Day 19 (Week 3)

Today was supposed to be a smoker. The first half was and so was the night part.

We did "day infiltration". Which is not as "high speed" as it sounds. What it really means is that you are getting your face in the dirt! Crawl and crawl some more. It will smoke you! Well if you do it right! gotta love the low crawl! We ran that a couple of times. Then we ran an "assault course". I got to play an assistant. I had a pretend rifle and said "bang" a lot. My chaplain ran with me. Good stuff. Love the knee and elbow pads. We really do have some excellent equipment. I remember my basic training, we often received the worn out, antiquated stuff. Not so anymore. most of the equipment is at least serviceable, if not new. Very surprising.

We did some "paintball". Which means we ran, while instructors shot at us. That had some great possibilities for training. Plus as a avid paintball player, I would have loved to "play" if I had the chance. But in this case it is like "raccoon hunting", and the raccoon doesn't need a gun. Not that I have ever been coon hunting. I just think the saying is funny. But getting a chance to shoot back would be good stuff. There is at least one other guy that has a lot of experience playing. teaming up with him, we could really have some fun with our instructors. I doubt that will happen. But one can dream.

Night infiltration! Man that was fun. We got poured on. It rained hard so that the ground was nice and soggy. Then we got out on the range with machine guns shooting over our heads and crawled for quite a ways. It was funny to listen to the Drill Sergeants tell their troops that the bullets were flying 30 inches over head. If you think about it, you will know that that is not a true statement. This training is very safe. Well except for the bullets. If it were really dangerous they would not sent thousands of soldiers through the courses. The army tries to be safe with its property. But that does not mean that they won't mess with privates, just for fun!

We crawled the course along with some other soldiers. Some had never done anything like that before (I suppose that outside of the military nobody would?). We encouraged them as much as you can crawling through wet sand, under barb wire, with bullets flying by 10 to 20 feet above our heads. Not at all like the movies. where the drill sergeant has the machine gun firing just above soldiers. These guns are very safely employed. Fixed to fire at a certain point well above the soldiers. I remember doing it as a private, I believed the drill sergeant. I had seen the movies. This time was much more fun. Perspective and age are valuable commodities. Sorry no pictures of this range. it was at night and we were hustled into and out of it so that we could come back to our rooms

Showers are great! I feel sorry for the staff that cleans our rooms. They have to deal with the Red Clay/Sand. It stains.

It felt good to be in a real bed!