and the National Guard failure rate has fallen to 4% nationally and under 2% for some units (I don't remember our exact failure rate but I've never heard of anyone washing out and we have 156 men currently in my battalion with more coming every month).
So, enough history, I should probably say what it is exactly that I do. I go out to Gowen Field for one weekend each month to drill with my battalion and do the things which a typical National Guard soldier would do. My first drill was in November; we flew on UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to a place called Big Willow which is past Payette. The rest of the battalion had hours of classes on Saturday (the day before the Blackhawk flight) but I had the district swim meet and the Sadie Hawkins Dance that day so my friendly NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) let me skip Saturday's portion. Once we reached Big Willow we did a Land-Navigation course which consisted of finding your way from place to place with a map and a compass and coordinates which were specific enough to be accurate within 10 meters. We then hopped back on the Blackhawks and flew back to base. If you've never been on a helicopter, do your best to try to get on one, even if you have to build it yourself out of parts from your neighbors cars. It is the coolest thing ever (especially when the helicopter is a military transport and the pilots aren't afraid to play around a bit:) . We then did what is called AAR (not sure what that stands for), where we essentially discuss the various goods and bads at drill that day with the NCOs. We returned home at about 1600 (have to use proper military time when talking about drill, sorry).
My second drill was my first full drill. I arrived at 0545 and started a class at 0630 after some time with my SSG (staff sergeant) SSG Walls (funniest lady ever). The class was what is called Red Phase where we learn the various basics of being a soldier (creed, values, general orders, time, rank structure, saluting, etc.). At 0900 I then had my first PT (Physical Training Test). Because I have not been to BCT yet I had to do as many push ups as possible in one minute, as many sit ups as possible in one minute and a one mile run in as little time as possible. My scores were 37, 38 and 6:38. Not terrible, but not amazing although I'm happy with them since it was my first drill. We then ate MREs for lunch (which are actually dang good) and started the bulk of our training. We were learning the basics of Modern Army Combatives. I will not give you the history of Combatives since this is already really long but it essentially is just fighting. If you watch UFC, much of our technique is shared with UFC as both use large amounts of Brazilian Jujitsu. We learned holds, escapes, arm bars, arm breaks, chokes and how to stand up without letting your guard down after a fall or take down. We also had about 10-15 2 minute sparring sessions where we were trying to pin each other but had to make sure no one got hurt. My first partner kicked my butt (I didn't know until later that he scores higher in PT than anyone else in our battalion, he's done as many as 107 push ups in one minute). I jammed all the fingers on my second partner's right hand about 30 seconds into our round when he tried to charge me and I flipped him which should have made me feel bad but actually was pretty sweet since I had just been pinned 4 times in 2 minutes. My third partner was PVC Biggins, who is SSG Walls' assistant. I didn't want to go against her since she's pretty tough, about my size and has been in the RSP far longer than me and I really didn't want a girl to beat me. However, I ended up making her cry on accident when she wouldn't release me from a headlock and I slammed her into the ground to try to throw her off. I didn't think it would be too bad since we were on mats but I ended up hurting her head. She didn't let go though and I didn't notice her crying until she screamed after I did it a few times. I really did feel bad and changed tactics after that and would have stopped if she had let go.
I'll let that be it for combatives and put this month's drill in a separate posting. Sorry that was so long.
Private Christopher J. Goodale, E-2 (As posted by my father)
December 4, 2008 Update to this Posting: Previously, I had indicated Private Goodale's rank as "E-1." Actually... because Christopher is an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America, he is automatically an E-2. Normally, that rank advancement comes only after four months of active duty service. So, COOL... all that hard work earning his Eagle paid off (literally, as E-2s do actually get paid more)!!! :-)
It's official now (in reference to an earlier posting): Today Christopher was sworn in to the Army National Guard. He's a member of the Idaho National Guard, and his first weekend of service is coming up in next month, when he will ride in a Blackhawk helicopter up to Payette for some training. His recruiter, Sergeant Stace (pictured below) said that it's just not fair; he had to be deployed to Iraq to get his first ride aboard a Blackhawk, and here Christopher's getting that experience his first weekend!
To the right here, Christopher is being sworn in by Captain Gray. This took place after a full day of poking and prodding, medical exams and processing. I'll have to look up the swearing in ceremony oath; there are some pretty powerful words in there, that I think it would do EVERY American good to swear to!!!
Christopher will have Guard weekends every month through June of next year, then on June 30th he reports for Basic Training in Fort Benning, Georgia. Some 38 weeks later, he will have also finished his advanced training on Apache helicopter electronics systems repair.
God bless our great military, and Private Goodale as a part of it!!!
It's official now (in reference to an earlier posting): Today Christopher was sworn in to the Army National Guard. He's a member of the Idaho National Guard, and his first weekend of service is coming up in next month, when he will ride in a Blackhawk helicopter up to Payette for some training. His recruiter, Sergeant Stace (pictured below) said that it's just not fair; he had to be deployed to Iraq to get his first ride aboard a Blackhawk, and here Christopher's getting that experience his first weekend!
To the right here, Christopher is being sworn in by Captain Gray. This took place after a full day of poking and prodding, medical exams and processing. I'll have to look up the swearing in ceremony oath; there are some pretty powerful words in there, that I think it would do EVERY American good to swear to!!!
Christopher will have Guard weekends every month through June of next year, then on June 30th he reports for Basic Training in Fort Benning, Georgia. Some 38 weeks later, he will have also finished his advanced training on Apache helicopter electronics systems repair.
God bless our great military, and Private Goodale as a part of it!!!
National Guard Gains a Great Soldier (As posted by my father)
It's not official yet, but it's pretty close. Today Christopher is submitting all of his paperwork to join the Army National Guard. He's joining their "College First" recruitment program, and is not supposed to get deployed until two years of college are complete. They will also grant him a deferment to serve a church mission, as his older brother Justin is starting next month.
Christopher is interested in a career in helicopter aviation, whether that be as pilot, mechanic, or whatever. He is a straight-A student most of the time (and certainly ALL of the time when he wants to be), and excels in all of his classes; he does very well in his Auto Tech class, and loves working on cars, lawn mowers... anything mechanical.
But above all else, Christopher is intensely patriotic. He loves his country, and no matter what conflicts we're in... no matter who is Commander in Chief... no matter what the risks... Christopher wants to serve his country. He will be with a unit of the Idaho National Guard, and his first weekend exercises could be as early as next month. He will go through Basic Training as soon as he graduates high school in May, and then will go through his AIT for his specific MOS. Man... the military is full of TLAs!!!
As you can imagine, Michelle and I have discussed this at length with Christopher. We've spoken with many soldiers. We've analyzed all options. Nervous that Army National Guard would certainly result in an eventual deployment to Iraq, we brought this up with Christopher. His reaction? "So... there are bad people out there that need to be dealt with and ideals that need to be fought for; somebody has to do it."
We are very proud of Christopher for all of his ambitions, his desire to serve, and to always strive to do the right thing. We'll keep you posted, and probably most importantly, we'll be sure to post a picture of him when he's all handsome in uniform. :-)
Christopher is interested in a career in helicopter aviation, whether that be as pilot, mechanic, or whatever. He is a straight-A student most of the time (and certainly ALL of the time when he wants to be), and excels in all of his classes; he does very well in his Auto Tech class, and loves working on cars, lawn mowers... anything mechanical.
But above all else, Christopher is intensely patriotic. He loves his country, and no matter what conflicts we're in... no matter who is Commander in Chief... no matter what the risks... Christopher wants to serve his country. He will be with a unit of the Idaho National Guard, and his first weekend exercises could be as early as next month. He will go through Basic Training as soon as he graduates high school in May, and then will go through his AIT for his specific MOS. Man... the military is full of TLAs!!!
As you can imagine, Michelle and I have discussed this at length with Christopher. We've spoken with many soldiers. We've analyzed all options. Nervous that Army National Guard would certainly result in an eventual deployment to Iraq, we brought this up with Christopher. His reaction? "So... there are bad people out there that need to be dealt with and ideals that need to be fought for; somebody has to do it."
We are very proud of Christopher for all of his ambitions, his desire to serve, and to always strive to do the right thing. We'll keep you posted, and probably most importantly, we'll be sure to post a picture of him when he's all handsome in uniform. :-)
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