Foxholes and Dogtags

Operation Helena Handbasket

This was a pretty packed weekend. It was a MUTA 8 (for you civies, that's a four day drill) which consisted of going to Fort Harrison in Montana and partaking in a pretty intense weekend. Like any unit in the military, there was some hurry up and wait involved, but overall, there was a lot of good training.

The first day was pretty slow. I had to get up pretty early, and currently, anything before 8 in the morning consists of insanely early for me these days. We had to be at the drill hall by 0430, get issued our food for the trip, sign for weapons, get our gear together, and then get on the road.

The bus trip consisted of watching Season One of the Chapelle Show.

We stopped in Missoula MT, grabbed a bite to eat, I picked up a couple of reads at Barnes and Noble, and got a Thank You from a passerby which caught me by surprise. Still, its always appreciated to know that we're appreciated.

Fort Harrison is a National Guard Post, where the MT National Guard is head quartered. We kind of teamed up with them a bit for the weekend.

This weekend consisted of Qualifications and other misc training. I got a few good drill weekends out of my other unit, but a lot of times, they consisted of us sitting around BS-ing and then inventoring the equipment. Well, BS-ing is a job skill of every soldier, but we actually had stuff going on and I felt that time was usually pretty well spent.

I do have one minor beef, which brings up my next point.

You Can Take the Girl out of Preventive Medicine, but you can't take the Preventive Medicine out of the Girl

I've been doing this job for to long. And it was made evident this weekend. I've never really been to fond of aspects of my job, and it hasn't been a secret, but I still find it my obligation to perform it. As I know of the importance behind it.

So anyway, without really thinking, I reverted to Preventive Medicine Specialist this weekend. My Target? The Dining Facility.

Actually, the Dining Facility is a building used by a contracter who caters the food. Well, you would think that the contractor would be aware of the laws in regards to food handling, but these yahoos obviously didn't. I think they felt that since they were not working within their facility and on a military instillation that it would be ok if they cut corners. Or something.

The first meal consisted of three beverages to drink. Cola (generic), Diet Cola, and Tea.

Um, I drink none of those. And guess what? Water was not available. This is a huge no-go. If nothing else, ditch the Tea and serve Water! No matter what you serve at a meal, you always have water! Its freakin' common sense!

Strike one to the caterer. So I made a comment. I trade to make it as tactful as I could, just letting them know that it would be nice if they would have H2O available next time.

They evidently took this to heart, because they did.

The next meal was breakfast. I didn't really pay attention to anything, trying to get out of the Preventive Med mind, but just made a comment out loud that they served Hash Browns but there was no Ketchup. Honestly, I wasn't really making a complaint, lack of Ketchup is not a health issue, but I would like to season my Hash Browns with SOMETHING.

Dinner was the next catered meal.

This time, I actually looked at the food handlers and noticed something about them. There were at least three, and only one was wearing some kind of hair restraint (a base ball cap, which is acceptable) I made a comment asking the food server if he had a hat or something to wear and he mentioned he didn't, and then I mentioned that he should be wearing something.

Apparently, the food service people take offense when 'simple military type folks' start telling them how to do their job. Except, well, its my job to make sure that they do their job right. I actually would have loved to have inspected the place, but within the unit, I was out of my jurisdiction. So I made an on the Spot Correction, which was basically, 'hey buddy, get something on your head.' This is a common sense health code issue (unless it doesn't apply in Montana, which I bet it does).

So the management made a complaint to the Sergeant in charge of the contract or something. And she came and told me that I was not to make any more complaints to the food workers since I complained three times, instead to tell her directly.

She told me that right there at the table in front of two of my sergeants. They didn't like her tact (apparently she lacks it) and I was informed to go through them from now on.

Preventive Medicine is known for creating a bit of a stir. In that sense, I guess the job fits me more then I admit. And I don't foresee myself abandoning my MOS any time soon.

Regardless, I give my Sergeant a copy of the regulation in question, informed him of my stance and why I did what I did (because PM does that) and he told me that he would take care of it.

Because I was told not to talk to the food service people anymore, I refused to eat any of their hot food after that. Several people also complained about the hotmeals, so I know it wasn't just me. However, I am going to write a pretty nasty eMail to the caterer in question. That Caterer? Golden Corral.

The Range

This weekend was about weapons familiarization and qualifying. I've gotten to a point that I'm pretty good with a weapon, but I've come to notice that my stance in a supported position, and how I hold the rifle, and where it is positioned, is very different then how I hold it in the unsupported position. Which, I've discovered, is why I have so much trouble in the unsupported position. So the next time I qualify, I'm going to have to focus more on making sure the two positions are as similar as can be with hand placement and what not. Regardless, I managed to zero the weapon in 9 rounds and felt pretty comfortable with it. Then I had to qualify with it.

I got into position within the foxhole, waited for the targets to pop up, and when the 50 meter came into view, I pulled the trigger, and the first shot sent a stream of CLP into my eye. It obscured my vision for at least a few targets, I could only see a blur, and seeing as we only had a limited amount of amunition for this range, I called an alibi so that I wouldn't waste ammo and knew I would get an opportunity to fire again.

They still made me fire the NBC round. They make you mask up and then you fire at the 50 meter target 10 times. I hit ten out of ten. Because I'm high speed like that.

The second time I fired, I qualified, piece of cake. This unit should really help me with my Prone Unsupported and I'm looking forward to getting better at that. Meanwhile, we got opportunities for kodak moments.

I tried to do a semi-rendition of my 'not sorry' pose that made me sort of infamous online, although it was noted that the kevlar obscurred my vision. So what was I to do?

Well, take it off! And then procede to act like a freak.

Yes, it was warm. Yes, probably to warm for the knit cap. But I'm new to the unit, and the kevlar I recieved didn't have a sweat band. I had to compromise.

One of the blasts from the past I did happen upon is the weaponeer. It's a pretty sweet machine that helps you to see how steady your groupings are and how you are shooting. It just looks like it was made 20 years ago. Which it was.

To keep people from having to sit around to much during the day, they had classes going on in regards to Land Navigation and what not, while other soldiers were on range detail.

I was generally on Range Detail, which I didn't really mind so long as I had a job to do. Sometimes they get too many people on detail, and although many hands make light work, too many hands makes an area crowded and it difficult to do your job. Still, we had it under control, I felt like I had a job to do, and I got to know the people in the unit, many of which I'm still getting to know.

Well, since I was one of the few females to qualify early and was not in a major detail on the range, I did get tasked to escort another soldier back to the barracks who wasn't feeling well and spent the rest of the afternoon in the barracks catching up on sleep or reading. That wasn't my favorite part of the weekend, but everyone came back for dinner where we prepared for the Night Fire. With Tracers.

The course is made up of a lot of dead grass. Night fire can be amusing because in order to see where your shooting, you use the tracer rounds which shows where your aiming, as well as where your rounds end up going after they ricochet off of various rocks and what not. Some people were quick to show that they don't know how to shoot at anything as some missed their targets by, well, a lot. Apparently they think their target is 20 feet high or something.

ANyway, it was quite a sight, and lit many a fire out in the field, which made us have to cease fire after every firing order so we could put out the fires. One thing this little drill taught me was, be flexible. And relax a little. It turned out to be quite fun!

We got to bed around 12 that night.

Mount Drills

Saturday turned out to be quite a busy day. Wake Up at 5, breakfast at six. The morning we were given training on the most common form of military warfare in the global war on terror.

Urban Warfare.

In Iraq, some of the major missions that needs to be accomplished is going through and clearing houses for insurgent attacks. I got an idea first hand of how dangerous this mission is, and it gave me a pretty good respect of what is going on over there. We had an Army Ranger who had been in theater doing just this teach the class, and I found it to be fascinating. And in the controled atmospher we were in, it was also a lot of fun!

Probably not nearly as fun when put to use in the real world, when you have people shooting back, but it definitely put a lot of things in perspective. And I think everyone got valuable training in regards to teamwork, modern warfare and a greater idea of what is happening within theater.

This is me practicing stacking with a couple of my new battles. We should probably be a little closer, but none of us are experts at this and for a quick hands on lesson that we go, I think that we had performed very well.

We were simulating a hallway here.

We had a great training experience using the techniques we learned to clear an old building that turned out to be a latrine. We were getting pretty hoorah about it as well. At least, I had a lot of fun.

The whole training was to prep us for the real excercise, where they gave us an objective called 'Goat' that we were supposed to take from our start point of 'Rope'. We broke off into two teams, took on the objective, and simulated rounds with the words 'bang bang' or whatever sounds that we could make that sounded like gun fire. The Opposing Forces (from this moment forth referred to as Opfor) were one up on us. They had Paintball Guns.

Anyway, we stormed the building, took a few casualties, but learned a lot. And I think I would have gone down if my kevler hadn't saved me. But I am wondering how well my kevler really would have held up if this had been an actual bullet.

I think this whole training experience would have been great if we had spent an entire day on it. However, they only allotted the morning.

The afternoon was geared toward something else. But first, we had to get to our destination.

Black Hawks

To get us to our next destination, courtesy of the Montana National Guard, we were given a little helicopter ride to our next point. Three helicopters escorted us over the Montana country side to our land navigation destination.

I've ridden in a Black Hawk once before. I meant to negotiate a trip on one when I was in Kosovo but never managed it. Well, they gave us the opportunity and I had an absolute blast.

They had us practice getting in and out of the helicopters first. See, to save time and gas, they would touch down, we would jump off and lay on the ground and then they would take off and get the next flight. We had to practice this maneuver and so I did. And I landed right on a little piney when we did the practice run. Damn thing left pricklies in my uniform that I had to spend the next ten minutes trying to pick out.

Well, we were on the second run, so we waited and just talked for a while, before the hawks returned. We got on at a pretty good pace and I had my camera out and ready for the kodak moments.

I got a lot of air shots, and pictures of the other birds as well. For some reason, all of the pictures I got of me came out blurry.

Well, we touched down, and as we practiced, as soon as the bird landed, we unbuckled our belts, took a few steps away from the black hawks and then lay down to stay away from the rotary blades. And as if it had intentionally been part of the rehearsal before, I lay down on another cactus.

Grr.

The parting shot was pretty cool though.

Land Navigation

I've done land navigation a few times, and I feel that I'm pretty good at it. Actually, I'm one of those people that seems to do better at it when I run solo, but for the purposes of this course, we were paired up. I think I got a little over confident because I botched a few things up at the beginning.

The best trainign I ever got from land nav was from a Special Forces Master Sergeant, and that guy was Hooah. Land nav has stuck with me because of him, in fact I attribute his teaching for what pulled me through Land Nav in PLDC. I was the first person to come back with all four points then.

Well, this time, I had three soldiers who were somewhat familiar with land nav with me. I did a little refresher course with me and then we went for a hike. And looked and looked and looked for our points. We found three of them and was onto our last when we ran out of time, but all was well, as we got some high quality training out of the matter. Fort Harrison has a pretty intense land nav course, at least terrain wise. The points aren't difficult to find, its just getting to them.

Well, when your trekking in the hot sun looking for points in very hilly terrain, you have to keep yourself motivated. We did so by singing show tunes, me and one of the specialists ended up singing the entire theme song of Tiny Toons as we marched toward our third point. We initially overshot on our second point, but I won't take full blame for that, only partial.

Land Nav never has you looking your best. But whatever the case, I found my point. And damn it, that is all that matters!

I probably would have been quicker had I been alone, but all in all I had a great time, and this really wasn't a graded event, it was more for the experience if anything, and it was an awesome experience. Complete with blisters. Fortunately, they didn't get too bad, the medics patched me up before they got much worse.

Meanwhile, along with the day land nav course, they set us up with a night land nav. This dealt more with dead reckoning, where you shoot an asmith, find out the distance, and then start walking. Because this is done at night, the points are a lot closer together and unfortunately, the closer the points are together, the harder it is to shoot a proper asmith or mark it on the map. And we're trying to do this in the dark. Which makes it harder still.

The points were marked with obscurred chemlights, which is all good, and the first one was a little to easily seen. We found it without much of a problem, and then it was off to the second one. I think we missed some things on that one, because we had to cheat to find it by asking the team coming from it where it was. They pointed and sure enough. . .

The last group had been instructed to pick up the chemlights as they found the points. Unfortunately for us, they did it in reverse order, so we never found our last point, unless you counted when it walked right past us. We did look for a little while but soon gave up when it was clear that the clean up crew didn't wait long enough to start cleaning up and headed back a little dejected.

No harm done, like I said, this was more for the learning experience rather then a grade.

The night sky was amazing. Now I know why they call it Big Sky Montana.

Le Fin

Long days had us going to bed around midnightish. I couldn't help but not take a shower at night for risk of going to bed smelling too much like army. Today, we got the pleasure of sleeping in until 6. I slept in until 0630 when I found that I woke up with a head cold.

Every trip where barracks are involved always means barracks clean up. And then a police call, where I spend a lot of time cleaning up other people's cigarette butts. And of course, the trip home. We watched Uncommon Valor, Old School and Chapelle Show, Season 2.

On the way back we were encouraged to clean weapons. When we got to the drill hall, we proceeded to clean them again.

But overall, one of the most enjoyable drill weekends I have had in a long time.

Which is another tick in the reasons to Reenlist Column. . .

The New Unit

Currently, I'm in a trial period with a new unit. In this unit, I will still hold my primary MOS of 91S, however I'll be taking on a new job that is basically open to all MOS' within the military.

Its a drill sergeant Unit. And so far, I really like it.

Call me sadistic or whatever, but it is very different looking at the whole training aspect from this side of the fence. Its interesting to note how real and human drills really are, and how much they really laugh at themselves. I really enjoy working with the people in this unit and I just really like the mentality of it. Its getting back into the army aspect of things, and this is why I joined the army. To do stuff like this. And I love it.

Its got me motivated to drill again. I won't officially be put into Drill Sergeant School until I reenlist, but in the meantime, I'll give this unit a looking into, and if I still like it in about six months, I'll re-up.

Blogging

So, if you haven't noticed, my deployment in Kosovo has come to an end long ago. For a while, I took this page down, simply because I didn't want to deal with my blog anymore. There were some posts on here that had to be taken down for security reasons or what not. Since that no longer applies, well, guess what? They've gone back up.

Although this is still a milblog, I have some intentions of downplaying it quite a bit. Mostly in regards to just talking about life in the reserves.

I think I'll write a story in retrospect about my time in Kosovo. People will remain nameless to protect their identities, whether they deserve it or not as I will be rather blunt about my experiences within my year in the Balkans. I think I need to finish my basic training page as well. Perhaps someday I'll do that.

Anyway, though I'm still technically 'in the army', I'm only a reservist, I haven't done my MOS job for about seven months now, and I'm currently in the process of retraining into something else.

Looking back on my deployment as well, in a lot of ways I enjoyed it, I grew from it as a person, in some ways positively, in other ways not so positive, and I learned a lot about people and more about myself. I have an absolute loathing of one man in particular, he knows who he is and I know he doesn't think to highly of me either, and I can live with that. All in all, I have no regrets on this deployment, other then I should have put my foot down a long time ago.

I think I'm going to milblog. Talk about the issues I always wanted to talk about, mainly the problems with the military, and why some people are complete asses that need to get the hell out of this institution.

Meanwhile, it looks like I'll be looking at the army from another perspective.

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