Returned from the field...the massive update part 1.

Ah, gentle readers, this will be a long, visually intensive post - I may not even get it finished tonight! As some of you know a group of us went into the field for the better part of a week for gunnery training. What this consists of, for those of you not well versed in military things, is that a select number of us had to report for training to become qualified as gunners (people who fire crew served weapons like the M249 SAW 5.56mm machine gun, the M240B 7.62mm machine gun, and M2 .50cal machine gun). The course would be only for the M240B and M2 and gunners would engage targets from about 80 meters to 800 meters during both the day and night (aided by nightvision devices like the PVS-7 GEN III night vision goggles and PAS-15 thermal weapons sight) over the course of a week.

Unfortunately for me, since my weapon wasn't going to be qualified at the range, I was selected as a driver of the 1151A1 HMMWV (humvee). Sgt. Damask was picked as my TC (tank commander/truck commander) and Spc. Williams was selected to be the M2 gunner. We loaded up our kits (a full infantry load by anyone's standards - about 100 pounds on our backs, a 40 pound IOTV (Improved Outer Tactical Vest - body armor), our ACH (the helmet), our assault pack, and our weapons. Here are a few pictures of us on our way:

Here we see Spc. Felda with his M16A2, assault pack held in front of him, and rucksack on his pack. We look like we're moving pretty quickly in the pictures, and we are, because the weight was such that if we slowed down even a little, we'd probably end up on our backsides as helpless as a turtle who has been flipped on his shell!

To the right is Spc. Barnett, smiling as always, a positive attitude, as always! Her part in this exercise is that of gunner for truck 18 on the M240B. And two more pictures of the march over there:


The thing to look at in all of these pictures is our faces. Most of us are smiling...unsuspecting of what the week will hold...one face though (yours truly) already had a feeling creeping through his bones, slithering through his veins like a serpent of dread...

And here, finally, before a video (I know you all love the videos!), is a 'hero' picture of me as my brother (a Captain in the Army) called it. There are a few things not right about it (as my brother was kind enough to point out). First, I have a BFA (Blank Fire Adapter - for use with blank ammunition) on my M249 SAW. Hero pictures, my brother expounds, should not have weapons with blank adapters on them. Second, it is the wrong BFA for my weapon (the one pictured is square, and designed for the M16 series of weapons.) At the time the BFAs were being handed out, the unit didn't have any


SAW blank adapters. So no smarmy comments about it!


The following is a video taken from inside my 1151A1 of the trail (while we were still on the hardball) on the way to the range. We're already in the middle of nowhere and we drove another hour into nowhere (which I suspect means we were actually close to somewhere) to get to our range. The drive was actually a lot of fun, as we really got to push the vehicles and see what they'd do! They handled it well, though I think that some of our passengers were a little green by the end of the trip!




Once we arrived at the location, we were chagrined to find out that we would be sleeping in tents. Tents that we would have to set up. Tents from the fifties, more suited to the M*A*S*H* television show than anything that we were doing. We set up two because we were told the 367th (another unit) would be joining us, and then we set up the heaters, the sun screens (mesh tents open on two sides), and the cots for both units. Once that was done we had some time to relax, which was wonderful. Chow (food) was brought out to us twice a day (usually around 0600 in the morning and 1800 (6PM) in the evening, give or take an hour, but never early.

The next morning we rushed out to unload the ammunition. Quite literally hundreds of boxes of linked .50 cal ammunition (each round is nearly seven inches long and comes 200 rounds per box) and dozens of boxes of linked 7.62 ammunition. Seeing it all in one places gave me a warm feeling as I love shooting, especially when I don't have to pay for the ammo (your tax dollars at work!) I was later to learn that I wasn't going to get to shoot at all, which made me quite sad. The ammo trucks left right after sunrise, and I snapped a great picture of the sun's first rays on the mountains as they began to pull away.

Soon we established a routine (the 367th conveniently arrived at the location right after the trucks were unloaded and right before chow, and somehow ended up first in line for the food. Definitely not the best first impression to make, and sadly, first impressions are often the most lasting ones.) The routine became something along these lines. Wake up at 0530 if you weren't already awake. Chow at 0600. Safety brief between 0730 and 0800. The lanes (what we call range training) opened generally at 0800. This means that the ammunition detail began soon before that, as did the fire guard (an ad hoc group of soldiers who were made firefighters in case the tracer ammunition that we shoot started a fire in the desert), and the other fire guard (responsible for keeping the heaters in the tent going) and the range detail, and the gate detail. A lot of details. Each detail generally lasts six hours. On average, each soldier expects to get about two hours of sleep a day, not usually all at once.



During the day you also have to actually go on the range. The range is set up with a series of firing stations that the humvee pulls up to, and then the gunner engages the targets. Gun crews are graded on their gun crew commands, time used to engage and destroy the targets, and general cohesiveness. The range SHOULD take no more than 12 minutes to navigate from start to finish, but as we soon all discovered, it can take longer than an hour for a single truck to go through. There were originally nearly 30 trucks slotted for the range from several different units. Each truck is expected to do both a day fire and a night fire during each 24 hours. I'm no mathematician but even I can figure out that if each truck is taking an hour, and the range is open from generally 0800-0500 each day, with breaks throughout to reset targets that are literally destroyed, for dinner, and for latrine breaks for cadre...no way are we going to get all the trucks through twice in one day.



I think at this point I'm going to end this first part of the synopsis, but first, a few shout outs, as it were. Special thanks to my grandfather for digging the wells in the area so many years ago (and for guessing so accurately as to where we are), and also to all of the readers who provide feedback either through email or, as I received today, through their soldiers here (specifically, Spc. Okrasinksi's mom - I'm glad that you enjoy the blog and that you feel that I have some talent at this! Your daughter is doing fine, and was walking with a spring in her step and smile on her face when I ran into her today!) Others to be included are the soldiers who listen to me rant about both the positives and negatives of this deployment and give me ideas for the stories I tell in this blog - I'm also VERY grateful for them not having broken my video camera, as I know it's near constant presence can get a bit irritating! My girlfriend also deserves a very special thanks as she gets to hear all of these tales (and then some!) before the rest of you, and most of all for her putting up with the Army. As she so eloquently put it earlier today when I had yet another meeting to attend, and I said, "It's the Army..." She replied succinctly with, "You signed up, but I didn't" or something to that effect. My squad leader overheard, and agrees with you that the Army is a terribly unfair creature when it comes to loved ones!

I'll write part 2 tomorrow!