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.

The Good Stuff

The Scout's Noble Steed

Again, my profoundest apologies for the long delay between posts. I’m halfway through the superweek, I’ve only slept three hours in the last 48 and it’s only Monday… But despite all that, a lot has gone on in this past week and I’ve certainly had some fun and gotten some good training. As I wrote previously, our platoon is currently in the Cavalry Scout phase of Gunnery which, though we still have several days left of it, culminated yesterday in a 25 hour extravaganza of Humvees and heavy machine guns. More about that later though. 

I’d like to hit on a few events that transpired last week that I found amusing and some of the training I found particularly useful and, well, downright fun. I’ll go for the training first. Over the course of the week, we continued to work on the weapons systems until we really knew them inside and out (literally). Although it felt a bit (ok, extremely) tedious at points, it’s all stuff that we’ll really need to know when we get to our units, so not much complaining. Along the way, we got a good look at some of the fantastic optics the Army uses, both for mounting on weapons and the LRAS, a giant box on a tripod that lets you watch soldiers smoking from about a mile away in alarming detail (at least that’s what we used it for…). 

All that was good stuff, but the real fun began on Thursday. We’ve been rolling in Humvees exclusively (the Bradleys are still being unpacked after the move from Ft. Knox) and so we needed to do the class on what to do if your Humvee rolls over. With all the extra armor and weapons, these formerly light vehicles have an alarming tendency to roll over with serious repercussions on the crew inside- and especially the gunner sticking out the top hatch- so the Army has invested in a rollover simulator. And boy was it fun. Probably the best parts were the cameras and microphones mounted inside the vehicle body which was then rotated 540 degrees, coming to rest on its back, upside down. The driver and three passengers are all strapped in with seat belts, but the poor gunner must rely on the passengers to hold him to the ground/ceiling/ground/ceiling of the vehicle as it flips. This is tough under normal circumstances, but one of our poor platoon mates found himself in the gunner’s seat and, looking down to ensure that the passengers were prepared to hold him, found Lt. Aziz and our Jordanian in the back seats. Over the loudspeaker, we heard, “Hey guys, you got me, right?” On the cameras we saw Aziz shaking his head vigorously and pointing to the door and the Jordanian pressed worriedly up to the window. Needless to say, when the Humvee started rolling, you didn’t need a microphone to hear the poor gunner’s body slamming from floor to ceiling to floor to ceiling. He was not a happy camper… At the end of the day, however, it was great training and there’s something pretty entertaining about dangling from the roof of a car by your seatbelt then having to use the steering wheel to orient yourself enough to find first the door, then the handle, a process much more challenging than one would think…

Later that same day, we had the opportunity to spend more time on the Electronic Skills Trainer, this time with heavy weapons, simulating the fire commands we would be using during live gunnery over the weekend. After two hours of repetition on pop up wooden trucks, our cadre decided to have some fun and switch things up. For iteration after iteration we fought off enemy helicopters, tanks, personnel carriers in all sorts of environments from downtown Chicago to a hamlet in Vietnam. The hardest scenario by far, however, was trying to defend your position from a horde of escaped zoo animals. Who says training can’t be fun? 

That being said, we are having a blast, because the guys are fantastic and a lot of fun and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that our platoon is the most motivated, effective, and certainly the most fun of the group. It makes the long hours and early mornings seem almost enjoyable…