Basic 12 David's Journal August 17 to August 25

August 17th (Day 32) Monday

I decided to do range detail today. The people that do range detail go a little earlier to the range and help prepare the range for everyone to use. Today we had to attach the grenade fuse to a casing. Yes, no shooting today. We are throwing grenades.

They let us on range detail throw a grenade before everyone else showed up. I wasn’t sure how strong the bang would be. It was actually very small, because it was for training purposes.

They had us practicing form with the training grenades, and to see if we could throw okay. Then they took us further out and gave us real grenades. It was a cool experience, but when you throw them you definitely want to find cover. They are very loud and you can feel the ground shake.

After that cool experience they had us go through a course and simulate shooting, battle buddy commands, and throwing a grenade. The drill sergeants told me I did real well. It was a lot of fun, but hopefully I never have to throw a real one in war. They showed us an incendiary grenade and how it easily burns through metal. We have already experienced the CS gas riot control grenade, and will probably experience it again in a few weeks during FTX. We also saw the different smoke grenades. The big grenade we threw was the M67 fragmentation grenade.

August 18th (Day 33) Tuesday

Today was the best day of shooting so far. We did BTT (Basic Tactical Training). I did range detail again, which was a good experience because I was able to load a lot of magazines with bullets. I also had a chance to be around a lot of the drill sergeants and get some words of wisdom from them.

The course started out with me and a battle buddy behind a wall. I yell to him, “Cover me while I move.” He tells me that he has me covered. I then pull my charging handle and move behind a car and begin shooting at targets of Al-Quida images. Once I am set my battle buddy moves behind the car and charges his weapon and asks me to cover him and moves to a wall down range. While he is moving I lay down suppressive fire to make sure the enemy does not come up while my battle buddy is moving forward. Once my buddy is set at the wall I move to the wall using the same commands. Once I get to the wall I have to do a high crawl with my weapon through the mud. I then go to a low wall and take out a few targets and protect my buddy as he moves toward the low wall that I am at. We then use all our ammo. We have two magazines and when one goes empty we need to yell to our buddy that we are empty and he protects me while I change my magazine.

I had a lot of fun doing this training and had a lot of energy because I was able to stay busy the whole day. It is so important to always be busy. When we are lazy the day is not that fun. It doesn’t really matter what we are doing, just as long as it helps others the day goes great.

August 19th (Day 34) Wednesday

Today was the first day of FTX (Field Training Exercise). We started out with an 8 km ruck march. We loaded our ruck a lot more with clothes and shoes. We also had to carry our tent and our sleeping mat. I was so happy with this march because my blisters have callused up. My body was pretty strong and didn’t have any problems.

We then set up our tents, which sadly took a long time. Then the rest of the day was spent sitting around and eating chow. We also got smoked a few times. My knee started acting up a couple of days ago, and I am starting to think that I have tendentious. I am exercising through the pain anyway. I hope that God gives me the wisdom of how to train in a way that will allow my body to heal and get stronger.

The rest of the day was spent sitting around doing nothing.

August 20th (Day 35) Thursday

Last night had a huge thunderstorm. Our tent was set up pretty good, but water did get on my feet. There was huge gust of wind that almost knocked everyone’s tent over. It did successfully knock over one of the tents. The two guys inside didn’t have the sense to fix it or get in another tent. They stayed inside for the next four hours and one of them got hypothermia. He is okay now, but a little scary when it all happened.

We spent the whole day getting classes on different weapons. When we were going over the AT-4 (rocket launcher), I started explaining some things to some people that came late due to being at sick call. The drill sergeant got angry with us and picked four of us to stand next to a puddle of muddy water. Then he would call out, “grenade” and we would have to drop face first into the mud putting our nose into the water. He did that about ten times. I could have been mad, but I thought it was fun. I thought about how it would be fun to play with Solomon in the mud when I get back. I think abut Mandy and the kids throughout all my training. It is what gets me through everything.

At night we did night land navigation. This was a lot of fun. We had three points that we needed to find. To the first point I was the point man. I didn’t know what we were looking for, so when we found it I did much better on the next two points. The next point brought us to a road and we were given specific instructions not to cross any roads. There were about five squads at the road lost. I remembered them teaching us curved lined land navigation so I went along the road with my squad leader and found the spot. About two other squads followed me when I came back to get our squad, so going to the third point was a lot of fun.

We went out about 25 meters with our red lights on and then turned them off and went stealth. We grabbed onto the person in front of us’ vest, and went in single file line through the forest leaving the other squads lost as we found the point and hurried to the starting point. We were probably the fastest squad to go through the course.

August 21st (Day 36) Friday

Last night the weather was great compared to the stormy night before. I guess during the night someone stole our phase banners. We are thinking it was our company commander and 1st Sergeant. We go smoked for it a few times and went back to our barracks.

The rest of the day was recovery time.

August 22nd (Day 37) Saturday

The whole day was spent recovering from our camping trip. It seems like they give soldiers a lot of recovery time when they go on missions.

August 23rd (Day 38) Sunday

I gave blood today. I think this is the first time I have ever given blood. I have O negative blood, which is the universal donor. So I should give blood more often. I hope to do it more regularly. I was only able to give a half a pint, because the doctor did not get a good stick. He played around with the needle a bit and that hurt, but overall it was a good experience.

The only bad thing was that we missed our bus to church and couldn’t get a bus until a half hour before church was over. I got there in time to use the bathroom, get my e-mails, write a quick email to Mandy, and feel some peace before we had to go back.

I was able to call Mandy and the kids after dinner. The only bad part was that my drill sergeant had gone home and I could not get my cell phone. So I had to use the pay phone. It was hard to hear and every once in a while I would hear other people dialing. We had a nice conversation through. Solomon loves to talk with me. I am so happy about that. Faith was funny and told Mandy to tell me that she can’t speak English any more, only Chinese. I could kind of sense her having that concern last week when we talked. She had a hard time understanding. It will be nice when I can call more often.

August 24th (Day 39) Monday

Today was a pretty easy day too, because tonight we have to wake up super early, (21:30) to go on a 10 km ruck march and do night defense shooting.

The day started with doing combatives. They let people call out others to fight. I think they let us old guys have a break. We didn’t have to fight. It was fun watching the others put their opponents in chokeholds and make them tap out.

Then they had us get shots, which I still don’t know what they were for. Then, after lunch we went to sleep. We woke up for dinner and then woke up to go on our march.

August 25th (Day 40) Tuesday

So the ruck march was pretty easy. I thought about going for a walk with my family most of the way. It was a little slower than the other marches because we were not able to yell out cadences.

Once we got to the range we were all sweaty and it was a little cold, so I think that is a part of what got me sick. I am not feeling well at all. Luckily we have gotten a lot of rest time today.

For our training at the range we got to wear NVG (Night Vision Goggles) while we shot suppressive fire with lighted ammo down range. It was cool to see where our shots were going. We then waited for the sun to come up and did the same thing. We were also able to shoot our weapons on burst, which was a group of three shots at rapid fire. I got a lot done this afternoon, and now I am finally caught up with my journal. I hope that I feel better in the morning.