No rest for the weary

It has been two and a half weeks and I haven't had a day off yet. Not that a day off would lead to anything productive, but sleeping in sure sounds like a fun idea right now. At training we are not allowed to leave the base, drink alcohol, go to the Air Force side of the base, or in general do anything that might be considered as fun, which means the most you can do on your day off is sleep. To be honest, I don't even want a day off - I just want a day to sleep in.

Since my last post, we wrapped up our combat life saver course with a practical exercise. Some of the photos above will give you an idea of the simulated injuries we encountered. To sum it up, it was like medical basic training. We did some low-crawling, rushing techniques, and reaction to direct fire before reaching our wounded comrades. My bunk mate and I took a stab at returning a "casualty" to a safe point only to find that the large gentlemen with all of his gear was much harder to move than we had anticipated.

After the exercise was over we then had to enter a smoke-filled room that had no lights. Well, there was one light - a strobe that flashed at a slow rate. Heavy rock music played in the background, which almost drowned out the cadre yelling at us to add to the confusion. I found an "injured" soldier and drug him outside to start treatment. Once outside I was told to stand fast while the other students navigated the room. After they all stumbled outside, a hand-full of us were brought back into the chaos to administer IVs to our casualties. Fearful of my three-stick attempt on the previous day, I desperately tried to reassure myself that I could do better this time. Just as I was about to make the poke, I realized I was shaking like a leaf on a tree...I paused, took a deep breath, steadied one hand with the other, and made a successful stick on my first attempt.

I have since spent the past four days firing weapons. The Army does a great job with weapons training, unfortunately, the scheduling of firing times has left me a bit sleepy. On two of the four days we were up around 5. As my wife can attest to, I do not do well with little sleep. Fortunately, I love shooting guns and I am able to curb my grouchy side while I have ammo in the clip. I had to get my Air Force qualification on the M9 and M4 on the same day, within minutes of each other - that was fun. Later that day I had to zero my M4's iron sights and optical sight - that was not fun, but yes, I have some cool "gucci gear" on my M4.

One evening, a late evening, we did night time familiarization with our rifles. For the first time ever, I shot tracer rounds. Probably not a big deal to my Army family and friends but a huge deal to me. It was supercool and seriously validated my child-hood fantasies of seeing my bullets at night. The real eye-opening experience was seeing what happens after your bullet hit something - it just keeps going. I really enjoyed watching as the bullets would hit the berm and deflect into the air, it was almost like watching fireworks.

We have since "deployed" into a tent city for some more training. This isn't just any tent city mind you, this place is complete with a chow hall, small PX, gym, morale tent - no kidding, this is exactly like being deployed. To make it even more realistic, they play some Hajji prayer calls - just like they do during their numerous prayer times in country. Many of us are showing far too much skill in our tent living abilities. Those who have ever spent any time living under the comfort of a green tent will know what I mean.

Tomorrow we have another early start where we will go through a live-fire, base-defense drill. The commander says we have about 4,000 rounds to blow through...there are only about 80 of us so it should be a lot of fun. Stay tuned for the next installment of Just Another Day In My Life.