Week 3: Shooting, shooting, and more shooting

So if you didn't get it from the title of the post, this week is based on shooting. Monday starts with the 4 mile ruck march. We did it at a 13 minute pace which is pretty fast. especially if you haven't rucked much in the past. For those of you that are rucking machines, it will probably be boring. But We had quite a few guys fall out, and if you do fall out you get a major minus and it goes against your leader presence attributes. Anyways, the whole point of the round about ruck is to get to the BRM range that you'll drive past all the time on Ft. Benning. Monday you get a safety brief and begin zeroing. Its not very exciting but if you've ever been to basic its way better than that. Things are much more laid back and you're treated better. Once about twenty people have zeroed they will take you to the range next door and you begin qualifying. I think most people only attempted to qualify once, but during the rest of the week you'll get plenty of opportunities. They will take your best score during the week and use that, and if any time you score 36+ (expert) you don't have to go again. Monday night you also zero using NVG's and IR lights. Which is kind of cool as a novelty but is mostly a pain in the ass. You get home around midnight and first formation is 0530 the next day. Tuesday starts off with a 5 mile run at a 7:30 pace to ensure you can do it under 40:00 minutes, everyone in my platoon made it. After that its is more of the same and they take you to the EST 3000 or whatever its called. Its a video game that replicates zeroing and qualifying, then they take you to this cool range that tracks your bullets and tells you where exactly you're shooting, where you hit the targets and such. Mostly if helps with the little things like if your breathing is off or your trigger squeeze. Tuesday is the only day that you'll get off at a decent hour. Wednesday is the official qualifying day supposedly, but like I said before if you already qualified then you're good. If you do qualify expert you get a major positive and most likely a challenge coin from the Battalion Commander. After that you "qualify" at night using the NVG's. No one came even close. Someone hit like 13 out of 40 and that was the best. I'm sure with some practice people could do better, but half the time I couldn't even see the targets. Anyways, home by midnight again and the next day you got formation at 0500. We loaded the buses immediately with the rucks, which is a pain. My advice is to have a plan with your platoon on how you will load up beforehand or its gonna be a painful 45 minute drive. We did field PT then went to another live fire range and did a whole lot of reflexive fire. Like a ton. I think we shot like 200 live rounds each after all the practice. I was smoked from all of it to be honest. Then you take another bus ride to where you'll be doing your team live fire the next day. You'll do a few dry run through's that night and then you'll make a patrol base and with bivoac shelters. Then that night we had our first infantry moment. Holy hell can a storm come out of no where in this place. One moment I'm digging a slit trench and the next moment we are all soaked. But then there was a giant blaze and lightning hit less than a mile away and all hell broke loose. Cadre ran up like chickens with their heads cut off and told everyone to drop everything and get in the buses. So then we spent the next five hours soaked in a bus, unable to move. That sucked worse than being under the rain would I'm pretty sure. Then finally at 0200 they told us we could go back to our sites and go to bed, wake up at 0500. Came back and by buddy had his sleeping bag literally filled with water. Had he stood up in it the water would have gone up to his knees. Luckily for me mine was fine, but it was warm outside so no one suffered too bad. Then Friday was all Team Live Fire. Each team of four has a team leader, which I was, and its cool to lead everyone but it is a smoker. You have to run (well IMT) to everyone and get LACE reports all the time and its rough. You are in full armor by the way. But everyone has to get a GO with blanks before you go with live rounds. About half the groups will go again so it takes a while. Then the live fire round is up. For the love of all that is holy do not flag anyone. First of all it is stupid and dangerous, and second the cadre will hurt you, like literally. Once youre done with all of that you go back to the company and begin cleaning weapons. We got done at about 2200 which is about average and then it was release, sweet release. Next week is right back to the field though for Patrol Base operations, should be interesting.