Week 13: The Final OPORD, the Final APFT, the Final and Randomly a whole lot of Mortars

Yes this is basically the Final week. It is the last week before we go out to Leader Forge so they really pack everything together. This week is also worth a lot of points. The Final OPORD is worth 100, and for us we actually did a CONOP more than an OPORD but it was all on powerpoint. Which made some things a lot easier and some things more difficult. We had three more people fail this, making it their second one and recycling them back to week 5... suck. That brings us down to 25 people. The APFT final was actually really easy and you get 100 points if your over 290, 95 points if youre over 270, 90 if over 240, etc. I dont think anyone got less than 85 total points so that was nice. We also had a quiz on COIN and an Exam. The exam was the first one we had were you actually answered questions instead of just memorized lists. Because I had been in a Civil Affairs unit during college this was my bread and butter, but for a lot of guys it was hard, mostly because it was so unexpected. They also have a new final they just started with the last cycle who graduated a couple weeks ago. It used to be 100 multiple choice questions but now its all fill in the blank and a whole lot of depicting fights. Suffice to say we studied like crazy and we were all super nervous, especially since the cadre told us how much harder it would be. But when we took it on Friday it was WAY easier than we all expected. Just make sure you really understand Operational Terms and Graphics FM 1-02, or you're screwed. But to be honest after so many OPORD's you'll know exactly what to do. Basically a whole lot of worrying for nothing. The best part was on Friday was right after we took teh final we were released so that was nice. Oh and randomly on Thursday they had our class do a live fire with the mortars. We used 82mm and hung the rounds ourselves. It was kind of cool, but the purpose was to actually call for fire, and we were so behind on the schedule all we really did was read a prewritten sheet. So all you had to do was read off a card, and then we rotated with the other platoons to actually hang the rounds. Which the first time or two was really cool, but after hanging something like 40 it wasnt that awesome... and at the time all I wanted to do was study for the final. So basically this week is really simple, but a lot rides on it. Also you have to have a certain number of points to continue. Hopefully no one else gets recycled, but we wont find out until the first day of Leader Forge. Which for us is a Sunday. Anyways Ill be gone for the next 10 days, and then its a four day pass. A nice little break after we do make it through this hell week.

Week 12: Urban Ops and Blackhawks

So this week was hands down the most fun I've  had at IBOLC. It started off on Monday pretty much the same as all field weeks. Getting everything prepped for the company, getting weapons, and NVG's, MRE's, the whole shebang. One thing that is important for this week was to have a good GTAO set up for the two mock villages you'll be at. Basically the GTAO is a map where each building is numbered separately and coded. So basically when you're getting shot at you can say "Contact from building 12." Instead of "Someone is shooting at me from that building on the left, behind the big circle one." Type of thing. Anyways have that set up. So Monday itself we went out to the mock city and actually had a few familiarization classes with a few of the big weapons systems. Like really big. The M1 Abram was just kick ass and I admit I envied the armor guys for a little bit. I got in the drivers seat (which may be the most relaxing job in the army), closed the hatch and just about passed out. Anyways, played with that for a while, as well as the Strykers, and the Bradley's. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm going light infantry and airborne, and I think the best weapon the US has is the soldier, but I sure wouldn't mind walking less and using a few of those things here at IBOLC. Anyways at about 1700 we started our patrol lanes. We started with a patrol base outside in the woods about 500 meters away from the village. The village was awesome, it was only built a few years ago and is a maze. Plus everything has ladders, and there is this HUGE underground network of sewers. There is the "Government Building" which is five floors and is basically a death trap.... But more about that place latter. Anyways most of our lanes were raids, then a KLE lane, then a defensive lane. That's pretty much how the whole week went more or less as far as the lanes went. The first night was actually pretty fun. I remember as we were clearing rooms was of the guys on my team literally yelled out "This is SO much better than running through the woods!!!!" And it really was. That night we were also set up in a defensive lane and while another one of our sister platoons was getting water from the water buffalo our cadre recruited them for a riot. They rioted and then stuff went crazy. All 40 of them rushed the building at once. I was up on the third floor where our prison was and all the sudden people were firing like crazy and I looked outside through the window and saw people literally jumping through the window's. When I ran down stairs it looked more like and old school royal rumble from WWF. People were literally beating the crap out of each other. One poor guy in our platoon, a small Lebanese, was looking at the window and then a guy hit him full in the chest, and pushed him backwards all the way across the room, through the hallway, and slammed hit to the bottom of the stairs I was standing on. Ouch. Though it gave me the perfect, and thrilling, opportunity to jump and tackle the guy from the stairs, and then hog tie him. Once I looked up from my little victory I saw things had calmed down a little bit. About 15 guys were hand cuffed or zip tied really. The other ones had run away and we were checking to make sure we werent missing any SI. Luckily we werent. So we put them in jail (which was a legit jail with cells) for about an hour until their cadre came to get them. It was a blast. Anyways, that night was a lot of fun, but it had rained a ton so we were all soaking wet, which wasnt much fun at all. Then on Tuesday at about 1200 they took us back to the company because all the cadre had to meet with the new battalion commander for a few hours. This just gave us an opportunity to eat fast food instead of MRE's and to clean our weapons a bit. Then we went to the hanger for our air assault mission. Had to do a lot of dry practices getting on and off the blackhawks. We didnt do a true air assault, no fast roping or anything, but we did get a long ride all over Ft. Benning before we were eventually dropped off at our LZ. We then had a movement of about eight miles, which was by far the biggest movement of the week and then conducted the attack on that hellacious government building. It was 100% dark, so dark that our NVG's wouldnt really work with the laser, which made anytime a battle buddy look at you, literally blinding. I felt even worse for the OPFOR, they were literally blind and it had to be scary for them and we blasted into rooms and started lighting them up with sim rounds. Which hurt by the way. Anyways, that is how most of the week went, some of the KLE's were really fun, but challenging if youre into the civil affairs type stuff. But like I said, this was the funnest, and most real world training I think we've had so far.

Week 11: Two Quizzes, a Test. RPFT #2, OPORD #2

Whew! Glad this week is over, it was brutal. It may have been a week in the classroom but you have so much going on youll probably only get a few hours of sleep. First of all, as the title of this week says, there is a lot going on and of the 1,000 possible points in this course, 250 are part of this week. So if youre not very good at math that 1/4 of youre grade in 1/16 of the course. Don't eff it up. So anyways Monday is just a day of classes on Defensive and Urban Ops. Pay attention because its the only classes you will get. Tuesday starts out early, we had to be there at 0400 so we could go have the RPFT. We went out to Rangerland and were actually graded by real RI's. A LOT of people failed. The first time we did the RPFT a few weeks ago not a single person in the company failed, this time about 1/3 did. Only a few on push ups, none on sit ups, and a bunch of the five mile run. I don't know what the difference was this time, or if it was simply just the heat but it wasnt good. The run is the only real graded event and its worth 25 points. Then when we came back to the classroom we had the defensive ops quiz. To be honest it was probably the easiest quiz we've ever taken. Then for a couple of the platoons they got released after a quick review of urban ops. Not our platoon. We watched some real good army videos on how to not be an idiot as a PL. Kind of funny, but most people just wanted to go work on their OPORD. Tuesday night was the night I decided to pull my all nighter for the OPORD. As I said a few weeks ago, you need to put at least 40 hours into it. Which makes it really hard if you get off of work everyday somewhere between 1700-1800. Anyways as I think I said before the real key to passing is writing a word for word script. I literally dont think a single person that passed didnt have one. Mine was about nine pages long in size 12 font. If anyone is interested just let me know and I'll email mine to you. I got an 85 on mine and the only reason I didnt get a 95, at least according to my grader, was because my graphics were zoomed in enough on the urban area we were fighting. Wednesday we had three people go got more than 90% on their first OPORD brief to us. It was a good idea to pay attention to them as each grader is different and you can see what your grader gave them. So, you basically had to come back at at 0200 Thursday morning for the 12 mile ruck. I two words--it sucked. First of all it was a damn thunderstorm when we started so our light a pre weighted 35 pound rucks weighted 56 pounds when we crossed the finish line (at least thats what mine weighted). Anyways its a simple six miles down and back and I did the first six at a 13:30-14:00 min pace. Which paid off because the last few were brutal. The track we took had mile 10-11 completely uphill. I swear that thing looked like Mt. Everest and felt like it as well. I had been on pace the whole time and had saved up some precious minutes but mile 11 literally took me almost 20 minutes and that took away almost all of my time. Suffice to say I made it at a little over two hours and 58 minutes and I was dead. My traps hurt so bad I literally had to lay on the ground because when I stood up or sat down and gravity pulled on my arms it hurt to bad. And I was not alone. Most guys though didnt take care of their feet  and that was the main problem. Of the company about 25-30 failed. Im not sure exactly cause I was too smoked to care. They will have to retake it in week 13 on the one mile track--yuck. Then the rest of Thursday and Friday are all OPORDs. I went at about noon on Thursday we I was free to go after wards. Friday was kind of a bummer day. We lost another five who failed both their OPORDS. One came as a really big surprise. And two people passed who I was certain would fail. I guess you just never know. So we are back down to 27 and we started with 40 and have had 4 inserts. Its been brutal. Though next week is supposed to be a blast, we do a few air assault mission and use simunitions the entire time. I'm jacked. Anyways, the only other thing we did Friday was have an advanced CFF class with CAS and CCA. All in all, a brutal week, and good luck when you hit it.

Week 10: Patrols...of Death

Ok the title is a bit melodramatic but at times that what it felt like. So Monday morning is just like any other with PT and the like. Then you get prepared to get out to the field. They bus you out there, drop you off, and once you get all your equipment loaded you're off. A note on that. You will have a TON of equipment. They give you a week's worth of MRE's (12) you're own ammo for the week (around 300 rounds per M4) and then you have to distribute the machine gun ammo. I think each person in the platoon carried 200-400 rounds and the weapons squad carried around a thousand at all time. Plus all the other stuff (AT-4's, javelins, breach kit, tripods--those bad boys weigh 25 lbs themselves--extra barrels, etc) in your rucksacks. There is no way your rucksack itself will weigh less than 80 lbs, its just not possible. The only good thing is that as you go through the week it will get a little lighter each day as you use your ammo and eat your food. If you're in weapons squad youll be even heavier. Total, including my FLC and weapon, I had over 100 lbs on my body. Somehow you just get used to it. No secrets there. Just make sure your ruck is connected properly and fits you well or you will be in a world of hurt. If you don't know what you're doing ask someone! Don't wait, its not worth it. So when you are doing patrols they dont really care on what or how you brief, as long as it works. You are graded 100% on execution. Obviously the more you brief the easier it is. Ok my only advice here is work hard and dont screw your battle buddy. We literally did not sleep at all until Friday night when we almost got an hour before we returned to the TTB and started loading up everything and cleaning etc. But I thought I'd give you a few high lights (or low lights) of the week. We started really bad. We had to do a 5 km movement but our PL did bad terrain analysis and took us through a swamp. It SUCKED. Both literally and figuratively. The epitome was the PL himself who literally fell into the mud up to his armpits. If you dont believe me I have pictures, Ill send them to you. To say he was stuck is a serious understatement. He couldnt move, or even access his radio and the whole patrol almost moved by him completely before the RTO noticed he was gone. We were in a heavily wooded area and couldnt see much, plus we were in traveling over watch. Suffice to say that we didnt even get close to making it to the OBJ and failed miserably. PL got it the worst, but everyone was up to their knees at least. Other fun things included moving 12 casualties 1 km off the OBJ to a LZ. I happened to be the medic on that lane and I literally fireman carried people 2.5 km myself. It felt awesome. The last lane we had was the real killer. We had to move one casualty 10 miles on a skedco. That flat out sucked. It was the hardest thing Ive ever done in my life hands down. You still have all your gear and dragging that guy through the woods and sands just sucks. We went up a hill that I swear was vertical. But I admit I felt like a bad ass when we finished, though i was so tired I could barely pull the trigger when OPFOR hit us at the LZ. This was also a time for people to step up. We had one kid who was carrying the 240B carry all his own stuff, that, his tripod, and 2000 rounds of ammo. His kit weighted over 150 lbs easy. We didnt even realize it until afterwards or we would never have allowed it. But he was a real team player and made it easier for all of us. Dont get me wrong though, it wasnt all suck and we did kick some ass eventually. We had tons of smoke and using that is always fun. Plus once you get all your CAS and CCA down with your IDF you can really dominate. Have fun with it, cause you certainty wont be doing anything else.

Week 9: First Graded OPORD

Ok so I admit I was stoked to be back in the classroom this week for some good R and R. Sadly though, I was mistaken. Given the physical aspects of this week arent that bad at all. We had some pretty rough PT, but nothing too crazy. What was killer was the OPORD. As I mentioned in week 5 the OPORD's are incredibly detailed. For our platoon you really needed to put at least 40 hours into it. The hard part is that you still work a 60 hour week. So in order to put 40 more hours into your product you will have some sleepless nights. Yes, even in the classroom CPT Morris somehow takes all my sleep away. Anyway you will receive the company OPORD in slideshow format. The phrase "there's more than one way to skin a cat" perfectly applies here on how you want to break down your own OPORD. What I do is try to complete paragraph one over the weekend. Other than paragraph three this will take most of your time to complete. I do terrain analysis first, doing my GTAO is literally my first step, then simply following down the Company OPORD and doing my own as it applies to key terrain, avenues of approach, etc. Then I begin the enemy analysis, which is crucial to passing your OPORD. If you enemy analysis is bad, especially your enemy sittemp, they youre screwed. Your whole plan will suck and you will fail. It happened to a lot of guys. Think of the enemy as yourself. Basically create a whole separate scheme of maneuver for them. Not with all the graphics, but how you would fight if you were them. If you spend some legitimate time doing this things will be a lot easier. But dont get sucked in to thinking there is only one thing or one way the enemy can fight. Make sure to have something like a PACE plan for how the enemy will fight. THen once you have that you can start writing up their COA statements and then easily slide right into your own COA statement and Task Org. Mission statement takes two seconds then the big daddy. Paragraph Three. If you have good enemy analysis and good COA statements for both you and the enemy this will be a lot easier. Start out writing a detailed concept of the operation, then basically take your concept of the operation and turn it into 30-40 slides. Show movement at LEAST at the squad level, but you really  need to break it down into teams. Once you get done with this, paragraph four and five are basically copied from the company and you can move on. I think everyone in the platoon had at least once sleepless night while we worked on our OPORD's. Especially because we were on a short week for Memorial Day. The presentation itself is 45 minutes. If you get done before 40 minutes you are a fool and you are almost guaranteed to fail. Make sure to talk really fast. Most guys that passed that a specific script and just read off of it. This is not like ROTC or LDAC where they care about how engaging you are. You could be as interesting as a block of wood but as long as you have the info, youre set. Anyways, about a third of the platoon passed. Which means already 2/3's of the platoon are already on the chopping block in week 11. But if you were at least over a 60/100 you should be set for week 11.

Week 8: Squad Lanes and Patrols

So first of all this was by far the hardest week thus far. You get out to the field pretty dang quick, by 1000, and its go time. We had the squad live fire first. This is similar to the team live fire from week 3 except now youll need to shift and cease fire. They are incredibly strict on safety and if you do anything unsafe in the practice fire with blanks beforehand you will be crushed. Also make sure to conduct good PCC's/PCI's. One of our squad leaders got fired and got a major minus because the M249's jammed because they didnt have any CLP. This was also the first time we used the two different military radios. Out platoon did some extra practice and while one squad was conducting the practice on the live fire with blanks the other three squads were assaulting the trench. The squad leaders got the opportunity to rotate as PL's and control all four squads. The hardest part was communicating on the radios. As the PL I had three seperate radios, and literally had conversations with 9 different people. My PSG, 4 SL's, then four other cadre who take the role of Company Commander, 1SG, Fires, or other assets. I admit I had a blast and it was fun, but it is really hard to keep track of everything. Thank goodness they keep repeating themselves but I did completely miss CAS. Practice makes perfect. Anyways after everyone goes through the live fire (which is a smoker) we began  our squad lanes. The rest of this week is almost the same as week 4, except this time each squad will teach classes and conduct lanes instead of the cadre. They are basically evaluating our ability to train soldiers. NOTE: You will not sleep this week until Thursday night! At least our platoon didnt. We stayed up for somewhere around 82 hours. It was basically LDAC on crack. I have learned that its only really hard to stay awake between 0100 and 0500. During daytime hours its not too bad and you are so dang busy you simply dont have time to sleep, or think about sleeping. A lot of guys dip to stay awake. I use BBQ sunflower seeds and bring out four or five bags when we go into the field. Anyways, as SL I was OIC for my squad's portion of training. We had nine hours to conduct training and lanes for the other three squads for nine hours From 2000 to 0500 until we had PT. We had react to contact and had four different lanes with different OPFOR. But I have to admit it was some of the hardest training we had done. First of all guys had already been up for like 50 hours when we started and their motivation wasnt at its peak. Then the terrain was rugged and using NVG's in rugged terrain is one of two things--hilarious or deadly. Or both. People fall all the time, usually not too bad but we did have one guy go down a ravine. He wasnt seriously injured but was a little woozy for a while. Anyways there were plenty of times when people zoned out. We had people falling asleep standing up. When I was evaluated a late, sometime around 0300 I was standing behind the SBF with the machine guns blazing. I leaned on a tree and the next thing I knew I faceplanted right between the two M240B's because I had fallen asleep. Like I said, less than five feet away from two machine guns. Its a difficult couple of nights. Thursday night we FINALLY got to sleep, and we got 5 hours! We were so jacked before going to bed you would have thought we had won a the collective lottery. Bad news is that Friday morning is the 8 mile ruck march. We had 35 lbs dry and then we carried an additional 8 quarts of water so your ruck wasnt the normal 80 lbs it had been during the week. They let us leave an assault pack with stuff in it so our rucks weighted roughly the same. You have two hours. The fastest did it in under an hour and twenty minutes. Most of our platoon was exhausted so a bunch of us just did the first mile in 13 minutes and the next seven miles in 15 minute miles. Not super hooah hooah high speed. But I didnt give a rats ass and we came in at an hour and fifty seven minutes. Once youre done with that in the morning you load buses and go back to the company to clean weapons! It wasnt too bad, but we got out a little late at about 1800. I crashed immediately when I got home and slept a ton.

Week 7: Machine Guns and Rockets

Well let me tell you, if you every wanted to fire a machine gun a lot, this is certainly the week for you. But before you get to do all that awesome stuff you need to take your first RPFT at the one mile track! They do grade pretty tough and try to recreate Ranger School, but its not to hard. I'm not sure about the company but no one in our platoon failed. The toughest part for people was the 5 mile run, but even the slowest came it with a minute to spare. Also if you can do any of the following you will get a major positive (100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 5 mile in less than 32:00, and 20 pull ups) so in theory you could get 20 extra points if you were a super stud. No one in the company got more than two. Anyways the sucky part is the RPFT starts at 0400. And I mean people are doing push ups at 0400 so we had to be there at 0330. Not the coolest way to start the week. After the RPFT Monday morning is mostly in the classroom and a little preparation for the week. Our platoon checked out eight 240B's, twelve M249's,  two .50 cal's, and two MK-19's. Suffice to say if we went to combat like that... it would suck carrying everything. Monday afternoon is a familiarization fire on the crew served weapons which is pretty cool if you've never fired them before, and a few more in depth classes on the machine guns. That evening we had classes on the different rockets and missiles used by the infantry. Not too exciting, but most of the instructors were pretty good so the time went by fast. Tuesday was an awesome day. Basically we got to blow stuff up. For whatever reason our class was the first IBOLC class to get to shoot AT-4's and boy did we shoot a lot of them. I think the whole company shot somewhere around 80 (There are about 120 in the whole company), and it did look pretty cool to see eight or nine rockets hit the same target at once. On the other hand a few of my classmates really struggled and probably couldnt hit the broad side of a barn with those things. Until I fired a live one I had no idea how much of a "whoosh" there really was. They also let us shoot live rounds out of the M203's, which was a lot more fun than I anticipated to be honest. I should have mentioned that before you fired anything that blew up you did a whole lot of either dry firing or firing with some sort of non lethal ammunition (chalk or balls or something). That afternoon the assigned gunners from each squad zeroed on their weapons. I had been assigned as a main gunner for the 240 and zeroing was a lot easier than I expected. For those that did it, it went faster than when we did the M4's. The next two days and nights were spent qualifying on the weapons systems. Kind of life qualifying with the M4's except the closest target is at 400 meters and the farthest was at 1000 meters. To be honest I couldnt even see anything past 800 and neither could my assistant gunner so I never even tried to shoot at them. But its not too difficult and most people qualified after their second try. Then on Wednesday night the entire company will do a familiarization fire with all tracers in the M249. It flies through and we were changing barrels every minute and they were still getting super hot. Oh and dont be a dumb ass and touch the hot barrels. They say it a million times but someone always gets a pretty nasty burn. Then Thursday morning is spent making sure all those that still need to qualify are, and other tasks. You return back to the company Thursday afternoon, but youll be cleaning all night. Literally. We had a rotation with the squads, but you only had an hour to go home. Not really to sleep, just to drop your gear and take a shower, and grab a bite. Friday all day is just cleaning. Youll get released when you finish. It took us until 1800.