Week 4: Lots of Battle Drills, No Sleep

So this week was our first official week in the field, and it was our true (at least in my opinion) "Welcome to the Infantry" week. Monday morning started off pretty normal. We had PT then afterwards a quick class on Call for Fire, which was basically the same slide deck they show you in your commissioning source, but this time from an FA officer. Then a quick class on demo because you will go to a demo range at the end of the week and they have to show you some stuff before they let you blow stuff up, more on that later though. Then they let you quickly change, you grab your ruck which now weighs about 65-75 lbs with the full load, they issue you a weeks worth of MRE's to smash in there and then you get on an overcrowded bus and you drive out to the range. You get classes and instruction on four basic battle drills, all at the squad level. The only new one for me was attacking a trench. That, gentlemen, is something I will never want to do in real life, so here is me hoping we never go to war with North Korea. But if you have had any urban combat training its very similar. They also issue you a breach kit for the platoon, which is basically 30 lbs of axes, and other tools to get you through all sorts of crap. One guy has to carry it for the rest of the course. Anyways, you get plenty of instruction and practice. Monday itself though is classes and then Tuesday and Wednesday you actually get to practice. But the nights are the hard part. We started working on patrol bases at night. It takes a loooooong time. Someday when we get more practice I'm sure it will go faster. Anyways, we started the patrol bases operations with the ORP when full night fell, around 930. I had the unfortunate luck to not be in leadership so all I did was security, and staying awake was incredibly difficult. But if you fall asleep and get caught its an automatic major minus. So the only advise I would give is on range cards, make sure you have them, and people do them right because that is what takes forever. The individuals do it, then buddy teams, then squads, then the whole platoon. I know it sounds really easy, but its not, and we didn't finish until after 0400 and wake up was 0500. Then we got up and ran 5 miles at a 7:30 pace. At least that was the goal, I think we did it at about 8:00 though. But the fact that I ran 5 miles after 45 minutes of sleep was a miracle in and of itself. But then we got back and as I said before we actually practiced the Battle Drills. Then the day basically repeated itself on Wednesday. You will do field PT and it was sprints for us on Wednesday, that didn't feel very good haha. Then that night we got hot a's which was awesome and our captain gave us a surprise, we wont have PT tomorrow so we were going on a ruck march tonight! We waited for it to get dark again, rucked up and went. The first three miles there were at a good 14 minute pace, but it was really really warm and humid. Then we took a break at three miles, cooled down, and then got "hit" with artillery simulators. We took four "casualties" which made our night a living hell. We had to pick them up and carry them, I got to carry an extra ruck, which felt like it weighted a ton, and then i realized it had the breach kit on it as well. Woo hoo! So I was carrying the two, when we got another round of artillery. It tried to run as fast as I could the called out three hundred meters, but as I was doing so the breach kit fell off the ruck, flew down, and whacked me straight in the back of the knees. Suffice to say I went flying and face planted into the dirt. As I rolled over onto my ass cursing the damn casualties, the captain walked by, looked at me and said "Hey LT, dont be a pussy. Get up." My only thought at this point was "Welcome to the infantry." We eventually got back from that three miles back exhausted. But then we had to make a new patrol base. We got done, and then had a whopping 15 minutes before wake up. I still managed to sleep. Thursday was an awesome day though. We had the demo range. The first part was the best. They let us blow up four claymores, which was kinda cool, then they blew up over 100 lbs of C4. They put most of us in these little bunkers and it sucked the air right out of us. It also knocked the cadre on their ass. It was epic. If they let us have a copy of the video Ill post it. The second half of the day was less exciting. It was the grenade range. Where they treat you like privates. But eventually it was over and they let us back to the company. We had to clean our weapons and all the platoon equipment, but we released around 2100. It may seem kinda late but even five hours of sleep felt like 12 after a combined total of two all week. Friday was then a relaxing day. We went to the Call for Fire simulator, then had  a quick class and were released at 1500. Quick note, we got three new LT's who just recycled from week 13 for failing OPORD's, made it a little more real for us