manrymission.com

I have only 1 wakeup left here at Ft Benning. Tomorrow morning, I will begin my journey on a military chartered aircraft on its way to Kuwait. I’ll probably have a couple of days of processing in Kuwait before continuing on to Iraq, but we won’t know that for sure until we get there!

This morning, we had formation to draw weapons for the range at 0630. At least that’s when formation was scheduled. At about 0640, the NCOIC announced that we were waiting for the armourer to arrive to open the Arms Room. As I said before, some things in the Army never change!

We eventually got our weapons at about 0700 and then marched over (or some semblence of marching) to a training site for some more refresher training. We spent the morning doing the low crawl, high crawl, and 3 to 5 send rushes. I wish I had a video camera, but I’m also glad no one had one to record me. Just picture approximately 100 Army officers from mostly combat support and combat service support branches, such as medical, dental, transportation, and even topographic engineer officers. As the artillery simulators are detonating, we begin our 5-person team maneuvers. We had to negotiate under a barbed wire obstacle then go over a sandbag wall about 4 feet high. Finally we had to cross a linear danger area. Shouts of “Cover me while I move”, “I got you covered” and “Moving” brought back memories of Infantry Basic Training. But as we moved down the lanes, our shouts faded while the creaking of our joints increased. The movement lane was probably about 50 meters long, but it seemed to be about 100! Fortunately, after 2 hours of lane training, we moved indoors for some preliminary marksmanship instruction (PMI). Actually, while we were at the lanes for 2 hours, each individual probably spent a grand total of 10 minutes maneuvering on the lanes. But those 10 minyes were really tough, just ask me!

After PMI, we went to the M9 9mm pistol range. Once again, it reached Heat Cat V. In accordance with the Commanding General at Ft Benning, for outdoor training during Heat Cat V, we unbloused out trousers from our boots and open the cuffs of our sleeves. It was hot, and I was completely drenched by the end of the range. Needless to say, it’s going to be much hotter in Iraq. Do you think they’ll let me unblouse my boots in Iraq?