A Month Gone

I can't believe that its been a month since I have written on my blog! It is very surprising that we have been gone for over a month.

Most of what we've been doing is training, training, and more training. This is what I was expecting when we arrived on Fort Hood. For a while, all we did was range after range. I never thought I would get sick of ranges, but I actually have. I guess the problem is that with the way they were doing these ranges, you're out there for about 24 hours on each range. In all, it was great to be able to fire so many different weapons. The most interesting night was the night I was the NCOIC of the .50 cal range for our company. It is amazing how many things can go wrong in such a short period of time! It is also amazing how quickly I was able to get things fixed!

Some of the other training we've been doing is more interesting things like Reflexive Fire and Room clearing to get us ready for our Urban Operations training. For the last several days we've been doing a lot of IED training and really focusing on how to spot and react to IEDs. In all, I believe this is probably the most important training we have had so far. The best part of the IED training, for me, was when we had to hook up with some Iraqi Army guys, pick up an interpreter, and walk to an Iraqi village to talk to the local sheik. We drove into the Iraqi Army area and found out we had to walk into the village. I was surprised that the guys from the Iraqi Army were actually from Iraq! When we arrived in the village, about 85% of the villagers were also Iraqi. It was a strange feeling to hear all these people speaking Arabic. I kept damning myself for not taking the Rosetta Stone course on Arabic so I could understand them. I was charged with pulling security with the Iraqi Army guys while our NCOIC talked to the sheik. I couldn't speak much Arabic so I really needed the Iraqi Army guys to help me keep these people away! Eventually I thought I spotted somebody with a suicide vest on so I was investigating that with an IA soldier. Turns out that guy was the decoy, while I was figuring things out with him, the real suicide bomber was getting ready. I shot the suicide bomber a few times but he was still able to blow us all up..... I died. Actually I died 3 times that day, but its a long story. I really had a lot of fun, and I'm glad I was able to have that experience.

Yesterday, after I got back from running around in all my gear all day I was told I had to go to an emergency meeting. I was told that if I wanted to re-enlist, that I had to do so within an hour and a half. To top it off I had to take a PT test before I could re-enlist! I was sore and tired, hadn't eaten in over 10 hours, and it was 90+ degrees out! I didn't want to do it, but if I didn't re-enlist right then, I would have lost $15,000.... so I took a PT test. I passed but felt like dying in the process.

That's all there is to report right now, I think I would get into more details about things if I wouldn't wait a month between posts... but we get busy and I tend to forget about things.

Talk to you all soon

-Guardsman