Black Hawk Down.......for truckers

I am on the right


Okay so the ARMY in its infinite wisdom has no real idea of how to training each type of unit that deploys so it employs the strategy of lets train them all like "door kickers" or what most would understand as infantry. Yes even us truckers have to train for the worst. If anyone reading this remembers the Matt Maupin story... well that is why we train. If you don't know his story just Google his name. Anyway we have spent about the last 7 or so days doing infantry tactic training. We worked on individual movement and squad movement. We worked on mounted"in Humvee" IED defeat training and also dismounted IED defeat training. We also worked on MOUNT training. Now mounted and MOUNT training are different. Mounted is training while using vehicles. MOUNT training is urban warfare training. Its kicking in doors, room clearing, searching detainee's and all the extras that come with it. This training is the stuff in the commercials. Its the stuff younger soldiers join the ARMY for. Its the stuff that wears down the older NCO's as its very physically demanding. Well i had planned to get more pictures but i spent most of the time during the training employing my squad and killing the enemy. Yes my squad did the best i could have ever expected.

For being truckers at heart my soldiers surprised me beyond my wildest expectations. They responded to orders without question or hesitation. They were able to communicate through the fog of war. They pushed past their preconceived limits and found a sense of teamwork i didn't think would be achieved stateside. I was in charge of my squad of people plus 4 soldiers from my platoons 3rd squad. These soldiers also performed beyond belief. They were integrated to our squad and we all never missed a beat.

Keep in mind all of this training is in full battle rattle. Full body armor full gear, mask, magazines for our weapon, elbow pads, knee pads, helmet, weapon and buttpack with food, wet weather gear, full camelbak, gloves, ballistic glasses. If you add all that up you easily have an additional 70-80 pounds onto the average soldier. Now imagine carrying that weight as you run, jump, crawl, go up stairs, spin, maneuver,and communicate all at the same time as pulling security, searching a house, throwing a smoke grenade and shooting.

The MOUNT training was the best. My team did two "lanes" one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The lanes consisted of patrolling a street, clearing houses, searching the locals, dealing with unruly locals, killing the enemy and taking some prisoner. basically walking down a city street and handling anything that comes at you. I was able to shout and move my soldiers up the street and they killed the enemy. I did a little Rambo maneuver with another soldier but that's okay.

The second day my whole platoon had a rescue "mission". If you imagine black hawk down the movie but mostly the beginning. My squad had performed so well the first day of training that we were commended by our first Sargent and even the Observer trainers that taught the training. Because of that performance my group of 10 soldiers were picked as the assault element of my platoons mission. 1st platoon was to find a high value individual and rescue him, then escape with him to the landing zone. All inside this hostile town. Well my team did great, we had a battering ram for the front door, two search teams and a combat lifesaver team. We killed or captured all the enemy inside the target house, we got the HVI and we got out all within the 30 in time limit the platoon was given. The whole platoon did great. Our security force outside did a great job handing anyone outside the building. We all were commended for our tactics and handing of the ever changing situation. I was mentioned again by the OC's( teachers ) and by my company commander as someone who went above and beyond during the training. I don't want to toot my horn but i felt i found a new part of myself out there during that small simulated battle. I was able to maintain my bearings during the fog of war. I felt good about my decisions and my ability to direct traffic during a hectic stressfull situation.

Its amazing how the training that is so far from our actual job can teach us the most about ourselves. I thought this training would be a great way to get a good evaluation of my squad i never expected to be able to evaluate myself. I do feel that sometimes i might need to reign myself in from the inner push to handle any and every situation that "I" feel isn't going right. Though i did understand that the voice inside me that tells me to take charge is appreciated by those who fall victim to the fog of war, or in civilian terms cant handle stress.
Again far right.

21st century...... not so much

Well here in the ARMY we have those soldiers who still cling to the old ways of doing things. Making phone calls home and writing letters. As much as i love letters and the phone i do understand email is taking over and a computer is a must have to help pass the hours of boredom. Well my Platoon Seargent finally came out of the dark ages and got a laptop. Its funny many of our older soldiers have purchased a laptop during our time here at Fort Dix and in the following weeks they keep exclaiming how much they love the new technology.

Yet we havent totally come out of the past just yet. We are out here in the FOB at fort dix and we are in tents. yes they have a wood floor but a tent is a tent. Its hot during the day and cold at night. we make the best of it. We organize things the best we can. I dont mind the close proximity since we acutally have more space in the tent than in the room. i do mind some of the amenities. Port -a - Johns. yeah they suck. Oh well we make the best of it. And it could be worse.

Army training! Sir

Okay so we have been training now for quite a while and while some of it is redundant and .... well stupid so is very helpful. I will elaborate on both.

The stupid is the training we do most of the time. Since the war is still being fought training doctrine keeps changing and each place in Iraq, each command, hell each company does things a little to a lot different. This makes for a ever changing standard. That is hard to train for. We keep hearing "oh you wont use this at all in Iraq but you have to train on it anyway." What sense does that make? Or we hear " this isnt how your will do it over there but learn this anyway." I find all this does is create a false muscle memory for our soldiers. I dont want my guys learning the wrong way to conduct a TCP "traffic control point" or the wrong way to pull roadside security. These "bad habits" can lead to soldiers being out of place or even in harms way if something were to happen. Oh well is what im told, "just check the box and get out of here." Well i understand that but i still dont like it. I vent here because that is the only place i can.

The good training is something like what i did a week or so ago. I went through CLS or Combat Life Savers Course. Basically you learn to be the first line of medical aid when a soldiers goes down. Medics are really a thing of the past or for the infantry. We dont have a medic in our company... at least not an ARMY one. SO the CLS learns how to give an IV, learns how to do a "needle chest decompression" and bandage and splint many types of wounds. Its a great class, tought at a fast pace and one really never hopes to use what they have learned. Yes I did have to stick someone in order to give them an IV. I did very well i think. I also got stuck by another one of the students. He was one of my soldiers a Sgt Kopel. He has a permanent shaking problem so watching the needle shake as it inched towards my blood supply was a little un-nerving but we got through it. We also did some weapons training on some of the heavier weapons such as the 240B. This is a cross between the M60 and the M249. Great weapon, great stopping power and heavy.

I like training but wearing our IBA's (armor) and just walking around or sitting in the sun is really not what i expected from an ARMY that has been involved in combat operations for 5 or so years. our lessons learned are being cut short by budget cuts. Pretty sad when soldiers are still going down range to the fight. Write your congressman or woman and ask for more military training dollars. It will keep our force stronger so you can sleep better.

Don't Forget About These

Hey everyone. This is Jess. I want to make sure everyone has links to my blog and our family blog. There I keep updates on what the kids are up to and what's going on with me. I also post there if the kids or I are in need of anything. Please check them out and check back regularly. Thanks so much!

My Blog http://armystrongwifeandmom.blogspot.com/

Family Blog http://notsonormalfamily.blogspot.com/

You can also find the links to the blogs to the right of this screen under All in the Family. Thanks!

All quiet on the Western front

Okay as we sit here with much of our training completed, I have quite a bit of time to think. So I want to expound on the things that make deployments hard and easy. I cant really list all of them because my mind doesn’t work like that. So here we go.
I have a harder time when the training slows and leadership has no real idea of what to do so they have us do stupid things. No I know I shouldn’t bash my leaders but sometimes making me do the same thing over and over again doesn’t make me any better. One reason why is you can only make training so real when you have to prevent any type of injury and you have very limited resources. So it becomes very bland. Now when training is specific and very realistic with plenty of assets soldiers including myself become must more focused and receptive to learning. When a soldiers interest is peaked or their mind is challenged they will participate more and are more than willing to give 100% of themselves to the process. When you dumb down….. If you will….. Training soldiers turn off their receptors and continue to go through the motions without recognizing any missteps or faults along the way. This creates bad habits.
MOB and deployment becomes harder when family doesn’t understand exactly what mindset the soldier has to try and remain in to keep their training effective. I try and keep my brain actively engaged during any and all training so as to increase my combat knowledge. I feel this gives me the best chance to be an effective leader. When it comes to explaining the combat/warrior mindset or battle mind to civilians or “regular” people its about impossible. Most Americans never have a job where the person to their left and right might depend on them for life and limb. Yes our jobs at home are stressful and our co-workers depend on us to pull our weight but no one is killed or is maimed if someone forgets to fax something or fills a form out wrong. I am not knocking civilian life. I am a civilian most of the time. I am just saying that soldiers when they are truly using their battle mind have a hard time hearing about your “bad day.” We care but we can understand why you don’t just fix the problem. If you are tired, go to bed. If you want to do something or need to go shopping do it. No matter how stressful or much of a hassle you think you have in front of you it will be nothing to us. Not that we have more to do, just that a soldier has to be ready 24 hours a day for change to happen. With that being said, that bad trip to the store could have been prevented by prior planning. If you know you have to go to the store and you have certain variables that will make that trip more difficult, and you have the ability to eliminate those problem variables, to a soldier it’s a no brainier. Make the decisions ahead of time and adjust your fire so your trip is easier. We care we just don’t want to hear it.
We love to hear about your day, write it in a letter, send it in a post card. Even though you can send us an email or call us doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send a letter. This holds true all the way out the family and friends line. People need that physical communication. Phone conversations are good but its instantly forgotten once something more difficult is presented to us. A letter can be reread and passed around. It can be carried in a pocket for when times are boring, difficult, stressful, or just bad. That one letter you may write or card you may send might be delivered at just the right moment to make a difference. Never ever think sending a letter will be forgotten. Those days when mail call is held and everyone of your buddies walks away letter in hand smiling because they know its form their girl or its from their parents with some cash or its from a buddy that you wouldn’t ever imagine would right, and you walk away empty handed. Well those are the days that break most men. To see the happy face of your best friend and know you have to wait for the next day to feel like that. Its horrible. Please make soldiers lives better, buy an envelope and stamp and write that letter. Just tell them you are thinking of them, tell them you care, just tell them hi.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I look surprised.

Well, we qualified yesterday. That was rough. Not the actual shooting but wearing the IBA ( armor) all day. From 0430 am to 2230pm or from 430am till 1030 pm, I did not open up or take off my IBA. I was in full battle rattle all day long. very seldom did i get more than 30 min of rest time. It was a very good day. I zeroed my brand new weapon with its brand new optics both of which i have never held before. I zeroed my weapon with red dot optics and with old school iron sights both on my first time out the gate. Many soldiers did take some second, third and so on chance but i felt good my soldiers put out never ceasing effort.

We did NBC qualification, daytime qualification and even limited visibility qualification. That limited visibility qual is basically night time black as hell dark shooting. Which i surprisingly did very well at . 28 out of 30. My qual scores were the highest they have ever been, but i did feel comfortable and confident with my skills on my new weapon. I had a blast, i lost about 6 pounds in sweat, i even broke in my body armor. Gotta love a good day. It was hard, it was long, it was hot, it was even painful, but it was worth it.

Crawl, Walk, Run

Well i have been at Fort Dix, now for a week and its not too bad. We did our first major training today. We packed and repacked and repacked our Large green footlockers. We configured and re figured and disfigured and all figured our body armor and uniform. I think we went through 10 different ways to set up our IBA (body armor). I am loving all this ARMY stuff. I truly love the time i spend here and doing my job. I enjoy taking care of my soldiers. I feel that my only job is their welfare. I am an NCO. For anyone not ARMY savvy or just interested in what an NCO truly is please Google NCO creed ARMY. If you read that and then apply that to what i have said over the past months and what i will be saying over the next year then maybe you can get some insight to who I am and what the ARMY and its soldiers are truly about.

Today we had a class on our new weapon the M4 carbine and the M68 optics. I have never fired this weapon system before and am very excited about it. It is a very light and easy to carry weapon. Our armor is starting to break in and when combining the armor and weapon tactics we can see the little hints and adjustments to make the armor fit better and our mission just that little bit easier. I found out that the gloves I was issued don't work in the heat. I will be wearing the ones i was given, they will work perfectly. I found out that the ballistic sunglasses the ARMY issues just give the sweat a nice channel to your eyes. My Wiley-X's i bought will be very handy. I found out how to make the body armor sit in a better position so it doesn't weigh on my shoulders but on my hips. I found out that just having a half size off in boots wont be something i can "live with."

I got some great training today on how to better position my rifle, my self, how to hold the pistol grip better and even aim better. All the old ARMY ways that i have used for 10 years are being thrown out and new techniques are being shown and i like them. After 10 years of training soldiers and myself to follow certain techs this is taking some getting used to but i like it. The armor makes you sweat and can be uncomfortable but once you understand it will save your life, its not so bad. I am still right next to my best Friend Sgt Jon Sopczak. He and i spend almost every day all day together, just like our first tour. I have some pictures of our packing, our confusion and how we looked today. There will be more and our look will change. By no means is this the last time you will see my in armor.

The beginning

Well, I am at Fort Dix and its okay. The hotel waiting in Buffalo before we left was okay. I roomed with a best friend of my Sgt. Sopczak. He and I lived next to each other during my first deployment. We are very close so being far from home and without our families was much better together. We did a little drinking but that's kinda what soldiers do before they deploy. We never left the room though.

Now that we are here its really not too bad so far. It is a little hot, our room AC was frozen over to begin with so that took some time to thaw. I found out today i have to get glasses because i cant see. My left eye is the bad one but oh well its just for the ARMY.

We also got our body armor today. Yes the piece of equipment that is supposed to save our life. Its a heavy heavy vest with multiple extra additions since my first tour. Until it breaks in it will be very uncomfortable but i imagine once we get used to it the weight wont be so bad.