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.