Much needed rest

Yesterday was a busy day. We were attacked by sniper fire, initiated an attack on a bunker, and set up both a day and a night ambush. I’ve never been so sweaty and dirty in my life. It was a lot of fun though. It is always fun to see how much a plan changes once the bullets (or in this case blanks) start flying. You can have what you feel is a fool proof plan, but the actual situation you encounter almost always necessitates a change of plan. We did well, though the instructor said we lost one soldier during our day ambush. When you’re training it sometimes feels like losing one or two of your guys is acceptable. After all, we accomplished our mission, and the other platoons took far heavier casualties. But when you think about the future, when it’s no longer a game and our enemy isn’t firing blanks but real bullets, you realize that that one casualty during the ambush is a friend of yours, a real person, that isn’t going home. I’m confident that, in such a short time, my platoon has come far in our training. We have made mistakes, and I’m sure we will make more, but we are trying very hard to learn from them so that they won’t be repeated. The next time we plan and execute an ambush I know that it will go even smoother and that we won’t lose anyone. I guess that learning through trial and error is the best way to train around here. I’d much rather be given a skeleton of formal instruction and then go out to the field and find what works for me than sit around reading field manuals. The only way to learn the stuff we need to know is to go out and make mistakes until you figure out how to correct them.

It might have been fake combat situations, but I assure you we all came away from yesterday with real wounds. Every time we hear gun fire we dive to the ground. I swear, in Texas ever plant you see is covered with 3 inch thorns. By the time the gun fire stops and you pull yourself up off the ground you’ve already lost a pint of blood from all the puncture wounds. Each time you imagine that you might be better off taking your chances with bullets than throwing yourself head first into another briar patch. It makes a guy very aware of every inch of his body that is NOT protected by body armor.

Today was a much needed day off. We slept in a few extra hours and then went to the Post Exchange where we bought a bunch of crap just for the sake of spending money. It was great. We have all been very irritable lately. It had been almost a month since our last day off, and nerves were beginning to wear thin. If the leadership hadn’t given us a day to rest soon this camp would have turned into some sort of Lord of the Flies nightmare. But now all is well. We’ll start another training cycle tomorrow morning and the days will pass quickly.