GAS! GAS! GAS!

What a nice day to be gassed with CS!? We road marched as a platoon to the gas chamber for training on how to protect ourselves from chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. The big event for the day was the dreaded gas chamber where we all had to remove our protective masks and see what it's like to get a snoot full of what some people call "tear gas". It's an amazing substance that somehow can slam your eyes shut and cause liquid to pour from all of the holes in your face in copious amounts. They should call it "tear, snot and vomit gas". We also learned how to set up and conduct a decontamination site for treating soldier who are exposed to these sort of attacks. I found that training useful and interesting. All of this is good to know but I hope it's something that I never have to experience in a real situation.

9 mm Pistol Range

Qualifying with the 9mm Baretta was great. The range had various pop-up targets that came up in singles and pairs and you had to shoot them down, change magazines and keep shooting etc. I really enjoyed it. Everyone did well on the 9mm. It is actually quite user friendly and has relatively little recoil so I think most of the troops were comfortable enough with it to have fun and blast some targets.
It was a long day at the range to get all of us (380 some odd) to the firing line so it was nice to be back to FOB sweet FOB by the end of the day. Though the training here is tough and the day the days are long, at least I get to have a lovely picnic each day as I sit on the ground and eat food out of little boxes and envelopes...yummy!

Firing Range

As I said in an earlier post, we are soldiers first, so here I am at the firing range with my trusty M-16 shooting pop-up targets. It's pretty awesome nailing a target that is 300 meters away with just plain old iron sites...very satisfying. I've done this before and am a great shot, but let me tell you these nurses and Docs are all doing great with their weapons. I know this because the cadre were short handed on the range one day so they asked if anyone was prior service in combat arms and would help out as a range safety, so I volunteered. I spent half of the day helping folks learn to fire. All I have to say is pity the fool that thinks a bunch of Docs and nurses are an easy target because these folks are all trained and deadly and worse yet...they really get off on this stuff. The pic that I posted here that has three soldiers in it is of LT Hamlin firing. She is a PA that is a prim an proper southern girl who takes time to put on make up in morning out on the FOB, but look at her blasting away in the prone, unsupported firing position like a killer. It sort of cracked me up. Anyway, days on the firing range are always long and tiring, but shooting is always fun in my book so it's well worth it. Once again...I'm proud as hell to serve with these good people.

Life on the FOB

Life on the FOB is not easy. Everything you do, just everyday life things like brushing your teeth requires planning and is inconvenient. One of these pics shows several of us lined up at an outdoor sink at 5 AM brushing our teeth in canteen water and shaving in cold water with foggy steel mirrors. The water has a big sign by each spigot that says "Not Potable" so you have to be careful not to drink any during the process. My new friend Jim from Tennessee says if puts it in his canteen he can make it be potable though.... no he didn't really say that. When we do get a hot meal we stand up to eat it, but it sure is nice to have a hot meal and honestly if I got to sit down, I think it would be a real challenge to talk myself into getting back up again. We are all pretty tired.

The reason they keep us on the FOB is to get us used to living in tough conditions in addition to the fact that this is where all of the training we need to complete is done, like shooting land navigation, convoy operations etc. It's a logistical nightmare to move all 285 of us anywhere, so keeping us near the training makes good sense.

The funny thing is that, as hard as it is, you actually start to get very good at living here and grow close to the 30 guys you share a tent with and have a lot of good laughs along the way. There are many women here too in all sorts of medical professions. We all live and work together. Age, sex, race is not a factor in the expectations that are placed upon us to complete the mission. These are all really good people who represent less than 2% of the population that even qualify to be soldiers, who volunteered to be here so they could apply their skills to send soldiers back home to their families as healthy as they can. I heard an interesting statistic here. A soldier found alive from a battle injury, has a 97% chance of surviving his injuries once the medics get their hands on him and send him to us at the CSH (Combat Support Hospital). We have air superiority and we can move our people to the best care available in the world in a very short time. Yes we are all Doctors, Nurses, Dentists, Optometrists, PAs, etc., but it has been made very clear to everyone of us that we are soldiers first and foremost so we all train on core soldiering skills. None of the soldiering is new to me coming from my prior service background, but some of these folks are getting a real eyeopener here, but rise to the occasion never the less. I am proud to be here with them and plan to help them acclimate all that I can.

Head 'em Out

Well here we are getting ready to head to beautiful Camp Bullis where we will do our first week of Field training exercise. Two people from my right is my new friend Jim, a nurse from Tennessee, prior service marine...old guy like me and to my immediate right is my roommate Cameron, a perpetual over achiever Physicians Assistant from Ohio. Cameron is 25 years old, a PA in the emergency room, a volunteer fireman and a citizen soldier. I told him he has my permission to marry his choice of my daughters...for the price of a goat of course. Theses guys look all happy like, "oooo they gave me a gun (we call it a weapon in the Army by the way..never call it a gun)..we're going to have fun with this. If only they knew that they would spend the next three weeks carrying it everywhere they go including the latrine and to bed. Never never never be caught without your weapon or you will be in deep doo do. It's hard to believe it, but you can fit into a porta-potty out on a road side with an assault pack on your back, a load bearing vest with two canteens and an M-16 while you sit there constipated from the MRE's. We eat a lot of MRE's in the field. They are like a sack lunch packed a hundred years ago with loving hands that are highly portable and surprising tasty depending upon your level of hunger. Anyway they can really stop you up if you let yourself get even a little dehydrated.

After a long day we eventually got settled in to the FOB (Forward Observation Base) which is a collection of tents in a compound essentially, where we would live and laugh and be really uncomfortable and tired for the days to come.

Land Navigation

Today we had a great class on land navigation. I was surprised how much of I rememebered from my old infantry days, but I am sure I will be equally surprised at how much I forget tomorrow with the ailing short term memory of an old man. Regardless, it was a great class taught by a charismatic instructor who was also entertaining. Gotta love that. We learned a huge amount of information in a short period of time. I just love looking at Army maps. They identify every terrain feature, topography etc. The detail is amazing. We use an 8 digit grid coordinate to navigate to anywhere within 10 meters accuracy. Later this week we will put those skills to the test when we take an land navigation test in the field both day and night. My biggest disadvantage will be my eyesight. That map will be mighty hard to read with bifocals at night with a red lens flashlight. I wonder if I can just shout "Marko"...and wait for the response if I get lost. Anyway I am sure it will go just fine. I am looking forward to it. Tomorrow morning we draw our M-16s in preparation for the FTX. I have had plenty of experience with the M-16 so I hope to be a good resource for the nurses and docs who have never even seen one. Hope nobody gets shot.

First Sunday

Last night we got off around supper time so a few of us went for a nice run and then split a cab ride to San Antonio. We went to the River Walk We ate at a nice Mexican Restaurant and walked around a bit and headed back home so we could get our duffel bags packed for next week.

There isn't much going on at Ft. Sam this morning for me. I slept in until 7 am and rushed out to get my chance at one of the 2 washing machines available in this building. It seems like they run non-stop. I got lucky and got to do a load of laundry but just one so I threw everything in together..nothing faded or bled so I got lucky other than that fact that I had two casualties left on the battle field..a lowly pair of socks goes MIA. I will hold a memorial service for them later this AM.

Later today we will meet up with our platoon, draw our weapons (M-16s) and get our duffel bags loaded on a truck that will deliver them to Camp Bullis where I will spend the next five days doing field exercises, land navigation, and weapons qualification. We will do a PT (physical fitness...another acronym uggh) while we are there too.....Good news, my roomie just walked in with one of my missing socks so the memorial service will just be for its fallen comrade.
They encourage us to take pics on FTX (Field Training eXercise) so I should be able to post some cool pics later. I'll close with an interesting little factoid regarding all of the Army acronyms that I had mentioned in an earlier post. It seems that there are 385 pages of them on the official list. Insane isn't it?