One more X in the box

One more day of training complete, today was PowerPoint briefs all day, for about eight hours we endured some of the most mind numbing subjects, Law of War, Force Protection, Rules of Engagement, Uniform Code of Military Justice, the list goes on. For days like today I have learned to channel my thoughts, I drift out of the class room and go to my happy place. It is much easier than fighting to stay awake, at one point I returned from my happy place, looked around, and half of the class was standing at the back of the room in order to stay awake. During the break, a genius offered his technique for staying awake, apparently, if you reach into your nose and pull the longest hair you can find it will reenergize you for at least an hour. Now this guy is a ship driver and they get a lot of practice at staying awake, it probably works if you actually need to be alert, in this case I just need the illusion of alert. This technique is much to advanced for me, I plan on continuing to drift off to my happy place during these type of events.

I don’t remember the name of the training but the gist was to drive a convoy of hummers on a patrol along a route with all kinds of hazards, hidden simulated IED’s, real people acting as angry villagers, and terrorists ambushing the patrol. This sounds like excellent training and it could be, however you have to remember the Army is just trying to get an X in the block. After the standard hour or two of classroom instruction it is time for the circus. There are a lot of tactics and comm procedures to do this correctly; no way in hell two hours is even close to enough. Grabbing all our gear including big red noses and floppy shoes the clown parade headed to center ring. The route we were on was no more than a mile long it took us about three hours to complete it; I could have lapped our convoy several times at an average walking speed. It was probably very comical watching us flounder in almost every situation. A guy dropped his 9MM out of the holster and it was run over by the clown truck. This was quickly followed by the owner jumping out of the truck and digging in the sand for his pistol, he looked like a cat burying his shit. All the while smoke bombs and loud fire crackers were exploding around us simulating incoming mortar fire, we had no blank ammunition, the Army probably thought we would hurt somebody with it, so our gunner was saying bang, bang, bang as he was shooting at a bad guy. At this point I looked at my driver and we both just busted up laughing.

Day two of the greatest circus on earth, our show was urban foot patrol and building clearing. Again after a couple of hours of class room training and one practice room clearing under instruction we were sent out on a patrol through a simulated town with bad guys. Guys that are good at this are SWAT, SEALS, real Army guys, not the clown team. I am not sure why but they gave us blanks this time, not that it mattered all we did was make noise, had we been using real bullets we probably would have killed everybody but the bad guys.

Most of the training we get is simply to cover the Army’s ass, if anything happens and questions are asked the Army can go back and say, well we gave them training in that area, we did everything possible it’s not our fault. After the last three days my Army bullshit bag is completely overflowing.