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.