September 17, 2007

Today was a good day I guess. The drill sergeants left early and forgot to pass out the mail, so I have no mail to read tonight. That's kind of a bummer, but what can you do.

The day started with a very early transport to Pierce range, which is one of the ranges here. Today was Buddy Team Live Fire, which was actually pretty fun. I teamed up with my friend Heath Jones. It almost reminded me of playing paintball, except the gear is much heavier here. We had to do it while wearing our LCEs (load carrying equipment) which is a harness that has two ammo pouches and two full one quart canteens, our IBAs (body armor), and our ACHs (Army Combat Helmet). That's a fair bit of weight.

The way the training worked was this. The range is set up with bunkers of one type or another every ten meters, with groups of them on the right and left of each lane on the range. To start off, we did a dry fire run so that the drill sergeants could make sure that everyone was doing things safely. We had to low crawl from the starting point to the first bunker. Once the person on the left reached their first bunker, they would begin firing down range while the person on the right low crawled to their first bunker. Once the person on the right reached their spot, they began firing and the person on the left then had to commando crawl to their second bunker and the process repeated itself. After those crawls, we utilized a movement technique called the three to five second rush. After the dry run, we ran it again, this time with blanks. After that, it was time to do it with live ammo. That was pretty fun. It was safe though because we were probably twenty feet or more from our battle buddy.

After that we came back and Drill Sergeant Smithling gave us the MIG parts of the mid-cycle test so that we could get that out of the way. We will do the rest of the test tomorrow. Then Wednesday is the final PT Test. Other than the final nine mile road march, those are the last two things that I have to pass. I should be fine. I'm keeping my eyes on the goal.

PFC Sam Jones