The 2nd Longest Day

My Vehicle Commander and buddy, 2LT Tyler Smith, from the Kansas National Guard doing what he does best.

So. Live gunnery. Had a blast (pun intended), started a pretty serious fire, put some heavy rounds downrange, got yelled at as a group at 2:30am on the side of a road in the middle of Ft. Benning and stayed awake and in my full gear for 25 hours. It was a roller coaster of emotion… 

 

My "Ma Deuce" M2 .50 machine gun, getting ready to rock and roll.

Firstly, that training was fantastic.  We were intimately familiar with the weapons we were using (M2 .50 Cal and the M240B machine gun mounted on Humvees) and we were pretty darn familiar with the fire commands we needed to use after a full class and multiple days at the electronic range. So, when it came time to do it live, as they say, all we needed to account for was the nerves of doing it with live ammunition and for a grade. The actual firing iteration is like an oddly choreographed dance that you must control every move of. You have to tell the driver to move and halt, and where to go, tell the gunner where, what, how far the target is, make sure he sees it (especially hard at night with optics) and then call your superior to alert them of the results of your engagement. It’s a lot to remember especially with a big 50 cal banging over your head. By the end of the day, however, we were all pretty comfortable, confident and excited about the day’s results although a bit exhausted.  

On the way to fight the fire with our 5 gallon "water source"

One of the reasons we were so tired was the fact that we never got out of our gear. After 19-20 hours, body armor, tactical vest and camelback starts to really weigh down, especially when you’re carrying crates of 50 cal ammo and fighting fires. Which leads us to the fire. Luckily for us, Phil Baki, my roommate, had fired the day previously and started a fire that burned most of the flammable material in the range area. The forestry guys were chopping down trees to keep his from consuming everything it was so out of control, if that gives you any idea… despite that, during one of my firing iterations my gunner sent some tracers downrange (tracers are bullets that are actually burning, giving off light so you can see visually where your rounds hit) where they hit a clump of dried grass and started a brush fire. Of course, we thought it would burn itself out (which it didn’t) so it was pretty out of control by the time we got to it. So off we went. A van, 5 LTs, 4 shovels, and a 5 gallon container of water (thus the picture), a lot of motivation, and no experience fighting fires. Luckily, despite all the smoke, the fire was pretty small and it only took us about an hour to fight it back to a manageable size and continue on. Still, it convinced me that fighting forest fires is something I’d never want to do. It was hot enough outside without the added heat from the flame and the irritation from the smoke… No thanks…

Anyways, we finally finished up around 2:30 AM, and, after some hijinks that ended poorly for us (involving a 2LT taking charge and sending our convoy off with no safety precautions and, more seriously, no cadre) we found ourselves getting berated on the side of some deserted road in the middle of Fort Benning at 3 AM. A moment that is rarely seen in Army recruiting videos… Of course, with a marked amount of irreverence often shown (perhaps a bit insensibly) by our Platoon, we have changed our Platoon nickname to “The Midnight Express” in homage of our wild midnight ride. A crazy day, but a productive one. That’s how we roll.