Jason's Army Life

Korea weeks 51 and 52

2008-12-28T16:33:00.001Z

Korea: December 15-28

I leave on Wednesday! There is a permanent grin on my face now. Earlier tonight I was whistling “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” down the hallway.

I seem to be in a good position now for getting out of here. Almost all of my “clearing” (outprocessing) is done: I have yet to visit the ID office, which is supposed to be near last, anyway, and then I need my post clearing papers and battalion papers signed off. After that I get on the bus and go to the airport, Lord willing. My orders are correct now, in that they have been amended to reflect my leave dates. That was a little hurdle. Now I just have to make sure my leave paperwork itself is all good.

Tomorrow Transportation comes to pick up my household goods, which is a fancy way of saying the stuff I couldn’t fit in suitcases to bring on the plane (for free) and thus is being shipped (for free). I packed everything today, all day. Oh, it was so exciting! It makes the idea of leaving feel real now. They are taking my (desktop) computer, so it’s back to the iPhone again for a little while.

This will probably be the last major blog post I will write for a while, maybe forever. I don’t know how 160th will like the idea of a blog. As I mentioned a while back, when I brought this all up to our company’s XO, she said 160th would very likely want me to shut down the blog. Sigh. I still plan to post a follow-up next week saying if I got back safe, etc.

Here’s some info I found (and some I re-found) on the Army’s policy on blogging. The Army regulation governing operations security (OPSEC), and thus blogging, is AR 530-1. In 2007 the Army issued a fact sheet that softens the requirements a bit, lessening the hand-holding. It “places trust in the Soldier… that they will use proper judgment to ensure OPSEC." But 160th is a special operations unit, so they might be much more sensitive about the dissemination of information.

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On the 18th we had the mandatory battalion Christmas/holiday party. It actually was fun—and mandatory. Toward the end they battalion leadership was handing out gifts. Now, understand that these are not prizes that are won. There is no raffle. That would be illegal for the Army. But there is a fund which paid for the gifts, and people donated to the fund all year long, and while people were taking donations, the FRG people—basically officers’ wives—happened to have baked goods on the table, for free. So you see there is nothing wrong here.

The gifts were all for lower enlisted soldiers, E-4 and below, which is a nice touch. I guess the recipients are chosen at random. My name happened to get called—I didn’t even hear it—and I go up to receive my gift and I open it and it’s a Nintendo Wii! I couldn’t believe it. That was by far the best gift of the night. Before I got there, one guy got a 32” TV, but I think that was a raffle drawing from the PX (that’s legal), and I’d rather have the Wii.

It came with Wii Sports, which includes tennis, baseball, bowling, boxing, and golf. Tennis is the most interesting to me because unlike Wii golf or bowling or baseball, there are many complex movements that affect the game. And it goes fast. I haven’t played a video game since The Sims came out, and before that I think the last game I played was GoldenEye 007 (a James Bond game) for Nintendo 64. But I’m really enjoying the Wii. I stopped gaming back then because I wasted too much time with it. Now it’s nice to have a distraction.

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The 19th was a day off. I don’t know why; I don’t think anyone did. Then all last week was half days. Even though I haven’t been working lately, everyone else’s half-day schedule impacts how much clearing I can get done. But with minimal panicking, I managed to get nearly everything done, thank God.

Remember the guy I told you about before who I called Powder? He came here the same day I did and is supposed to leave the same day. My roommate leaves the same day, too (which is handy). Powder just started clearing last week. On paper that gives him two weeks to do all his paperwork, but in reality it gives him four half-days plus one day to sit around all day waiting for someone to pick up his household goods. He actually seems to be on track to getting it all done, but it is downright frightening that he has wasted so much time beforehand. I have no idea what the penalty is for missing your departure date. It can’t be good. What greater motivation is there to get something done than the promise of leaving this place and going home?! I really worry about that kid.

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Christmas in the barracks was a lot like Thanksgiving was, only not as well-planned. It was still a lot of fun, with some good conversation. We used the second floor kitchen/common area. The 1SG stopped by, as did the battalion commander later, both just to say hi and “merry Christmas” and to see how we were doing. It was nice.

Korea week 50

2008-12-14T13:43:00.000Z

Korea: December 8-14

A blog entry two weeks in a row! It’s amazing!

This week the theme is clearing. “Clearing” is how we refer to the process of doing all the necessary paperwork to PCS (an acronym, used as a verb here, meaning to leave one duty station and go to the next; it stands for permanent change of station) from somewhere. Clearing is more properly referred to as outprocessing.

There really isn’t that much to do to clear, but one can start clearing 10 days out, which is 10 working days (sergeant’s time, meaning all of Thursday, is not considered a working day) from the day one flies out. Even though I don’t leave until the 31st, with Christmas and the day-on/day-off schedule the Army has around Christmas and New Year’s, I calculated that 10 days out for me was December 3. The post had it at December 8. (I think they were right. But it’s only a difference of two working days.)

Step one to clear is to fill out a levy brief. I did that and I still don’t know what it is. But the point is that once you complete it you get a paper copy of your orders. One’s orders is the official document that says what day you PCS, where you are going, and when you have to get there, among other things. Everything requires a copy of your orders. I kept putting off doing the levy brief in favor of actually working. Not a great idea. It normally takes a day to process it, but the day I sent mine in was the first day of vacation for the guy who cuts orders, so it was nearly two weeks before I could actually start clearing. That day was the eighth, so I wasn’t too far behind schedule.

I did kind of panic, though, because I anticipated the clearing process taking longer than it would for most people; I figured I would run into some snags. So far I have been right. I’m still trying to sort out the dates on my orders since I plan to take leave that will extend through my initial class date. 160th had wanted me to arrive for their class—called “green platoon”—on January 5. That would give me about two days at home. I don’t even have a car right now. I emailed the 160th branch manager (the man or woman in charge of assignments to the unit) and he said that there’s no problem with taking that leave; I’d just take the next class six weeks later. That’s what I had been told earlier, but I wanted to make sure.

At this point I really need to get everything done by the end of this week. After that starts the day-on/day-off schedule I mentioned. Then it’s Christmas weekend, and then I wait around all day the 29th for transportation—the people who pack up and take away my “household goods,” which is all the stuff I can’t fit in a suitcase and two checked bags. Then I “final out” on the 30th and fly out the 31st.

The Army offers you two modes of transportation for your stuff. Unaccompanied baggage has a limit of 500 lbs but gets to your destination faster, in about a month. Household goods has a limit of 2,500 lbs (for us lower enlisted, anyway) but takes about two months to arrive. I didn’t care either way since I won’t be getting to Hunter AAF (Lord willing) until mid-April. I am going TDY en route to Ft. Campbell for the class, so the Army just puts my stuff in storage until I get there, so I hear. TDY is the term for traveling somewhere at government expense on government time. Apparently it just stands for “temporary duty.” Humph.

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An aside on branch managers: I’m sure they do other things, but as far as most of us are concerned, your branch manager is the person you contact with questions about your next permanent duty assignment. I think for the most part everyone sticks with the branch manager for his or her MOS (job). Here is the link for a list of the branch managers for enlisted Army aviation MOS’s. It was not easy to find. You need to log in with an AKO name and password, so if you are not a servicemember or dependent, you can’t view it. For other enlisted MOS’s, go to this link and you’ll have to do some digging from there. Army sites are notoriously difficult to navigate, but there is a lot of good information out there, somewhere.

160th has its own branch manager. They do everything differently.

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From 1700 Tuesday to 0900 Wednesday I had CQ (guard duty at the barracks). I found this out Tuesday afternoon. Around 0830 Wednesday some DPW workers came by to do some work in a couple of soldiers’ rooms. Long story short, I ended up babysitting them until about 1430, although that included a two-hour lunch break, of which I slept for an hour. This was after staying up most of the night.

In my experience here, DPW is by far the hardest shop to work with. Almost everything on post that is not run by people in ACU’s (Army uniform) is run by Korean civilians. That includes: Military Clothing and Sales; alterations shop and the sew shop (for altering our dress uniforms, among other things); many of the tellers at the PX, commissary, and banks; the librarians; the LG Telecom store, which provides the (not free) Internet service at the barracks; the travel office (where we get our plane tickets to PCS); the transportation office (to arrange for our stuff to get shipped when we PCS coming here and leaving here); on-post bus and taxi service; and, of course, DPW. (Surprisingly, the chow hall is run by Army people. They are painfully slow.)

I understand that most Koreans aren’t going to be fluent in English, but you’d expect the ones that work on post to be comfortable with the language, at least in the words that pertain to their job. And most do, but not the DPW guys. I guess it’s because they mostly work alone—that is, only with other Koreans. All those other shops, by necessity, involve dealing with customers, which is to say, Americans.

DPW is so disorganized. Who schedules workers to work on a soldier’s room in the middle of the day? No one would be there—not even CQ! I had put a work order in for a problem near our hangar, building 1029. A few days later someone else demanded DPW take care of it right away (OSHA was coming, and it really was dangerous) and they did. A few days after that I get a call from a DPW worker saying he was at building 579, wherever that is, looking for me. The call went something like this:

DPW guy, with Korean accent: “I at building five-seven-nine. I wait for you outside.”

Me, baffled, but used to this: “I—ah—it’s building ten-twenty-nine, but they came and fixed it already.”

DPW guy: “I wait outside five-seven-nine. You let me in.”

Me: “No, no it’s building ten-twenty-nine.

“Yes, building five-seven-nine. I wait outside.”

“No, no. Building one-zero-two-nine.”

“Ah, one-zhero-two-nine. I meet you outside.”

“No, no, someone fixed it already. It’s been fixed. It’s done now.”

“Ah, it fixed now.”

“Yes, yes, it’s good.”

[DPW guy says more stuff but I’m not listening at this point.]

Me: “Yes. Thank you. Ok. Bye. Yep.” [Then I hung up.]

DPW also came by the barracks on Friday at about the same time—0830—to fix a slow but persistent leak in my room. My roommate and I were extremely fortunate to both be there at the time, since we are clearing, and we had the amazing fortune to have the woman in the room directly above us there at the time. She was doing headcount that day, which is a one-day duty at our chow hall to sign in everyone that eats there. The leak in our room had to be fixed from her room, and she was in between shifts at the time DPW was there. If the stars hadn’t aligned like that, I don’t know when the leak could have gotten fixed. Now if they could fix the three broken fluorescent light fixtures in our room.

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So, next week is more clearing. I’m sure I’ll have more stories to tell, but hopefully not ones about my paperwork being all messed up. I mean, this isn’t Foxtrot co. at Ft. Eustis, after all.

Korea weeks 42-49

2008-12-07T15:38:00.003Z

Korea: October 15 – December 7

I hadn’t realized it has been seven and a half weeks since I last wrote here.

Here’s part of my excuse for not writing: for at least part of the last three weekends before this weekend I was drawing up what the Army would call a “continuity book.” It’s a “how to do my job” book you pass on to the guy that replaces you. I didn’t have one when I came in to IMO, so I made it a point to write one before I left.

Those were mostly long weekends, too. One was Thanksgiving weekend (four days) and the one before it was a three-day battalion long weekend. I took Thanksgiving off (I’ll talk about that later) and I don’t work Sundays (unless the Army forces it). I could never get the book done during normal working hours because I’m always busy fixing computers or people’s accounts. I worked through lunch almost every day. Going in on the weekends was kind of nice though because the phone didn’t ring, no one stopped by, and I just listened to music off my iPhone.

There is a two-and-a-half month overlap between myself and my replacement, yet I have spent almost no time with him in the past month and a half. One week was his IMO class, then there were two weeks of drivers’ training. Our platoon sergeant wanted both of us to go to the training, and I went the first day, but the class was overfull and when the teachers discovered I had 45 days left in country they kicked me out. No tears shed here. Add to that that our office spent the month of November installing mandated software on our company’s many computers (I know how many there are but will choose not to say), and there simply was no time to train. Getting our work done still required us to come in in uniform at 0630 each day and skip most training events. (Such as learning how to sling two HMMWV’s—humvees—from a Chinook helicopter, which I heard was a lot of fun.)

My IMO book ended up being 77 pages long. I estimate that two-thirds of it was pictures or white space before or after a picture. I took screenshots of each important window in a process I described so that the reader would see exactly what the screen was supposed to look like. I think it came out really well and I received a lot of compliments on it—because I showed it to everyone I saw. Hey, I put probably 40 hours of work into the thing! Obviously I won’t share the file with you all, but to get an idea of what it looks like, here’s a link to three tutorials I made that are similar. The Word and Excel ones I created at the pointless internship in college that basically drove me to join the Army, and the computer tutorial I did for fun. Feel free to use any of them.

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This was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from my (mother’s) family. A lot of guys attended parties or had gatherings off post. A group of us got together in the barracks. It was mostly guys from my old platoon—15U’s. One young guy who cooks a lot here bought a large deep fryer (~$120) and deep-fried a turkey. It was good! Very moist and the skin was awesome. He also made an enormous batch of mashed potatoes and some stuffing. My roommate whipped up some potato salad. I can’t cook, so I brought Velveeta Shells and Cheese, sodas, plates and napkins and such, and Triscuits and Cracker Barrel cheese. Gotta have hors d’oeuvres. Someone provided pies. It was a lot of good, amazingly clean fun.

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The Sergeant Major of the Army, Kenneth O. Preston, stopped by Camp Humphreys just before Thanksgiving. The SMA is the highest-ranking enlisted member of the Army. He had a town hall meeting in the new $18M super gym (I hear it’s the biggest in the Army), which I was able to attend, along with about 1,000 of my closest friends. After he arrived fashionably late he gave roughly a 30- to 40-minute speech that was not the usual “You guys are great. Everything is great. There are no problems anywhere in the Army. Keep doing what you are doing.” (That’s every gathering headed by an officer.) He instead talked about the size of the in people and units and how the Army is rotating in and out of the Middle East and deployment lengths. All stuff I was fairly familiar with, but at least it was different.

The floor was then opened up to questions. Honestly, anyone could ask a question; you just had to find one of the people with microphones. The first people were reading off of index cards. One person asked about if and when we were going to phase into “dress blues” for our Class A uniforms, which I think we all thought was a good question. It took SMA Preston about 10 minutes to say 2012. It will be 2012. Really, was that hard? The question I wanted to ask, but wouldn’t dare to (and could never be this eloquent in person), was:

Good afternoon Sergeant Major of the Army Preston. I am Specialist McDermott and I am in Delta company, 3-2 GSAB [“JEE-sab”]. Sergeant Major, I came into the Army with a bachelor’s degree yet I went enlisted. Pretty much everybody I have met in the Army has thought I was insane to do so. Now I know that any enlisted soldier who has risen to the rank of Command Sergeant Major, or in your case, higher, could easily have been an officer at any time. You probably had people telling you that you should be an officer. So my question, Sergeant Major, is, why did you stay enlisted?

Okay, even in print it’s not that eloquent. I would love to hear someone like that answer that question, but it really wouldn’t be appropriate and I’m sure my NCO’s would not like it either. Really, I feel it would be an opportunity for the highest enlisted member of the Army to tell a gymnasium full of enlisted soldiers why there is still pride in being enlisted instead of being an officer. But it would be taken as the opposite. I thought maybe I of all people could ask it, but a friend discouraged me and then I realized how bad it would sound. (People really do think I’m nuts, especially when they find out my ASVAB and GT scores, which they always ask about when they find I have a degree.)

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Well, that’s the gist of what’s happened lately. I should leave Korea at the end of this month, and I’ve started getting ready to get out of here already. I have some stories to tell, but I think I’ll save those for next week.

WTG, Blogger

2008-10-14T18:47:00.002+01:00

Wow, so now you can actually click on the pictures I posted to see the full-size version. Blogger used to always shrink the pictures down to a uselessly small size. Good deal.

(WTG is "way to go," BTW)

Korea weeks 36-41

2008-10-14T18:21:00.009+01:00

Korea: September 3 – October 14

Yes, I’m still here. Still not much going on on the work side. It’s been rather tough to actually do my IMO job. We spent a few days in the field, but that required a week of prep and a week of recovery. Well, it really didn’t require those two weeks, but the Army likes to give plenty of wiggle room and doesn’t mind if the result is people standing around. My bosses generally hate it if I do try to do my job during field prep or recovery time, when there’s nothing to do.

This is the end of a four-day weekend for Columbus Day, so I wanted to catch up on the blog. I have done some sightseeing lately (and missed an opportunity for another trip), and I’d like to share those pictures.

First, this pic is priceless. A couple of nights ago, someone set up his projector and computer outside of the barracks and played videogames on the wall. Wow.

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On September 6, some friends and I went up to Seoul to tour the Korean War Museum. I thought it was a museum about what we call the Korean War (June 25, 1950 – July 27, 1953), but it is actually dedicated to all wars that Korea has ever been a part of, going WAY back. If you are not thinking like a self-centered American, it makes sense.

Incidentally, I asked a Korean friend of mine recently, what do Koreans call the “Korean War”? He said, “Yug-i-oh.” Naturally, I replied, “Like the cartoon?!” I was referring to that manga/TV show/card game “Yu-Gi-Oh!” which I now know is Japanese, not Korean, and apparently means “game king,” according to Wikipedia. The Hangeul Yug-i-oh means 6-25 (six-two-five), which is for June 25, the start date of that war in 1950. I guess it’s like if we say 9/11, everyone knows what we mean.

We spent hours at the museum. It was a lot of fun, but I know most people aren’t interested in pictures of dioramas, so I’ll post the more offbeat pictures here. The rest—and there are a lot—are at http://soldierjason.spaces.live.com/photos/.

Before we caught the train to Seoul, we walked around outside the station in Cheonan (near Camp Humphreys, via the #20 bus). There was this 15-foot tower with giant walnuts on top, in front of a store decorated with walnuts outside:

The display case outside had boxes of what looked like donuts shaped like walnuts. And in the window was a machine creating the pastries. We didn’t bother to try any, but I still find this fascinating.

Even in the modern subways the Koreans have a love for detail and artistry and architecture. Look at these pictures of the tiles on the wall and of the brick divider between pedestrian traffic flows:

On the way back we took the bullet train. We tried to take it on the way in, but got confused by the fact that the bullet train leaves from Cheonan-Asan station, while we were at Cheonan station. To the surprise of my friend, who was a conductor for years, the train is not maglev. It was wheels on rail, but, according to him, likely a “ribbon rail,” which is welded together to be seamless. The ride was very smooth. There are monitors that show the train’s speed in real time. We maxed out at 304 km/h, or about 190 mph.

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On September 26 and 27 our company commander organized a trip to Mt. Sorak. I was really eager to go and was the first one to sign up, but I ended getting sick that week. We were doing field prep that Monday through Wednesday, so I muddled through that. On Thursday we were still in field prep mode, but almost all of the work was done. I thought it would be a good day to go to sick call: because all the hard work was done; to get out of sitting around all day; and to make sure I was well for the six-day “field problem” and to go on the trip on Friday and Saturday. Sick call is the walk-in hours at the Army clinic (the TMC). Naturally, sick call is not open on Thursdays. It’s because sergeant’s time training is held then traditionally (even though our unit does it on Mondays now).

(The Army doesn’t allot you sick days, you just go to sick call and if you are genuinely sick the doctor will prescribe you bed rest if necessary. I had 24 hours of bed rest, or “quarters,” when I had my wisdom teeth removed. For ongoing conditions or after a surgery you might be issued a “profile,” which is a note from the doctor saying you can’t do certain activities like running or heavy lifting. There are temporary and permanent profiles. Often a profile will prevent you from receiving awards or promotions, but there are waivers for everything.)

I skipped the trip because I still felt lousy and I wouldn’t have gotten better during the trip, and I didn’t want to make a busful of people sick right before an FTX. (If busful wasn’t a word before, it is now. Cf. carful, houseful.) Everyone said it was great, though.

The trip was only $5 and included a stay at a nice hotel plus breakfast. The commander pulled some strings, I guess, but the goal was to have 60 people sign up, which could include friends or family—it didn’t just have to be people from the company. I’m pretty sure they didn’t get that many, and the commander was rather disappointed in that. He made the point that people keep saying that they want these trips, but then no one signs up. A lot of people had legitimate excuses, but some are just lazy or they don’t want to spend their free time with the people they work with. I can understand that, but I know I would never go to Mt. Sorak or these other places on my own. And you can’t beat the price.

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And then there was the field problem. What an apt name. The convoy was supposed to leave out on Wednesday, October 1. Due to some paperwork problems (a long story) we didn’t leave until that Friday.

I never bring personal technology to the field—iPods, cameras, etc.—so I don’t have any pictures. Sorry.

This was the first time I had traveled on a convoy of any distance. The week before I had the honor of being a TC (truck commander—a co-pilot) bestowed upon me. I had managed to avoid that responsibility until then. The driver of the truck I was in was a SGT I get along with well, and a friend was in the middle seat (the gunner’s seat) so it was a fun ride. (Usually the TC outranks the driver, but I don’t have a military license.) We traveled in an LMTV (one of the few Army acronyms that isn’t pronounced), which is a 2 1/2 ton truck with a large bed.

My job basically was to keep the driver awake. Eventually I settled on the tactic of throwing out random trivia questions. One of my favorites is, “What country has the lowest birth rate?” It’s a cool question because you can figure it out without any actual knowledge of demographics. The rate is zero because there are no women. Can you guess? People are also often surprised to find out who invented dynamite. His name has been in the news lately.

Our time in the field was more grueling than usual (but at least it wasn’t July). We actually played Army this time and dug trenches and filled sandbags and such. We’re aviation. We don’t do trenches, mm-kay? Nor do we usually wear our full gear every time we step out of the tent, but we did this time. I developed a rash on my head from sweating into that helmet so much. Some of the KATUSAs brought clothes hangers to the field, which I thought was brilliant. I borrowed one so I could let one uniform dry while I wore the other.

We did alright and the experience was useful enough. Everyone made it back fine. And we didn’t lose any NVGs.

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The Friday after the field exercise (October 10) was day four of recovery. Recovery involves cleaning and putting away (neatly) everything we brought to the field. There was a trip to the DMZ that Friday, which I had always wanted to do, and cleaning weapons for a second day just didn’t appeal to me.

Officially there were no slots open on Thursday afternoon, but the chaplain, who usually organizes the trip, said a few people often won’t show up so I and another person that asked should just show up Friday morning. I heard rumors the night before about the trip being cancelled or that it was overbooked, but I went down there at 5 AM anyway. Lo and behold there were a few slots open.

I think most people have the concept of a DMZ, or de-militarized zone, already. But, to wit, the DMZ between North and South Korea is a four-kilometer-wide strip around the last line of military conflict, which is to say, the border line. As I have said before, the Korean War (or Yug-i-oh) ended in a cease fire, not a truce or peace agreement.

The pictures I took aren’t great because we didn’t have a lot of time to linger and many places were off-limits to photography.

Here’s the touristy part of the DMZ. It’s right on the borderline. Those blue buildings straddle North and South Korea and were (are?) used for negotiations. The spot where I took the first picture is the same one I stood at to take a picture of the North Korean guard in front of his building. It’s handy having a 10x optical zoom on your camera. (Although some of the guys on the tour had $1000 cameras with 200x zoom.)

And this is inside the middle blue building. The blue UN flag and the microphones running down the center of the table mark the line of demarcation between North and South Korea. So I took that picture from North Korea.

There are more pictures from the DMZ at my photo site. There are also pictures of the air show I went to at Osan Air Force Base, but I don’t know how interesting they would be.

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So this is why I can’t get any work done. Our replacements should be starting soon in IMO. I hope we stay double-strength for a while—until I leave, really—so that we can actually accomplish something in there. We’ll see.

Korea weeks 33 to 35

2008-09-02T15:38:00.005+01:00

Korea: August 10 – September 2

You know, I really feel bad now. I wrote last time that the blog has had some moderate success, yet life here is rather bland now that I’m in IMO, so I have nothing to write about. And if I stay in 160th—my next duty station—I’d have plenty to write about, but they probably won’t let me write anything. Such irony!

This past week almost everyone in Delta co. went out to the field for four days or fewer for some actually useful training. Naturally, I stayed behind. I’m somewhat valuable now, so I stayed behind to handle any computer problems for those who stayed behind—about half the company was still on post at any given time. It sounds cool what they did. One day they split into two teams and sneaked around and attacked each other. My platoon sergeant led his team to ambush the XO’s team. One night (the same one, I think) people licensed to drive in Korea learned how drive in the dark with night vision goggles. I cleaned the office.

I tried getting out of my assignment 160th, but to no avail. I tried pleading my case that I’m shy and timid, etc., but the SFC in charge of recruiting for 160th explained that Night Stalkers are referred to as the “Quiet Professionals,” and so I’d do fine there. Umm, sure. Look, here’s the truth: I’m 27 years old (28 when I get there) and I really don’t feel like playing hide-and-go-seek for six weeks and being in a frat house for three years. I don’t see myself as their type of person. But hey, I came in the Army for the experience and I’m not being disappointed. Here goes nothing.

How about those Olympics? I complain about being 27 but then you’ve got Dara Torres, for example, who is, what, 41 years old and she won an individual silver medal!? (And a team silver, too; yes, I know.) Did you see those kids in the opening ceremonies running around in concentric circles only to fall perfectly back into place? We in the Army can’t stand four abreast, motionless, without messing it up. Amazing.

I said to someone a short while back, “Don’t you hate it when people are standing right next to you and speaking in a different language (than English)?” He thought I was referring to the KATUSAs speaking Korean. No. I have no problem with that. This is their country, even if they are working on American territory. No, I was referring to a certain rather large segment of the U.S. Army population that converses in a certain romance language native to the Iberian Peninsula. (If you can’t figure it out from the picture, don’t try out for “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?”) Inspired by this, I have decided to re-learn French so that I can speak it in public whenever I please and have no one understand me.

To this end, I have been using the Rosetta Stone program online for free through the Army. I’m on unit seven of 19, and I guess the 19 units equate to a first-year French course. It’s pretty good. You can really go at your own pace, learning the reading, writing, or listening portions separately or together. The Army offers Foreign Language Proficiency Pay (FLPP) for “critical” languages. French is certainly not one of them. But I’ve always loved French, and I’m doing this for me.

I haven’t watched any more movies in the theater lately. Mom sent me some of my DVDs, so I watched the “Bourne” trilogy. I bought and re-watched “Good Will Hunting,” my all-time favorite movie. (Yet I never owned it.) Lately I’ve been watching the DVDs of the TV series “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.,” simply the best show ever made.

Looking back, I realize I never mentioned that I bought and downloaded the miniseries “Carrier” from iTunes. That was a while ago. It was a ten-part documentary on PBS about a six-month deployment on a Navy aircraft carrier in 2005. I really enjoyed that. I learned a lot about our brothers in the Navy and yet a lot of what they go through is similar to the Army. One of the main guys on the show was about 19 and had a girlfriend who was pregnant with his child, but she, slowly, leaves him for another guy while he’s deployed. That pretty much sums up a lot of the guys here. Relationships other than marriage don’t last long in the Army when there’s a separation. Marriages seem to do okay. I guess the spouse knows what she’s getting into when she marries a soldier. And the guys, well, if they cheat they don’t tell me, and I don’t hear much about it. But if I had to guess….

(Credit goes to Wikipedia for the picture)

Korea weeks 30 to 32

2008-08-09T14:42:00.001+01:00

Korea: July 21 – August 9

Sorry, nothing fascinating has happened these past three weeks. No new developments on my assignment to 160th. IMO has kept me busy and fulfilled. The IMO 40-hour class was pretty much what you’d expect. Our company’s softball team got no further after winning the post championship. The highlight of the past few weeks was watching “The Dark Knight.” Twice.

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On a somber note, the company mourned the passing of one of the civilian workers, a Black Hawk mechanic. There was a memorial service on Friday at the Delta co. hangar, and most of the company was in attendance. They had two Black Hawks just outside on display, behind the podium in the hangar, with the hangar doors wide open. It was a nice backdrop. I wasn’t invited to attend, but I helped to set up the computer for audio and tore down the audio system.

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The one cool thing that happened concerns this blog.

I have started to get occasional comments on the blog and messages from complete strangers. I did a little searching and typed “army blog 15U” into Google and this blog is the third site in the results! The first two are not even blogs but just big-name sites. I typed “army 15U” in the search and the blog is the 16th result, so it’s on the second page of results. I am so excited about that! This is the premier 15U blog on the Internet! It’s a modest accomplishment, but it’s big for me.

I started the blog for my friends and family, but had in mind that strangers might read it. I always tried to keep the Army jargon to a minimum, except when of interest. I’d like to think that adds to the appeal. By plugging away at this for the last 15 months, I guess I’ve created enough of a body of information to be rated by Google. I’m glad I can be of some assistance to people becoming 15U’s in the U.S. Army and show what day-to-day life is like beyond the posters and what the recruiter tells you.

In my research, I discovered that the Army’s OPSEC regulations require that if you maintain a blog or discuss the Army in any public forum on the Internet (message boards included), you must clear it with your immediate supervisor (squad leader) and your OPSEC officer. Both of them were fine with the blog, but the officer made the point that if I do in fact go to 160th, they will almost definitely make me shut this down since 160th is special ops. As you can imagine, I’d be rather upset about that.

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I’m happy in IMO. I’m learning a lot, which is when I’m the happiest generally. After the week-long class, there were a few hiccups as the new IMO NCOIC and I settled into our jobs, but that was expected. After two weeks, I think we are comfortable enough with everything to not fail, thank God. I have continuously tried to set expectations low. My original motto was “failure is an option.” Not the first option, of course, but an option.

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After the Delta softball team won the post tournament, they went on to and lost the Area III tourney. (The U.S. Army divides South Korea into four Areas.) Next after that is the Peninsula tournament (though there are no troops in North Korea—that I know of). Both tournaments are held at Camp Humphreys. Delta was not supposed to play in the Peninsula tournament, but a team didn’t show, so since our guys are right here on the post where the tournament was, they filled in. They were beaten 23-2 in the first game and 12-0 in the second of double-elimination play. I was “volun-told” (a common Army construction) to assist a fundraising concession stand during the Peninsula tournament, but I really wasn’t needed.

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I’m going to have to find more things to do and to write about. I know you all won’t want to hear about how I changed the settings in some computer program.

Korea weeks 27-29

2008-07-21T17:03:00.003+01:00

Korea: June 30 – July 20

The big story this time around is that I got transferred over to IMO on July 10. (IMO is tech support if you forgot.) I’m really enjoying it, though it has been quite hectic. I had misgivings about going, because I thought that I might be stuck in IMO for the rest of my enlisted career. It looks like that won’t necessarily be the case, as I’ll explain….

Also in this episode: someone reënlisted; Delta company competed in some softball tournaments; I got two of my wisdom teeth removed (for free!); and some more movies. And that other thing concerning the future.

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I was offered the job in IMO on June 4, interned there for one day, June 5, and the next time I heard anything about it (despite my asking) was the night of July 9, when I was told I’d be reporting to IMO as my permanent (for Korea) job the next day. Got to love that Army organization.

I’m really not the ideal choice for IMO. For starters, I have less than six months left in country (woo hoo!), so as soon as I get settled in I’ll be looking for and training a replacement. My predecessor is on his way out the door (he’s gone on the 30th), and the NCOIC (sergeant in charge) of IMO is being replaced by someone who has left two fewer weeks than I.

My predecessor is a genius at computers. He makes me look like a Luddite. He’s no geek, though; he actually has a personality and is a nice, responsible guy. He’s managed to make sense of the slapdash system in the company. So he will be sorely missed, and I have made no pretense of being able to fully fill the void he’s leaving.

To his fault, though, he left very little written instruction—none, really—for the next person (me) to read. In my previous six-month stints working with databases, my co-op jobs in college, a major priority was always to create that documentation. (Of course my jobs at those companies were utterly pointless, so it really didn’t matter.) I spent the better part of the past seven workdays with him trying to soak up all the knowledge I could, and now all this coming week I’m in the IMO class, and then that’s it. I’m on my own after that. (One thing they taught us in the class today, the first day: create a book of common tasks that you can pass on to the next person. Brilliant!)

The sergeant taking over as NCOIC (a fellow Chinook guy) claims to know nothing about computers. An exaggeration, for sure, but he won’t be doing the bulk of the troubleshooting. But that’s not his job; his job is to keep things organized, and I have a lot of confidence in him in that.

I’m going to have a gradual learning curve (gradual equates to slow, right?), and I hope people understand that. If there was someone better for this job right now, they should take it. (There’s one I know of, but it’s a long story.) Some of the young guys might know this stuff better, but you also need someone responsible and pleasant, since the first sergeant and company commander and platoon sergeants are our main customers.

My seven days in IMO were mostly ten or eleven hours each, with limited breaks for lunch and breakfast. In 47 Maintenance the days usually ended at least on time, and we got our hour and a half for both meals. Yet I’m enjoying IMO a lot more because it’s interesting; I feel useful; and there’s not nearly as much of the nonsense. In maintenance, if there’s no work, you still are supposed to look busy, or at least not be seen doing nothing. (Key word there is “seen.”) In IMO, we’ll be busy a lot, but if not, oh well. It will be interesting for sure.

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In the process of transferring over to IMO I needed to print off a recent copy of my ERB. The Enlisted Record Brief is a one-page summary of all the great things you have done in the Army. On the bottom it lists all the places you’ve been assigned, even the in-processing stations I spent a week or even a day at, in reverse chronological order (most recent first). I hadn’t looked at it in a while. At the top of that assignment list was:

.......PROJ.......[omitted].......030160AVSPEC OPR.......HUNTER AA

Translation: I’m projected to go to 3rd battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Airborne, or SOAR (A), at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, USA. (And the omitted is some six-character unit code for Hunter which probably isn’t secret, but, well, you know.)

I had to add that one to my map of Chinook Army bases (on the right), since I didn’t know about it specifically.

Perhaps you caught the “special operations” part. It’s not the same as the Special Forces. Those guys are crazy, and go through a difficult application process. I didn’t apply for this. You’re “DA selected” (Department of the Army) for 160th, which is what everyone calls it. The outgoing NCOIC in IMO, who is going to the same place next, thinks we were picked because of our high GT scores (the “general technical” composite score on the ASVAB). We also both have college degrees.

Everyone in aviation knows about 160th, even in AIT. A couple (young) guys in my class kept asking around to see if they could get assigned there for their first duty station. It’s the super gung-ho branch of aviation. (In Army parlance, we say, “they’re all hooah-hooah over there.” “Hooah” is that all-purpose Army word/grunt.) Those of us over age 25 have no desire to go.

160th has four battalions split up between three posts: 1st and 2nd are at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; 3rd, of course, is at Hunter; and 4th is at Fort Lewis, Washington. They keep their soldiers in peak physical condition. There is some sort of grueling six-week (I think) course pretty much right when you get there, then you are put in “green platoon” for another six to twelve weeks or something where you’re treated like dirt. It’s the basic training I never had.

I was mortified at first, but now I’m kind of honored to be picked for something fairly elite. Now, understand this: there is no guarantee I’ll pass that course—I’ve got almost a decade on some of these guys—but I’d hate to have not tried. And it’s not like I have much say in this, though you can always appeal to your branch manager for a different assignment. Whether he’d do anything is another story. I’m really going to have to start getting into shape now.

Another aspect of 160th that is somewhat unique is that they serve three-to-six month deployments instead of the usual year. Of course, there’s less “dwell time” in between, too, sometimes very little. I’d prefer the shorter tours, assuming equal time at home. I’d rather be gone for a little bit, often, than for a year at a time. I say that now….

So I assume the joes in 160th don’t get picked to do IMO.

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And here are some other things that happened.

A guy in the platoon (that I used to be in) re-upped. There was a brief ceremony that day. He’s been in for 4 1/2 years of his six-year contract; they say your reënlistment “window” opens up two years out for a six-year contract. As part of the bargaining, he got his duty station of choice (a typical concession), which was Fort Wainwright, Alaska. That’s where his wife is from. You could tell this was a special day for him; I got the sense that the Army was the only family he had, or at least the dearest.

No big whoop on July 4. I stayed in to avoid all the drunken revelry, and I heard the fireworks show was unfulfilling and that the bands were subpar.

Our company won the Camp Humphreys softball tournament. I was a fairly loyal fan, attending at least half the games including the final games of the tournament, so I was thrilled to watch them win. Our fans were the loudest and most obnoxious (to our opponents) of any team I saw all season, and I’d like to think we played a part in the victory.

I was hoping having my wisdom teeth removed would get me a week off or so, but I was on “quarters” for only exactly 24 hours. (My boss let me have off the additional three hours, from 1400-1700, that Wednesday.) No power tools; they just push the tooth out of its socket. They gave me 800-mg ibuprofen and Tylenol with codeine. I took the ibuprofen at night, just out of fear that I might not be able to sleep easily, but there was hardly any pain—none after the first day. I never touched the Tylenol.

I saw “Get Smart” with a bunch of guys in a crowded theater. I would guess 25% knew there was a show before and that 2% had seen it. I grew up watching it on Nick at Nite. It’s one of my all time favorites. I was expecting the movie to be a shell of an imitation of the show. I was dead wrong: it was outstanding. They did the smart thing and took the show as an inspiration. If they tried to recreate the show it would have (a) failed or (b) been just an imitation.

“WALL-E” was just wonderful. The first hour or so is completely devoid of conversation. Yet it was just so perfect, and I think the movie got more laughs than “Get Smart” did. In the final scene, there is no music, no dialogue, and the theater was absolutely silent with anticipation. What a memory that will be. Theaters are never silent. Silence means we’re not being entertained, supposedly.

Saturday I had a 24-hour CQ shift, which is (pointless) watch duty for the barracks. We just sit in chairs the whole time, making sure boys don’t go in the girls rooms, mostly. On a whim I brought with me the Rubik’s cube I bought a few weeks back in Osan after much searching. It comes with instructions now on how to solve it; I’m down to 5 1/2 minutes. The sergeant on duty spent—no lie—12 hours fiddling with that thing, trying to memorize the solution sequence. So many people that day saw it and were re-enamored of it. I sense a spike in sales soon.

Contact me

2008-07-10T12:49:00.003+01:00

One of the reasons for creating this blog was for strangers that might come along and read, in detail, about one person's experiences in basic training (BCT) and in AIT. I couldn't anticipate everyone's questions (nor would I try), and I know I had many. I've thought about creating an email link, but I don't like the idea of a spambot trolling the Internet for addresses to spam and finding mine. So I've decided to link to my MySpace account (which is public, anyway).

If you want to ask me questions that I haven't covered here, request me as a friend on MySpace, and I'll try to answer them. (Keep it clean, please.)

I'll try to write some summaries like what to bring to BCT and AIT and post them later and link to them in a module on the right.

Korea weeks 24 to 26

2008-07-04T03:58:00.003+01:00

Korea: June 9-29

I really do feel bad about not staying more up-to-date with these letters, since I know what a pain it is to read one long letter instead of shorter ones every week. But if I did updates every week, the times when I had to do something secretive like a week- or two-week-long training exercise wouldn’t be much of a secret since there’d be no updates during that time (only). So this does work to my advantage, if unintentionally.

A lot has happened these past three weeks. There was a battalion change of command ceremony; we went from no maintenance to be done to loads of it; I saw some more movies; and some other things. But I’ll start off with what I think you all would find the most interesting.

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Saturday I went on a company trip, the first thanks to our new company commander. The plan was to go to a beach and an ancient, historic temple. He announced the trip two or three weeks ago, but there was never a sign-up sheet available that I saw, though I asked repeatedly. There were 80 slots; people could bring family or friends; the company has about 160 people in it. It only cost $4 per person, and the commander passed around his hat at the end and collected a tip for the Korean tour guides who volunteered their time.

Click here for the pictures I took during the trip. I didn’t caption them well, so read on.

I wanted to go but was exhausted from working until 9:30 PM Friday night (I’ll explain later), so I slept past the 8 AM rally time. At 8:15, a friend knocks on my door and says half the 50 people that signed up (was I on that list? there was a list?) didn’t show up, so those that did were recruiting everyone they could find, and the bus was right outside the barracks. I rushed around and got dressed and we all left about 9 AM.

I was worried about proper beachwear and sunscreen and sunglasses. It rained ALL day, and hard. We still had a lot of fun. I would guess around 35-40 people showed up, including the commander and three tour guides.

Our first stop after about two hours on the bus was the Saemangeum Seawall, the longest manmade dike in the world. It took 15 years and billions of dollars to build, and was completed in 2006. I don’t think it was worth it. The plan is to fill in the water behind it to create farmland; it also allows low-lying land that used to flood to be used. In such a densely-packed country, every square foot counts, but it seems like a lot of work for what they got out of it—and they’re not even done yet. We watched a 15-minute video about the dike, in English, in the auditorium there. The Korean propaganda is a riot. Maybe it just gets lost in translation.

I really can’t stress enough about the population density here. You will never see a yard here in Korea. I haven’t yet. It’s only high-rise apartments or businesses, shanties for houses or businesses, greenhouses, or rice paddies. Also there are mountains with trees on them.

The next stop was a beach somewhere. We tried to make the most of it. The rock formations were cool, resulting in some nifty small waterfalls in the rain. One (and I emphasize one) guy went swimming in the rain. He’s from California. Another guy took some pictures of these stacked skipping-stone-like rocks; it’s a Buddhist thing, we think—a type of prayer.

Korean bus drivers are amazing. Korean drivers are the craziest motorists in the world, but they’re also astonishingly precise. We were pulling out of a parking lot somewhere and there was maybe an inch between the window I was next to and the roof of a building. The driver had to take into account the side-to-side rocking of the bus (from the terrain) and the inward curvature of the windows toward the roof. He never hit anything.

Finally we had another long bus ride to this 1400-year-old Buddhist temple. It is built out of Asian cedar, which is now extinct. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the temple or go in it at all; it is still a practicing temple.

I’m certainly glad I went, although I think the trip could have been better organized. I’m glad it’s warmer now. This would have been miserable in the cold or frigid rain.

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I took part in the change of command ceremony on June 12 as COL Joseph A. Bassani took over for COL William H. Morris as head of the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, which is part of the 2nd Infantry Division. The 2ID commander, MG John W. Morgan III, presided over the ceremony and, after a pause, referred to us as the 2nd Combined Aviation Brigade. Later, after another pause, he just said 2nd CAB—I think he knew he was wrong. The higher ups just have no idea what we do. (There are only seven brigades in the division.) COL Morris was cool, though. He understood what went on. There’s an article here.

There’s an inactive flight line right behind our company’s hangar, which means lots of open, unused space, and that’s where we often have big functions like the change of command. It’s really convenient for us, since it’s a ten-minute walk from the barracks. Other battalions are clear across post, if not in other cities, as I mentioned before.

After a practice the day before, representatives from every battalion marched out in typical parade fashion. Our company sent 51 soldiers, myself being one of them. (I’m guessing the 51st is the guidon, the person bearing the company flag—also called a guidon.) Judging by the number of people, I assume all the other companies and battalions do the same. We wore our pistol belts (no, we don’t have pistols) and slung our rifles over our right shoulders. My hand was numb from the way the sling was pressed against it.

All the companies in the battalion mash together (beforehand) and then we arrange ourselves by height from tallest in the front to shortest in the back. I don’t know why it is that way, but I’m glad. I get to hide in the back. The guidons stand in a row in front of the battalion formation, with a battalion guidon in front of them. I’m thinking this might make more sense with a picture. I’m the red dot.

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Amazingly, we’ve had some maintenance to do lately. More flights go on in the summer, so in turn more stuff breaks. I had a Monday and Tuesday off, so naturally that was the longest week I’ve experienced so far. That Friday I and several others worked until 9:30 PM bouncing from one thing to the next. It’s nice to learn your job for once.

There’s a team of about ten guys on a two-week long, 200-hour phase, which we just call “the phase.” A phase is a “major maintenance event” that occurs after every 200 hours of flight time. Essentially they tear off all of the major components of the aircraft, inspect and clean, and then put it all back together. They work 12-hour days every day, plus weekends, although they will get three days off around the 4th of July. It’s a great learning experience.

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I don’t know what’s going on with me getting transferred to IMO. The SGT in IMO wants me over there, since they really need people, but I don’t know if the platoon wants to release me. It’s not that I’m valuable to maintenance, but we’ve just been so short-handed with guys on the phase and everything.

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I can’t believe how many movies I watch here.

A few guys dragged me to see “Stop-Loss.” It wasn’t bad. It’s a fictional story about a SSG who gets stop-lossed the day he is to retire from the Army and takes it like a man by running away. We knew we’d roll our eyes at the movie, but what else is there to do here? The checkpoint and subsequent ambush scene in Iraq was very accurate, even according to the guys who have been in combat. (Many of my coworkers used to be in the infantry or combat arms.) The movie portrayed the soldiers in a bad light, albeit accurately—though most wouldn’t run away.

I had always heard that “Logan’s Run” was this great classic science-fiction movie, so I rented it on iTunes a few weeks ago. I don’t get it. The special effects were horrible, the plot was thin, and there was a lot of nudity for a PG-rated movie. There was little explanation of anything, but I suppose if they had tried to explain the back story it would just flop. I looked at online reviews, especially ones by average people, and I could scarcely find a bad or even mediocre review. As one reviewer put it, it’s better than the sum of its parts. I guess so.

I watched the new “Narnia” movie again up in Osan. I really enjoyed that. I continued my reading of the “Narnia” series by reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” I read 86 pages the first day and the remaining 103 pages on the bus during the company trip. I’m a slow reader, so it’s nice to find something I can breeze through.

Saw “The Incredible Hulk” this weekend. It was very well done. It’s nice to see these superhero movies starring established character actors. I hear they want to nominate Heath Ledger posthumously for the newest Batman movie. I’ve never seen a Hulk movie or TV show before. I don’t get the appeal of a creature that’s bigger and stronger than everything. Where’s the drama?

I had to take the movie to task when the scientist warned of the danger of overshooting “by even the smallest integer.” That’s one. The smallest integer is one. C’mon! Also, the Hulk crushes the surgical table after being transformed. Conservation of mass, anyone? Hello!?

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And finally, go Celtics! 21 years!

Korea week 23

2008-06-08T15:22:00.000+01:00

Korea: June 2 – 8

Looks like monsoon season has started in Korea. It rains almost every day now. Half the time it doesn’t start until after 5 PM, which works for me. Wow, does it rain. Along the side of every road in Korea is a concrete drainage ditch about two feet wide and deep. I understand why now.

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Every so often the chaplain organizes trips, and usually on a workday. Last week some went to the DMZ, or de-militarized zone, which is the heavily-guarded border between North Korea and South Korea. He does that one a lot and I’d like to go one of these days. This week he brought a group to work on a Habitat for Humanity site. I wasn’t scheduled to go—the signup was during the NVG hunt—but when one person couldn’t make it, I stepped in.

It was fun. All we did was frame up some walls—just the frame of the wall; once the foundations are poured, people will drag the frames back up that steep hill (there are a lot of steep hills in Korea) and put them in place. I don’t feel a huge sense of accomplishment, since I hammered in, oh, about 30 or 40 nails aver the course of the day. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind going up there on a weekend to help.

The construction was similar to American methods. Two-by-four lumber (which is, naturally, 1.5” x 3.5”) was the primary building material. The dimensions we cut the lumber to were specified in millimeters, but I figured they were drawn from American plans and converted. The main wall studs were 2,540 mm, which is exactly 100 in. I spent a lot of time watching home improvement shows in the past (long before “Trading Spaces” or “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”), so I was comfortable with this stuff, even though I’ve never built a house. Some of the framing was a lot less robust than what we’re used to, though. Headers above windows were just one horizontal board instead of two vertical ones (plus a half-inch spacer—you do the math if you want).

I wish I had pictures to share, but I had very little time to get ready since I was told about the trip a half an hour before I had to be at battalion HQ—a 20-minute walk from where I was—in a different outfit. Thus, I forgot my camera. Of course we ended up sitting around for an hour anyway.

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I was offered another job outside of helicopter maintenance this week: IMO, which is tech support for the company. (I had to google it to learn it’s the information management office.) My platoon sergeant said convincingly that I didn’t have to take the job, but I decided to go for it. I haven’t started yet.

There are only three people in our company’s IMO, and I’ll be replacing a guy that leaves in July. I tagged along with them on Thursday afternoon while they installed some new (well, new to them) computers in the company supply room. The point was so that I could see what they do, and so that they could see how much I knew. I haven’t dealt with computer hardware a lot (but more than most, I guess) or with networks, but I’m pretty comfortable with messing around with computer settings and troubleshooting, and I guess IMO doesn’t do much with hardware. They’ll swap hard drives (which involves two plugs) or memory (just drop it in), but anything beyond that and they just throw the computer on the scrap heap.

After having spent five minutes with the IMO crew, I had a good rapport with everyone. These are my people. After five months with the Chinook guys, I’m still not really at ease with them. I’m still dumbfounded that I haven’t found other nerdy guys in the platoon—the cooler nerds, not the Dungeons and Dragons nerds. There were four such nerds I hung around with in AIT (two from the Kansas National Guard—it’d be cool to be stationed in Ft. Riley, KS, and maybe hang out again—and two active duty).

I’m pretty excited about it all. I miss fiddling with computers. I think I know enough to get by, and I think I’ll learn a lot, too, especially about the Army’s computing system, which I’m positive will be frustrating and have an unparalleled level of disorganization.

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We did a brigade run on Thursday morning (during sergeant’s time, for some reason). For the outgoing brigade commander, this was the first time in his two years is Korea that the entire brigade was assembled together at one time. It’s remarkable because the brigade, the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, is not just in Camp Humphreys; most of it is, but the 1st Battalion is in Camp Eagle, and the 2nd Battalion is in K16, just outside of Seoul. I knew the division, the 2nd Infantry Division or 2ID, was split up between Korea and the U.S., but I didn’t know that a brigade would be split up.

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Otherwise it was a pretty quiet week. We had a little discussion within the squad on Friday, but I don’t really want to get into that. It was pretty inconsequential, anyway.

Korea weeks 20 to 22

2008-06-03T14:03:00.000+01:00

Korea: May 12 - June 1

This letter is pretty long, but I think it’s quite interesting, so please read the whole thing. But first, some quick tidbits.

I’ve been in the Army for a year already! May 16 was one year. I’ve also been out of college for a year, too. The time has flown. While in college I couldn’t wait to get out, and now I miss it. I really did need a break, though. Five years of full time school or co-op and part time work on top of it all, plus commuting, all took its toll.

Did you all hear that last month (May) had the fewest American fatalities in Iraq since the war began!? I think that’s excellent news. The Iraqi Army has been having successes as well, in Basra and Sadr City, some of the toughest areas. I’m excited. That’s the best thing I’ve heard in months.

In the “My Job” section on the right I added a link to a custom map I created in Google Maps showing all the locations around the world where the Army has Chinooks. (Well, I left out Iraq and Afghanistan.) If you zoom in on some of those points in satellite view it gets a little scary. I could see myself getting in trouble for that. But it’s basically information you could find on Wikipedia.

We got a new company commander on May 20th. It doesn’t make a huge difference, but I mention it in case I wanted to look it up later and for posterity’s sake. He seems like a decent guy.

Now for the interesting parts.

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I think it’s time I tell you about one of my co-workers. I went to AIT with him; he was in my same class. We were roommates in AIT for two months. I don’t like to gossip, but I think he illustrates some interesting points, and he will, of course, remain anonymous. I think I’ll call him Powder (remember the movie?) in this letter. And by the way, this isn’t some clever way of referring to myself, even though I did have that same nickname once upon a time.

Our teacher in AIT used to repeatedly make the point that the, how shall we say, least qualified mechanics would end up in the tool room when they got out of AIT. By “least qualified,” I mean those people who are not only poor at their job, but fail to come to work on time or shave or are just generally irresponsible. Guess who ended up in the tool room when we got to Korea. Yep, it was Powder.

Powder was the slowest worker in our class and the only one to fail a test, other than the guy who got re-classed after a few weeks in. I think it was less than a month—much less, actually—of arriving at our unit (Delta co. 3/2 GSAB) that he was put in the tool room. We went on a road march in mid-January, also soon after arriving, and he forgot to bring his gloves. And didn’t tell anyone. And he hadn’t shaved that morning. He did some pushups for that.

You should have seen his MySpace page! (It’s set to private.) It’s beyond embarrassing—yet he requested a couple people to be his friends so they could view his page. He had all these pictures of himself dressed and made up in that ridiculous emo/punk style. His username was something about Peter Pan. He had blog entries on there about old girlfriends—creepy stuff. He’s 19, so some of it you can kind of understand. But not really.

While in AIT he was constantly on the phone—talking or text messaging—with random girls from back home or ones he met on the Internet. It was not because he was particularly suave or good-looking; he isn’t. He proposed to at least three different girls by my count during AIT. He was proposing to one while another had said yes; that lasted a week or two. By the end of AIT he had one fiancée for a few weeks, and I lost track of who that was. When I saw him at Incheon Airport he had a wedding ring on his finger. He was married, but not to the girl he was engaged to four weeks before. They had broken it off, and after nine days of being back home he had hooked up with some other girl and gotten married.

The rule in Korea, as far as I know and as everyone seems to believe, is that to bring your spouse and children here you have to AIP, which is to agree to two years in Korea instead of just one, albeit with an extra $300 a month. You and your family get to live off post and get a separate stipend (BAH, basic allowance for housing) for your rent (and utilities, I think) and a stipend for food. Married soldiers make quite a bit extra to support all of their dependents, too. Powder had planned to bring his wife over. It didn’t work out.

All Powder ever seemed to talk about was how much money he’d be making as a result of being married and living off post. He got settled in to his apartment off post and paid the first month’s rent out of his own pocket, since the BAH doesn’t kick in until the second month. When he tried to get his wife on a plane, she came down with a severe brain malady—something about too much pressure; it sounded genetic or like it had been something she’s lived with for a long time. The doctor ordered her to stay home. Powder had already purchased the ticket, also out of his own pocket, and it wasn’t cheap.

Later Powder tells me that his wife is living with another man back in the States. She insists nothing is going on, but Powder doesn’t believe her—finally a sign of common sense! He voiced his disapproval to her but says that he won’t forbid her to live with him because, “What happens when you tell a kid to do something? What’s the first thing they do? They do it anyway, right?” Now he’s going through JAG to try and get a divorce. I imagine this will be very difficult without her consent.

This past month Powder got kicked out of the tool room. That’s impressive, and not in a good way. The official reason was that he left the tool room unlocked overnight. That’s a very serious thing, since there’s tens of thousands of dollars of equipment in there, but an NCO did that the next day and didn’t get in trouble. Powder’s getting kicked out was for many reasons that had been building. The next day he was back on the floor and was issued a toolbox, itself worth probably a few thousand dollars. That night he went home without securing it to one of the racks. When he was called back to explain himself, I didn’t see him do any pushups; he didn’t have to walk laps around the hangar with it (it weighs 40-50 lbs.); and he didn’t have to take it with him everywhere for the next week. All of these things are common punishments for leaving a tool box unsecured. I think the NCO was just exasperated.

I have nothing against this guy, and I hope you don’t think I’m picking on him. He’s just very naïve. In all love and sincerity, without any sarcasm, I think he just needs life to slap him in the face a few hundred more times before he starts to understand how to function in society. I don’t wish that on him, but I know that’s what it would take. He seems to be aiming for the bottom and he won’t stop until he hits rocks. He’s not malicious; he hopes and dreams of big things; but he just keeps messing up and won’t look at himself first to see if there’s anything he can improve.

I’ve always had the impression that there was an unwritten law in the Army that people who in one way or another are not responsible members of society, if they sign up for the Army, the Army would mold them into shape, by force if necessary. I don’t think the “wall-to-wall counselings” that still go on in the infantry are the right answer, but I’m sure that the Army has lost its spine when dealing with people that need maturing. The tough love isn’t there anymore; the Army just shuffles people around to demeaning jobs so the offenders won’t hurt anyone or themselves. Being put in the tool room could send a message and wakeup call to those types of people, but the people that end up there, if they don’t do anything horrendous, will stay in the tool room for the rest of their careers. They’re branded with the scarlet letter “T” so that all future Army employers know that this soldier is worthless and should not be given any major responsibilities. (Not that he’s truly worthless, but that’s how it’s perceived in the big boys’ club.)

My friend says that they used to put guys like Powder in the infantry. Not to be “cannon fodder,” but so that he can experience rigid discipline and understand that there are standards, that it’s OK to follow those standards, and it doesn’t make you any less special, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. When right equals live and wrong equals die, as it can in the infantry, and those lives are yours and your friends’, those standards mean a lot more than to what torque to tighten a nut.

Look, I’ve been there; I’ve been that guy that just didn’t get it. I spent a long part of my life just quietly observing other people’s social behaviors because I was so inept. I was the guy in class that made stupid comments and tried to be the teacher’s pet and thought I was funny but wasn’t, and I’ve been the kid that didn’t say anything. I’ve graduated school only to realize that maybe I’m not an adult yet or maybe I don’t have everything I need to be as successful as I want to be. But I’d like to think that, thank God, I’ve come a long way. And it’s because I take a good look at myself all the time and ask, “Am I worthy of what it is I want to do? And if not, how can I change myself?” If you don’t do that, you only deceive yourself.

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Our battalion lost another pair of NVGs (night vision goggles) last week, so we went hunting for them. Ironically, the brigade commander gave us a pep talk the Friday before about how we were the best battalion in the brigade, because of all the important and diverse work that goes on. (We have all the helicopters, and the pilots and mechanics to go along with them.) Now we are probably a laughing stock. Again.

Someone stuck his head out the window of a Black Hawk while wearing the goggles and they fell off while the helicopter was flying over a city. The offender remembered seeing cranes, so we were searching in the area around a construction site they had flown past. After four days, someone actually found what was left of the goggles. Naturally they were nowhere near where we spent most of the time searching.

Where we were was a small neighborhood of one-story houses on a steep hillside. We had some flyers to give to the residents to see if they had any information. One did; she was wrong. Those houses are packed so close to each other. Most had modest gardens (20 feet by 20 feet, or so) but no yard otherwise. There was a lot of trash lying around. You’d see old, broken chairs—even a mattress—sitting outside, rotting away. If these people are trying to grow a garden, you’d think they would want all the space they could get. There was a small creek we searched repeatedly and an open field, too. Most of the locals were understanding. One yelled at us in English that we were on a private estate. (We knew this.)

Charlie company (they fly and crew the Black Hawks) did some test flights after the goggles were lost. They filled IV bags with water (Black Hawks are often used for MEDEVAC) to weigh the same as the goggles and let ’em fly. The tests showed that the goggles would have landed on the other side of the MSR (main supply route—a highway) from where we were looking. Indeed, that’s where they were. They had shattered in pieces after falling from 600 feet at 80 knots onto pavement. But they found the circuit board and other important components, so that was that.

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“Iron Man” debuted in Osan on May 9-11 and at Camp Humphreys on May 16-18. On the 11th, I was in Osan and saw a line from the ticket booth along two sides of the theater and down the sidewalk. Osan (an Air Force base) charges a few bucks for their movies, while Humphreys’ theater is free. There is rarely a big crowd at Humphreys. I went and saw “Iron Man” on the 18th. I thought it was great, though I was not expecting it to be.

Saw “Indiana Jones and the blah, blah, blah” on the 26th at a theater off post in Pyeongtaek. I say “blah, blah, blah” because I don’t think it really matters what the movie is about; it’s Indiana Jones. I enjoyed it a lot, though, if not for the substance of the plot. The theater was interesting. To buy a ticket you have to take a number and wait to be called. The ticket gives you an assigned seat in the theater. The rows are marked by “American” letters (A, B, C, etc.) and the seats are numbered. The movie is still spoken in the original languages (English, plus some Russian for the bad guys), but there were Korean subtitles.

What I had really been waiting for was “Prince Caspian,” the new “Narnia” movie. I really enjoyed it, I guess because with being in the Army, it’s nice to retreat to wholesome family movies, especially one with Christian overtones. I was planning to see it again but wound up going to a friend’s house (he lives off post with his wife) for a small barbeque with some of the more mature guys in the platoon. I instead borrowed one of the “Narnia” books from the library. This is the first fiction I’ve read in about eight or nine years; I read a lot of non-fiction books. I wanted “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” but it was checked out, so I chose “The Magician’s Nephew,” a prequel which is labeled as “Book 1” and is the first chronologically in the series of seven books.

I rented “Lars and the Real Girl” on the 12th. I hadn’t heard of it. I read the description and thought it was going to be a stupid comedy out for cheap laughs. I read a review of it and learned it was actually sweet and didn’t go for the easy jokes. I was very pleased. It reminded me a little too much of my own life (past, I hope). Minus the doll, of course.

With movies like “Lars,” I keep thinking that this gives real-life guys like the main character way too much hope. The girl he’s interested in pursues him even though he’s a loner and has delusions. Powder had far too many girls interested in him for his personality. To all the single ladies out there: stop enabling these guys in their loser-ness! Without repeated rejection by women (especially the good ones), how will the guys learn?

Korea weeks 18 and 19

2008-05-13T13:42:00.006+01:00

Korea: April 27 - May 11
I neglected last week to share this picture from the goggle hunt. We posed with all the sticks we had carved during the week. (We left the sticks up as a monument.) I’m third from the left. The brick wall to my left is my roommate. My wand is that stick that comes up to my knees. (I had thrown my walking stick into the woods when I heard we were leaving that day.) The sergeant in the middle is holding in his left hand the “Gandalf stick” in which is wedged a mysterious and powerful crystal. (It’s quartz.) The green wrapping the two sticks on the right is 550 cord, the ubiquitous and all-purpose rope found on any Army field exercise.

It’s amazing that in none on these pictures I’ve posted am I wearing a beret, since that’s what we wear 90% of the time.

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Tuesday the 29th, my platoon sergeant called me and another guy into his office to tell us that one of us had to accept a job in the orderly room for six months doing paperwork. The orderly room is where all the paperwork for the company goes through and is sandwiched between the first sergeant’s office and the company commander’s office. (Commander=officer.) Although the Army has people employed specifically to do paperwork (92-A, human resources), the orderly room is populated by people in aviation—people from our company.

Me and this other guy are both E-4’s new to aviation; he reclassed from being an engineer. (An engineer in the Army is basically someone who blows stuff up, though they do other things, too.) Neither of us wanted to leave the platoon since we wanted to try to learn our job at least a little. We were allowed to talk it over among ourselves before going to see the platoon sergeant. He was willing to take the job since I didn’t want to, and I didn’t try to talk him out of it. I did feel a little bad, though.

When we went to see the sergeant*, my colleague reluctantly volunteered, but it was fairly obvious that the sergeant was not happy that I was not the volunteer. The position required a reasonable knowledge of computers, so I was the odds-on favorite. After we left the office, about ten minutes later I was called up alone back to the office. I should have just said, “When do I start?” when I walked in, because I knew what was coming.

In those ten minutes I had made my peace with the idea of transferring, so I didn’t fight it when I was told I had the job. There are definitely advantages to working right next to the top people in the company. The next day I learned I wasn’t going, and neither was the other guy. All that suspense for nothing.

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I’ve said before that not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask me either why I joined the Army or why I didn’t become an officer. It’s still true. (Well, it sure feels like every day.) And, you know, I freely tell new people that I came in with a college degree, despite the fact that I know exactly where that will direct the conversation.

What made me upset about leaving the 47 Maintenance platoon to work in the orderly room was not that I wouldn’t be working on aircraft. We don’t do much of that anyway, and I feel that in four months I’ve pretty much plateaued (is that not a verb?) on how much I’d learn about helicopters while in Korea.

What I really wanted to gain from my time as an enlisted soldier in the Army was what a professor of mine once called “the soft skills.” That man, for whom English was not his native language, said, roughly, that “nerds” (that was his word) can only go so far. As I said in my essay on why I joined the Army, I’ve always known that.

It’s no fun getting treated like an idiot, pandering to your superiors, being told what to do all the time, or getting yelled at for something you’ve never been taught how to do. But I feel I would miss out on so much if I never experienced that. And nothing beats being a SGT, a first-line supervisor, knowing your soldiers on a personal basis.

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As I predicted last time, the flurry of room inspections died down after a week. While they were still going on, though, a couple of guys had a “GI party” on the 24th. That’s when someone’s room is so dirty and disorganized that the NCOs make the inhabitants move all their furniture out and clean the room from top to bottom.

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So, if it weren’t for political correctness in the Army, I’d have a miserable time and never would have joined. Having said that, I think they take it way too far sometimes.

For sergeant’s time on the 1st, we had classes on, among other things, discrimination. The instructor’s materials (and I’m not real sure where they get the materials) stated that one form of workplace discrimination was, making a qualification based on a trait historically associated with a minority, such as discriminating on the basis of education. The way I understand that is that if I as a CEO made a requirement of a job that you be able to pass an aptitude test, then I’m discriminating against, say, black people, because historically (and statistically) they have lower test scores than whites. I was outspoken for a lot of this class, but this point left me speechless.

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Our company has a softball team—and not in a million years would I play on a sports team of any kind. There was a pre-season mini-tournament from the 3rd through the 5th. They won the first three games last weekend and landed in the championship game that Monday. They lost due to a fatal error in the eighth inning. (Softball only has seven regular innings.) It’s a good team, though.

(As I write this on Tuesday, May 13, our team won their first game of the season with a score of 32-6. That’s not a typo. The opponent quit after five innings.)

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Most of what I wrote happened two weeks ago. Last week was pretty bland. I think I’ve gone on long enough now, anyway.

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*”Sergeant” is a general term used when speaking to or about an E-5 (sergeant), E-6 (staff sergeant), or E-7 (sergeant first class), not just an E-5. In this case our platoon sergeant is an E-7. When I’m talking about an E-5 I’ll usually just write SGT so you know it’s that specific rank I’m talking about.

Korea weeks 14 to 17

2008-04-26T12:02:00.000+01:00

Korea: March 31-April 26

What’s happened in the last four weeks? Let’s see. In week one someone left some unused bolts on one of the Chinooks, which is cause for great alarm. Also, I got a care package in the mail from some church in Florida. I rented some more movies online and checked a book out of the library. This past week we had room inspections every other day and personal inspections every day. I had to go to the range on Wednesday to requalify on my M16. But there was something else. Hmm.

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Someone lost a pair of NVGs, night vision goggles, in the field. Or so it’s thought. NVGs are a “sensitive item,” which means if they are lost, the whole world stops turning on its axis, basically. The better part of the battalion spent two weeks looking for them at the training site. This includes the group of people that had already spent two weeks there—they couldn’t leave until the goggles were found. Those of us that weren’t there rotated out for the first week, spending a day at a time being bused or flown there and back. We were leaving early and getting back around 9 PM each day. The second week a group of us, myself included, stayed up there indefinitely, which turned out to be seven days.

In the end we never did find them, and I think it’s safe to say they aren’t out there. Dozens of people walked that site day after day; mine/metal detectors were brought in; helicopters flew overhead; and weed whackers and a “brush hog” mowed down the acres of reeds and tall grass. My theory is that someone lost them months ago and cooked the books until it finally caught up with him.

The reason for the big to-do was not the cost of the goggles; the battalion spent FAR more than the roughly $3600 cost of the goggles in the search. The reason is that the goggles are, I guess, a rare enough technology and very useful to an enemy of ours. Whether the goggles are really that valuable or not, the search certainly sends a message to everyone about how seriously sensitive items are taken.

The continuous week I spent out there was actually kind of fun. It was thrust upon us rather suddenly—the night before, actually, and by the time we got back from the day trip out there, most of the stores were closed so we couldn’t buy all the supplies we wanted for the week. But the atmosphere was rather relaxed, since we weren’t supposed to be there at all. I got a lot of reading done and watched a couple of movies on someone’s laptop. On breaks during searching, most of us took a dead branch and fashioned a walking stick. Several people made some impressive wooden swords; I made a magic wand. We made the most of it. For those few times when we had to stand abreast and mindlessly walk in a line a few steps at a time like a chain gang, I just tuned out the world and hummed some hymns to myself.

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FOD stands for foreign object damage, but it’s usually used to refer to the thing that will cause the damage. A small screw that gets sucked into an engine would be an example of FOD (in either sense).

After some routine maintenance my squad had performed, a small bag of four tiny bolts was found under one of the drive shafts. The good news is that it was found before the engines were ever started. The drive shafts turn at thousands of times per minute, and that bag of bolts could easily have proven fatal to whoever was on the next flight. The bad news, of course, is that it happened at all.

A FOD check should be performed after any maintenance on an aircraft. We didn’t do one on the first day of the maintenance, when the bolts were left up there, and during the FOD check the next day no one found the bag then, either. A SSG not involved in the maintenance found it after doing his own check.

I will tell you that I was not found to blame in the incident. I was not on the aircraft at the time the bolts were brought up, and I was doing computer work (logging the maintenance) when the first FOD check should have been done and when the second one did happen. But that’s not the point. We have a saying, “everyone is responsible for safety.” We were rushed at the end of that first day, but everyone should have insisted that a FOD check be performed.

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I got a package in the mail from a Baptist church in Florida. I am not Baptist and have never been to Florida. I found out later that my squad leader, whom I’ve had some religious discussions with, used to attend that church and gave them my address to get my opinion of the package. It was pretty good. I gave the two hunting magazines to my roommate (who was thrilled); the toothpaste and deodorant are always good; but my favorite was the little bottle of Advil. Someone knows soldiers. My only objection, even though I’m not Baptist, was that there were no pamphlets or religious tracts. I respect the reluctance to be pushy, but a church is supposed to evangelize.

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Every six months we have to qualify with our M16s. Here, and almost nowhere else, they use paper targets instead of the plastic pop-up ones. It’s a giant piece of paper with ten silhouettes representing, in scale, the different targets we’d hit as pop-ups (50 meters to 300 m). With the standard 40 rounds we’re supposed to hit four rounds in each target. The standard is a little higher—26 out of 40—because this is vastly easier. I got through on my first try, but most of my shots were low, which could be due to a number of things. Something to remember six months from now. I feel more and more confident each time I shoot, but I don’t understand why we don’t practice more. Or ever.

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I don’t feel like going in depth about the recent spate of inspections. It’s just typical Army rigmarole, and hopefully it will pass soon.

I finally got around to reading a C.S. Lewis book, “Mere Christianity.” I’m about two-thirds through. He really is a brilliant author.

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I came up with a game for myself: We spend so much time waiting around for formations to start each day, I decided that I’d just start counting. I’ll pick up the next day with the number I left off at. Friday afternoon alone I counted to 3,500. I was hoping to hit a million by the end of my year here, but that seems unrealistic since I only have (precisely) 249 days left here. Not that I’m counting or that I have a countdown chart on the inside of a cabinet with Xs through it.

Another new feature

2008-04-20T13:10:00.004+01:00

Well, in the meantime, I added a little blurb on the right about what my job is. I've explained a lot of this piecemeal over the past 11 months, but I'm guessing most people have forgotten by now, or it never made sense to begin with. Tell me what you think and if anything is still fuzzy -- the description, not the picture.

I'm still here

2008-04-20T12:21:00.002+01:00

Hey all!

I'll post a letter soon--I just wanted you all to know I've had a hectic three weeks and we were out in the field sporadically during that time, so I didn't feel it right to discuss anything while it was all still going on. You know, OPSEC and all. I spent this weekend just trying to unwind (sans alcohol, of course), so I won't have anything for you today.

On an up note, I just rented "Enchanted," the new Disney flick, from iTunes. GREAT movie. Hilarious and sweet. I might watch it again. I'm a sucker for Disney movies.

Stay tuned!

Korea week 13

2008-03-30T09:08:00.002+01:00

Korea: March 22-30

To answer the question I posed last week in the opening paragraph, this past week would be a usual week. This was, thankfully, the most uneventful week I’ve had so far.

I’ve been trying to find a church of Christ to worship with, but I haven’t had much luck. The listings I have are old and congregations don’t stick around forever. There was supposed to be one in nearby Osan Air Force base, based in a conference room in one of the buildings, but there was no sign of it when I checked it out last Saturday. I haven’t gotten around to calling the chaplain there to see if she knew anything. That’s why I held off writing about last weekend in the previous letter.

This past Saturday I was supposed to do some mission that would take place off post, but it was cancelled due to rain.

Mom sent my civilian W-2 priority mail and that only took two weeks to get here. (Army W-2s are available online.)

I rented a movie, “Garden State,” from iTunes yesterday. You download the whole movie to your computer—“Garden State” was about an hour and forty minutes and 1.11 GB, which took 30 minutes to download on the high speed Internet here. It’s really convenient for those of us who don’t have a movie store nearby. Movies by mail wouldn’t really be practical either. (Vongo does the same thing, but I can’t access it outside the U.S.) “Garden State” cost $2.99, as it was an older movie (2004); new movies are $3.99. You get 24 hours to watch the movie as many times as you want, and you can start those 24 hours anytime within 30 days of renting it. I’d do it again—I was pretty satisfied.

So, yeah, that’s about it for this week.

Korea week 12

2008-03-23T10:53:00.000Z

Korea: March 17-21

Yes, I’m back to writing once a week. It was an unusual week (but what’s usual?) since I didn’t work all week but instead went to combatives training, along with a few others in the platoon. That’s about all I have to report on this week, so I’ll tell a couple of anecdotes first before you lose interest.

My mother sent a package on February 20 (my time); it got here on March 19. That’s four weeks.

My roommate took his AFAST, which is the test for becoming a pilot. He got a 151, and the proctor said it was the highest score he’s ever seen in 20 years of administering the test. (The maximum is 176.) We posted a sign outside the door to our room that says, paraphrased, “You must have at least a 99 on your ASVAB [that’s me] or a 151 on the AFAST to enter this room.”

(A 99 is the highest overall score you can get on the ASVAB; it’s a percentile, so one out of 100 people will get a 99. It’s designed for the average high school senior, who would get a 50. A 99 for a college graduate isn’t that amazing, though I’ve never met anyone else with the same score—but then, I never ask; the other person always starts the conversation, and I’m usually reluctant to answer. The other scores from the ASVAB—it’s a “battery” of tests—are often more important, such as the GT, or general technical score. I got a 141 out of a maximum 130 on the GT, which I still don’t understand.)

Now for combatives.

I’ve talked about this before, but I figure a refresher is needed. Modern Army Combatives, which we just call combatives, is a kind of sophisticated and potentially (if you want it to be) lethal form of wrestling. The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) that you might see on TV uses a lot of techniques that you’ll see in combatives. Combatives is good for subduing or killing an enemy, but it can also be practiced safely enough to where students don’t get seriously injured during training.

I was forced into the class by my squad leader, but I really enjoyed it when I realized they’d actually teach us the techniques instead of just making us horse around, like we did in Basic and AIT. The class is one week long (40 hours, minus lunches) and results in a level 1 combatives certification. Level 1 certification is required for all Army Soldiers (maybe just active duty), and is worth eight promotion points.

The first three days were instruction and practice on most of the basic skills. There are three drills that teach you how to achieve dominant body position from various disadvantageous positions, plus techniques for chokes and for breaking (or simulating breaking) the opponent’s arm. On days two and three we started off with an intense workout designed to wear us out so we’d be more equally matched. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what the instructor said.

On day four we got punched repeatedly by the instructor and his cohorts and we weren’t allowed to punch back. They did use boxing gloves. The purpose was to learn “clenching,” which is to wrap your arms and/or legs around someone to stop them from punching you. The trick is to get to them before you get knocked out. The main thing that I learned was how to not panic when getting walloped. As someone who has never been in a fight before, my first reaction to a punch is to back away. Eventually you learn to just dive in there and take a couple of blows in order to stop all of the hits.

We went through four rounds of clenching, each slightly harder. It was obvious that they took it easier on the weaker guys like me and on the two women, but I still feel great about doing something I’ve never done before. That was the best part of the class.

On day five we tested on the drills and techniques we learned, and everyone passed. At the end the instructor asked if anyone wanted to sign up for the level 2 class. Myself and another older guy said, “Not yet.” I value what I learned and would like to do level 2 (though level 3 seems a little too intense), but it takes a lot out of you. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was sore every day.

Korea weeks 10 and 11

2008-03-17T15:53:00.001Z

Korea: March 1 - 16

An editorial note: the dates on the last letter are wrong, since I didn’t cover anything that happened on the first or second of March, though I will in this letter. Could I go back and change that? Yes, but it feels wrong to change something I published (essentially) in the past.

I’m trying to be good about OPSEC and not divulge secret information, so I had no plans to tell you all about Key Resolve, an annual combat-training exercise done in Korea, this year from March 2 – 7. Then the Associated Press ran an article about it the first day. It seems the North Koreans are all upset and think we’re preparing to invade. Not that I would know anyway, but I haven’t heard of anything remotely like that. The exercise didn’t affect our company at all; it’s mostly done near the border; as the article said, it’s meant as defensive training.

A platoon in another company in our battalion was sent to Afghanistan last week or the week before. Deployments don’t happen often here, but they do happen. On the other hand, AIP, which as I said before is staying an extra year or two in Korea, is sometimes referred to as the “Avoid Iraq Program” because staying in Korea seriously decreases your chances of being deployed.

I bought a new computer on the 2nd. I went with a PC instead of a Mac, and I decided to go with a desktop this time. I’ve had a notebook for a while and I like it, but I missed having a big monitor and I like the ability to upgrade the hardware. I don’t need the portability of a laptop here, and in the States my iPhone is my laptop. I really wanted to try a Mac, but they’re just so expensive. Their computers cost a lot, then the software and peripherals cost more, and the options are very limited. The iMacs are really nice, but you can’t upgrade them easily. Someday I’ll get one.

I’m very happy with the computer. I won’t say what I spent on it. Let’s just say that I’m sure most of the guys here spend more on beer and nights out in a year than I did on my computer. Now I’m going to try and sell the laptop. There are always new guys looking for a cheap computer.

For Sergeant’s time on Thursday, the 6th, we had classes on disassembling and reassembling three weapons: our trusty M16A2, the M9 pistol, and the MK19 (pronounced “mark nineteen”) grenade launcher.

The M16 is a long rifle—it comes up to your waist when you rest the butt stock on the ground, as we did in drill and ceremony in Basic Training. The Army says it’s one of the best weapons in the world because of its accuracy. It’s rather ungainly, though not as bad as the roughly 30-pound M249 SAW. It fires 5.56 mm ammunition

The M9 pistol is used by soldiers in the rank of E-7 or above (to include all officers), and crew chiefs in aviation. (I don’t know about people outside of aviation.) I hate that we don’t get to practice with them. I’m much more comfortable with a smaller weapon like that. Of course it’s not designed for shooting accurately at long distances, like the M16 is.

The MK19 is a large weapon mounted on a tripod that you sit under or a turret you stand behind. It weighs 75 pounds. By contrast the M209 grenade launcher we practiced with in Basic is small and light enough to mount to our M16s.

On the way back from the arms room where the classes were I got to call cadence briefly as we marched. It’s been 7 1/2 months since I’ve done that. I missed that.

Two weekends ago I saw “Jumper,” which I liked a lot, though the plot was horrible. Last weekend I saw “Vantage Point.” It’s based on an interesting concept, though it felt like they just took a half hour of action and stretched it to an hour and a half.

Monday the 10th we had a day off. I don’t think there was any reason. Two five-day weeks in a row was enough, I guess. I went up to Yongsan on the post-to-post bus that also stops at Osan. It’s two hours each way. I just needed to get out. I bought a study guide for the GRE; that’s the graduate school version of the SAT. I took a practice test online the day before and did miserably (no, really, I did; I know you don’t believe me) so I decided I should study. A large part of the verbal section is based on highfalutin (yeah, that’s how it’s spelled) vocabulary words, most of which I don’t recognize. That’s what I need to brush up on the most.

This past Thursday for sergeant’s time we learned all about rules of war—Geneva Convention, what to say if you’re captured (name, rank, and SSN only), and tactics for searching suspects. I enjoyed it but everyone else hated it.

Friday we had briefings all day. It was “Nightmare Day,” with Nightmare being the name of the battalion. (I guess you could have a nightmare in the day….) We sat in an auditorium for a very long 2 1/2 hours listening to all the required quarterly briefings on the same things as always: sexual harassment, underage drinking, curfew (midnight or 1 AM to 5 AM every day), off-limits areas, prostitution and human trafficking, etc. After lunch I and others attended the newcomer’s brief for another two hours and heard many of the same things. At the end of the day which was right after the briefs) we had the company formation where heard more speeches on what not to do this weekend.

The first day I went to head start I was scheduled to pull CQ, but it got tasked to someone else since head start was more important. Friday the guy that had covered for me got CQ again on short notice and he had plans for the weekend, and I’ve never had it, so I volunteered to take his spot.

CQ is being a hall monitor for the barracks. There are two people at the front door—the only entrance besides one-way fire exit doors—and one on the third floor where the females all live. Weekday CQ is from 5 PM to 9 AM, and you get the next day off of work to recover. This shift was on a Saturday, for 24 hours, with Sunday as the recovery day. So pretty much the whole weekend was shot.

I had the third floor which was fairly quiet. It sure beats sitting in the foyer watching every inhabitant of the building walk by multiple times. I read a book for four or five hours, then studied that GRE book for most of the rest of the time. I did a lot better on the practice tests, except for the vocab.

There’s one guy on that floor that schleps his PlayStation 3, 30-inch LCD or plasma TV, Bose surround sound system, and a trash bag full of cords, and plays video games in the common room for most of the day. The chair and desk for CQ are directly across from where he sets up his TV, and he likes to make conversation with the CQ person about how great the graphics are and how much his electronics cost and all the cool moves he makes in the game. I’d complain, but it gave me something to watch for a few hours. Then I just shut the door. He does this every weekend, and about a dozen people on that floor told him he should get out more—or at all.

I was surprised that I didn’t get tired until 8 AM, the last hour of my shift. All the paperwork (logs) and everything were finished at 0930. After that I ate breakfast, shaved, brushed my teeth, showered, changed clothes, and slept for four hours. I didn’t want to spend all Sunday sleeping, and I wanted to be able to fall asleep that night.

Overheard from people about to go to special pops (PT for PT failures): “You want to take a cab?” “Yeah, sure.”

Korea weeks 7 to 9

2008-03-06T20:51:00.001Z

Korea: February 10 – March 2

No excuse this time for not writing. The more free time I have, the less I get done. I read more and wrote more in AIT than I do here. Of course, that was pretty much all there was to do then.

The most interesting thing that happened recently (to you all, anyway) was the three-day class a group of us took called “head start.” (Head Start was the name of my preschool, too, so it’s funny how things come full circle.) Head start is a program for all people new to Camp Humphreys and is held at Pyeongtaek University. (I’ve seen it spelled Pyongtaek, too; the University spells it both ways.) The first two days we’re in class from 0900 to 1630, with an hour and a half for lunch (that’s how long we get normally) at a Korean buffet near the school. They had a few DVDs to show us about the culture and history and the Korean War, plus some various classes on the culture. The bulk of our time was spent learning about the Korean language. The third day we went to some performing arts center and watched a play.

Our first class, on Wednesday the 13th, was on Korean history—going WAY back—and was given as a PowerPoint lecture by a very dry professor there. He just read straight off the slides. A lot of people fell asleep. The next classes were on the modern culture and customs. The woman teaching was funny and a little foul-mouthed. (It is college, after all.) On Thursday we had classes on politics and the economy, and on traditional culture, like birth, death, and marriage ceremonies.

One point they bludgeoned to death was about the sense of community Koreans have which contrasts our sense of individuality. They got really psychological about it all (it is college), but it boiled down to the idea that while Koreans do value moral decisions and lifestyles, if a close friend of yours does something wrong, you don’t criticize them or pronounce judgment. I call that “moral relativism”; Korean academia calls it a “we” mentality. Even in other countries the colleges sugar-coat (do Koreans use sugar?) the moral degradation of society as some important philosophy. I think that’s the Confucian influence.

That Friday morning we watched a documentary on the Korean War. I never knew anything about it before. South Korea was toast until the U.S. saved the day. The ROK Army (Republic of Korea, i.e. South Korea, and pronounced “rock”) was literally backed into a corner in an area around Busan when the U.S. assaulted the North’s army from all sides.

You know, the North and South are constantly talking about being reunited. When we were at Camp Stanley in the beginning of January I asked that question to a South Korean in the U.S. Army (not a KATUSA but an American Soldier born in Korea), because I’m thinking that if I lived in the South I’d never want anything to do with the North. He said the reason was largely political: the North has a much better army while the South has a better economy. OK, it has an economy, period. (They showed this picture at Stanley of a satellite photo of the peninsula taken at night. South Korea looked like the U.S. with lots of light spots all over the country, concentrated around the cities. North Korea had no light coming from it. None.) Plus a lot of Southerners have family in the North that they can’t visit. Sounds like Germany before the Berlin Wall fell.

The latter half of days one and two were about Hangeul, the Korean language. Their alphabet is set up totally different from ours. What looks like one character or symbol is actually a syllable made up of different phonetic sounds. Thursday we wrote our names in Hangeul. Mine is , which would be anglicized to Jeiseun (read: Juh-ee-suhn). Seoul is two syllables (So-ool), but when you say it fast enough it sounds like what we’re used to. It’s all so hard to get used to. They can approximate most of the phonetic sounds and diphthongs (put that in your Funk & Wagnalls) of English with their system, but it has limitations. They have 19 consonants and 20 vowels.

A few interesting side notes. “Han” means “Korea” in general. Hangeul means “Korean letters,” or the Korean alphabet. Hanguk is the country of Korea. Miguk is the word for America. It translates literally to “beautiful country.” I find that cool, but odd.

They taught us Korean numbers, too. What I found odd is that they group orders of magnitude in fours. So a one followed by six zeroes—a million—is written as 100,0000 (a hundred ten-thousands) instead of our way (1,000,000). A billion is 10,0000,0000, not 1,000,000,000. It’s the same number of zeroes, just called different things.

On day three we went to Lotte Mart (like a Wal-Mart) to practice our deft language skills. They gave us all 1000 won (about a buck) to buy a toy or something for local orphans. Almost everyone spent much more than that. I bought toys for them but I also bought this one memento for myself: it’s a Lego-type set to build a little Korean military Jeep-thing. It’s so cool. The little driver has a rifle and a Korean-style cap and a trim moustache. I haven’t taken it out of the package.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Lotte Mart called Alaska. It’s a seafood place, and it looked expensive. We didn’t pay; I guess the Army did. (Korean restaurants tend to be pretty reasonably priced; menial labor is cheap here.) They had a chocolate fountain—a fountain that circulated chocolate like water. I was not terribly adventurous with the food.

In the afternoon we traveled to that performing arts place. First we faked the funk on a traditional Korean dance where we put these tubular streamers on our hands. Next we learned how to play some kind of drum. It looked like an American Indian drum with an animal hide stretched over the openings of an hourglass shape drum (I’m sure it wasn’t an actual hide), and the “hides” were strung to each other by a webbing of rope. We got down with our bad selves playing some simple rhythms, and at the end our instructor showed off. He was amazingly fast.

During a break they had some games in an open area outside. One was to throw arrows into a tall, upright jar from a distance; another was the old roll a hoop down the street with a stick. There was also a board centered on a sandbag. It’s like a seesaw, but you and a friend jump on either end trying to launch the other person in the air.

At the end of the day we say a play spoken (almost) entirely in Korean. There was the occasional English phrase (just like we might throw out “je ne sais quoi”), and there were two monitors used before the play and between scenes that gave some background information in English. It was hard to read and scrolled by way too fast.

The play was the classic story of a peasant/servant who falls in love with a princess. Dad disapproves but eventually comes around after an act of heroism by the boy. It was very loud, visually. It’s like the old “Your Show of Shows” or something where TV was a new thing and people thought, “Well, since people can see us now, we have to do lots of big elaborate things to keep people interested.” There were many breaks in the action for dances and rhythmic musical performances. (No singing and very, very little talking.) Everyone did stay interested. The actors were very funny. At one point they brought up one of us Americans on stage (don’t ever sit in an aisle seat) and had him act out a scene. He was a great sport. It was all just good, clean fun. You never see that anymore. (Korea does have quite the dirty side, too.)

* * *

Monday the 11th I and a few others found out at 10 AM that we’d be heading up to Camp Stanley at noon to be in the audience for the retirement ceremony of some bigwig general. Well, it wasn’t Camp Stanley; it was Yongsan; and the bigwig was not a general; he was the CSM over pretty much everything in Korea. How’s that for organized?

CSM Barry C. Wheeler retired after 35 years of service in the Army. He was the Command Sergeant Major of the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, US Forces Korea, and 8th United States Army. As a friend and I have discussed, either these guys have a lot of work to do, or very little work to do. (“Should I allow them to wear the black fleece with their uniforms, or not?”) GEN B.B. Bell, commander of the same stuff, minus 8th Army, was there presiding over the change of leadership.

It was freezing cold that day, and the ceremony was outdoors, but I was glad to be there. (Everyone else felt that “this is gay.” Yep, they still use that phrase all the time.) We sat in the bleachers at 3:20, watched the U.S. Army marching band come out a few minutes later, and then waited for the ceremony to start at 4 PM. It lasted until about 5:30. We wore our black fleeces (so the answer was yes, as of a few months ago), berets, and gloves. The band and four other groups, some ROK army, stood in the middle of the field in the same stance the whole time—no jackets and thin, decorative white gloves. I felt so bad for them. My ears and fingers were numb by the end. I can’t imagine what they were going through. Hardly anyone else wanted to be out there, but after 35 years, I know I’d take my time giving my farewell speech. (There was an audible, collective groan after GEN Bell finished his speech and introduced CSM Wheeler. I didn’t groan because [a] it’s incredibly rude, and [b] I knew it was coming.)

Over the four day weekend around President’s Day I went to the library to…check out a book. They still do that, you know. It’s on HTML, which is the programming language of the Internet. Every website is coded in HTML (plus some other languages sometimes, but always at least HTML). I’ve tried to find a good program that will let you make your own website without knowing any HTML, and I haven’t seen any that a dumb beginner like me could understand. (If a computer program is too hard for me to understand, that’s a bad thing.) So I said to myself, now how hard could HTML really be?

Usually when I naively assume something with computers will be easy, I find out later it’s over my head. This time I was surprisingly right. Programming in HTML is very easy. Much easier than using an easy-to-use program. I read that 650-page book in just over two days. (It’s called “Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML” and is brilliantly easy to follow.)

I looked into taking some college courses here. It turns out that the Army will pay for one associate’s degree, one bachelor’s, and one master’s. I can’t take courses toward another bachelor’s unless I wanted to pay for them. I’m really saddened by that. I wanted to get a master’s, but I’m planning to do that through the Green to Gold program.

Green to Gold is a program by which enlisted soldiers can become commissioned officers by taking time off of the Army to get a degree—up to four years depending on how long you have to complete your bachelor’s degree, or they’ll give you two years to complete a master’s, and you can’t take summer courses or have a course overload for either degree. I’d rather get a master’s from a traditional college, not from online courses over five years from some less than stellar school. The Army will pay for your schooling or pay you your current active duty pay, or both.

I took and passed a PT test on Wednesday the 20th. No more “special pops” for me now. It’s a good thing, too. The results of that PT test were so bad overall that they’ve stepped up the intensity of special pops. One guy gained 16 pounds in the last month between weigh-ins. There’s a “gut truck”—I’m used to it being called a “roach coach”; it’s a street vendor operating out of the back of a truck—that stops by the hangar several times a day, beeping the horn. The people that need to lose several dozen pounds are often getting fatty sandwiches and snacks from the truck. I don’t eat from it because I’m just cheap. Five, six bucks a day adds up. And I’ve developed a distaste for fatty foods after eating healthier all these years.

* * *

On Friday the 29th, we had a “hail and farewell,” which is a little gathering where they introduce all the new guys and send off those leaving with some speeches and a plaque. Our hail was on February 8th, and somehow I neglected to mention that in the last letter. That took place during the day in a bowling alley and was a lot of fun.

This time they decided that it should take place on a Friday night in a bar in the ville. You can imagine my delight. They say these things are not mandatory, but they are, really. I didn’t see any easy way out of this, and even if I did weasel my way out, there’d be another one within a month. I knew I’d hate it, but I figured I’d go, hate it, and then I’d be able to say, “See, I went, and I hated it. Are you happy now?” So I went. And hated it.

Wow, I have never hated something so much as that night. You ever get that feeling that disturbs you down to your very soul? Like you can just sense the evil all around you? That’s how I felt.

These things don’t ever start on time. This one was scheduled for 7 PM, so I got there fashionably late at around 7:10. I sat on the edge of the action so people would acknowledge that I showed up, but without being in the center of any conversations. Some people tried to pull me into the action, but I was not interested in having a good time. In other situations I understand how this is a horrible strategy and I should just try to have fun and not be so closed off. This is a situation where I would never want to assimilate. I’m not trying to be antisocial. I’m trying to be anti-sin.

There were at least eight TV’s around the edge of a small room, so it was hard to get away from whatever was playing. This was a dive bar in a ghetto (although people said it was actually one of the nicer bars in the area). They had various disturbing or disgusting rock videos on the TVs. They were tolerable at first, but got worse as the night went on. Then one of our guys popped in a DVD of music videos he brought that was, let’s just say uncensored.

At that point I just stared down at my watch. I was on the verge of tears. It’s hard to explain. I wanted to leave so badly. Someone saw me and asked me how I was doing. I said what I said to everyone: I don’t want to be here. He talked to one of the senior-ranking sergeants and they stopped the video and finally started the actual ceremony. That was nice. I left immediately after.

I’m not sure what that feeling was. I felt like I had done something wrong, but I know I was really forced into going, so I don’t really feel guilty. I know I’ll never do it again, come what may.

I don’t need to get hit by a car to know that I should look both ways before crossing the street. I didn’t need to go to that bar or any bar to know it was evil. And I didn’t need to reaffirm my trust in my own judgment. But maybe now others will respect my decision to abstain from bars. I don’t expect them to respect my judgment. That’d be the day.

Suspected Arsonist in Custody

2008-02-13T13:48:00.002Z

It looks like the police caught the man who set fire to the Namdaemun in Seoul. CNN has the story.

Landmark destroyed in Seoul

2008-02-11T11:08:00.000Z

If you haven't heard about it, a fire destroyed one of the oldest landmarks in Seoul. Click here for the story from CNN. They have some pictures and video. I'll keep you updated.

Korea - weeks 4 to 6

2008-02-09T16:06:00.000Z

Korea: January 21-February 9

Well, the Pats lost the Super Bowl, so I can’t go on. But I must.

In the past three weeks we’ve had three long weekends, and one more next weekend. After that there are no American holidays for three months.

So this time there’s a good reason why I haven’t written for a while: we went on FTX two weeks ago, so I didn’t want to write about it beforehand. This week I’ve just been busy. The site we traveled to is off post, so the OPSEC I mentioned before really comes into play here. Fortunately I don’t know where the site is, so I couldn’t give it away if I wanted to. I can tell you it took a while to get there.

We were off post for FTX for only about 36 hours, but the week before we were “preparing” for FTX and the week after was “recovery.” Saturday the 19th we went to our hangar at midnight to “cold weather train” by sleeping in our sleeping bags with the hangar doors slightly open and the heat on. As a result it really wasn’t very cold. The night before a different company had to sleep outside, and it was colder that night. And I intentionally didn’t mention this last week.

We didn’t really do that much preparation. Thursday the 24th, for sergeant’s time, we put together a tent for practice. One tent is large enough for 12 cots, or 11 and a potbelly stove. It was bitter cold that morning, far worse than I’m used to. It had a lot to do with the fact that we were working in the shadow of the hangar; the other side wasn’t so bad. The next day started with an “alert” at 0520. We warned beforehand that the alert would come between 0400 and 0500—someone would knock on everyone’s door—and at that point we’d have an hour to get to the hangar. After breakfast, that whole morning was spent trying to get two eight-foot-square containers (ISUs) onto a 16-foot-long bed of an LMTV (a truck). We also loaded out duffle bags onto a truck; we brought the rucksacks with us.

FTX went from noon on Monday the 28th to noon on Thursday the 31st. Monday morning started with weapons draw at 0445; I was at the end of the line and got mine about 0600. After a short briefing (trust me, that’s not redundant) at 0630 we sat around until 1130 waiting to leave. While we were waiting we got to go out to the flight line and watch a Chinook slingload a container.

We got to fly out to the site on a Chinook. That was really cool, though I fell asleep after about ten minutes of being airborne. It’s very easy to do. Some guys have been in the company for months and never been on a flight. There was also an advance party that drove out to the site early in the day with supplies.

You’d think 36 hours is just barely enough time to set up camp and tear it down again, and you’d be right. One thing I’ve never seen before is the camouflage netting that gets put up above and around the tents. It gives you a little more freedom to walk around your area while still being concealed. The advance party pulled guard duty at the front “gate”, called the dismount point or the ECP, the entry control point. That wasn’t enough people, so I was among those that got plucked away for the task. It wasn’t bad, since we slept most of the time, and there was nothing to do for training anyway.

All the other tents got at least two heaters—the potbelly stoves—and a generator. (Yep, in aviation we bring power to the field. Flight company had a refrigerator.) My tent had one heater that kept going out and no generator. We got by, though.

A lot of teardown was done on Wednesday all over the camp and Thursday it was finished up. Those of us flying back to base had to be ready to go by 0800, though we ended up waiting until noon for our flight. We waited around in a “warming tent,” one of two remaining tents still up. Ours was a popular place, and a couple of WO1s entertained the guys’ questions about becoming a warrant officer.

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Here’s a little aside about warrant officers.

Warrant officers have the same privileges as officers, but most often come from the enlisted ranks—the grunt workers. As a result, they tend to be more down-to-earth. A lot of people in aviation are there to become warrant officers. A warrant officer in aviation is a pilot, which is why being a warrant officer is so alluring to people. I know I’d be a lousy pilot, so I have no desire to go WOC (warrant officer candidate) school. There are many other kinds of warrant officers, but aviation seems to be the most popular.

A major advantage to going warrant officer is that you get the job you apply for, or you don’t. As a regular officer you don’t get to choose where the Army puts you.

----------------------------------------------------

Friday the 1st we did an AAR, or after-action review, of the FTX. The AAR is a big thing in the Army, going over what went well and what didn’t and how you can improve. The last week has been spent doing cleaning of the tents, the trucks and the potbelly stoves. (My hands still have soot on them.)

When the Super Bowl airs live at 6PM Sunday on the U.S. East coast, it’s 8AM Monday here in Korea. Do you think thousands of military guys and gals are going to miss the most important football game of the year to go to work? No way! So that Monday is a day off for all U.S. military in Korea. I got to watch the whole game, for better or worse. The AFC and NFC championships were on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day two weeks before, so I got to see those, too.

Sunday afternoon a friend asked me if I wanted to go to the ville here. Every ville I’ve seen is basically a ghetto with lots of bars and knockoff products. Not my cup of tea. I told my friend I didn’t want to go and he said something about I was being a barracks rat. I said that I wouldn’t mind going to Osan, the nearby Air Force base, just not the ville here. Instead we went to Yongsan, which is part of Seoul and is home to the Army base we first stayed at in Korea. There’s a bus that goes between Humphreys, Osan, and Yongsan, and costs $2.90 for one stop or $5.60 for two. My friend’s KATUSA roommate tagged along. We skipped the bus and took the train to Yongsan and back. The KATUSA said it was faster, and I wanted to experience and learn Korean public transportation.

My friend wanted to buy a laptop, with my advice, so we went to the I’Park mall, a nine-story mall connected to the Yongsan train station. All the prices we saw were very overpriced, and the computers were seriously outdated, with many used ones. My friend really wanted to come home with a computer, but I kept telling him to wait until we compared prices with those at the PX (the military’s version of Wal-Mart, with no sales tax) back at Humphreys. Long story short, we ended up at the PX in Yongsan and found him a (new) computer for $544, with the 10% off coupon I had in my wallet. (I couldn’t put the coupon to better use than that.) Even at full price it was still a better deal than anything we had seen. Everyone always told us electronics were cheaper in Korea, but that’s just not true. And we haggled quite a bit—I knew what those computers were worth.

KATUSAs (it’s pronounced ka-TOO-sa, by the way) have a curfew of 9:30PM, so we didn’t stay out too late. On the ride back we took the more deluxe train. Every seat was like business class—more legroom than you could imagine, six music channels you could plug into, and seats with leg rests. All for only 7,500 won, or about eight bucks. We walked back on post at 9:28.

After the game on Monday my friend and I hopped on the 1230 bus to Osan. We both agreed that we should have joined the Air Force. Everyone here I’ve talked to agreed. Everything there was nicer: the BX, which is the exact same as our PX; the buildings; and the women. Army women max out at about a 3 or 4, Air Force women at a 7 or 8. (A typical Army conversation: “She was pretty attractive.” “Was she hot, or just ‘Army hot’?”) Someone reliable told me that when Air Force guys had to stay in Army barracks at Ft. Eustis, they received extra compensation because the Army barracks weren’t up to Air Force standards.

When we were in Yongsan on Sunday my friend saw from a distance the Seoul Tower, so we went back to Yongsan on Monday after visiting Osan. It was well worth the trip. The tower is on top of a mountain and has amazing panoramic views of Seoul. That is one massive city. I took pictures while it was night, but I’ll have to go back some time during the day. Outside of the tower are these cool light shows—they project this hologram of flames all up the side of the tower. Near the top of the tower is an expensive revolving restaurant which we didn’t go in. We didn’t get back that night until almost midnight.

Click here for the pictures I took from Seoul Tower.

Sunday morning my roommate moved out as did the roommate of another friend of mine. They both PCS’d out. The friend is the first roommate I had here at Camp Humphreys, and on Monday I moved into his room. Several people said it was a monumental task to switch rooms, but my friend and I just went to the woman in charge of room assignments and asked. I moved that morning.

Most aviation units have a flight platoon in each company; in Korea there’s a separate flight company in the battalion. This makes getting into “flight” much more difficult. Flight personnel are maintenance, but they get much more experience and get to go on helicopter flights. It looks good on a résumé, especially if you want to be a warrant officer. Basically the only way to be considered for flight is to AIP—to stay in Korea for two years. For many of us it’s a deal-breaker. Flight people get lots of extra pay and get separate rations—money for food instead of eating at the chow hall—but have to work long hours and weekends. It’s not worth it. Korea is not a very happening place.

A parting thought: every morning I wake up and step outside and say, “What’s that horrible smell?” Then I remember, “Oh yeah, it’s Korea.”

New feature!

2008-01-22T15:15:00.000Z

I put a little chart on the right side of the blog describing the difference between a company, squad, battalion, etc. (It's in blue lettering.) I know I had no idea what the difference was before I joined the Army. It also goes into rank structure a little.

Korea week 3

2008-01-22T14:20:00.000Z

Korea: January 14-20, 2008

Everything this week I think could be summarized as almost horrible.

The first thing I learned is how far apart everything is here. Monday I calculated that I did seven miles of walking back and forth to the barracks, the hangars, and different offices. Plus we had a five-mile run for PT that morning. My feet were sore until Friday. The PX, library, movie theater, gym, CAC—community activity center, bank, Burger King, commissary (supermarket), and food court (Popeye’s, Baskin Robbins, Subway, Anthony’s Pizza, and, yes, a Starbucks) are all in one plaza about three minutes walking distance from the barracks. The hangar where we meet for PT, on the other hand, is about 3/4 mile from the barracks and the hangar where we work is a good 1/4 mile from there. Now that I’m more or less done with inprocessing I don’t have to walk in circles as much. Also, I picked up a copy of the bus schedule and ride the bus quite a bit now. You really need a schedule with you because there’s really no pattern to the routes.

We get an hour and a half between the end of PT and the beginning of our workday. It sounds like a lot, but: we’re expected to report anywhere 15 minutes early; it takes 15 minutes to walk from PT to the barracks; it’s a good idea to shower in that time; we have to change clothes; the chow hall (for breakfast) is 10 minutes away; and the chow hall to the hangar where we work is a 10- to 15-minute walk. You’ve got to rush to be able to eat and make it to work on time. Most guys don’t bother eating breakfast; a lot have bought cereal at the commissary and eat in their rooms. I figure it takes just as much time to eat food I make as it does to eat food from the chow hall, and the chow hall is on the way to work. Here’s the kicker: in Korea the Army automatically takes the meal deduction from your check, forcing us to pay for three meals a day from the chow hall even if we don’t eat there. Most of us want to make our own food—it’s cheaper that way, and the chow hall schedule, especially on weekends, isn’t always convenient.

Monday I moved into the building with all the other Chinook guys and gals, as did the other two that were in the other building. (That’s the same day I walked and ran 12 miles.) They put us in a hallway with Black Hawk guys, so we might be moving again, though there’s no official word. My old roommate and I got split up, but both of our new roommates are leaving on February 3, so maybe we’ll be roommates again. My new roommate is pretty quiet and well organized, which is all I ask. The other guy has a KATUSA for a roommate. The rooms are the same as before. When I walked in to my room for the first time both of the beds were made. It turns out the last guy just left his linens, since he needed somewhere to sleep and he didn’t want to travel with them since they take up so much room. I just gave the linens to a friend since I didn’t need them.

People who fail their PT test have to do “special pops,” where “pops” is populations, I guess; I don’t think anyone really knows. Anyway, it’s an extra session of PT every weekday, except Thursdays, plus Saturday mornings. People who pass their PT test but don’t make the weight or body fat requirements must do special pops also. The weight charts are calibrated wrong for pretty much every height and age. I’m 5’4” and can get away with 160 lbs, though I’m 135 and can stand to lose a few pounds, and my 18-year-old friend who is 5’10” is only allowed 163 lbs, but he’s over 170 and scores very high on his PT tests. If you can pass the PT test, what does it matter if some chart says you’re overweight? No matter what, though, all new people have to do special pops until the next PT test, which is administered once a month.

It just so happened there was a PT test on Wednesday. I was happy to take it and get out of special pops after only attending on Monday. It didn’t work out that way. I managed to fail the sit ups requirement because I was so sore from exercising on Monday. I did 37 and I found out later I needed 45. I’ve never done fewer than 60 before. What have we learned? Don’t put in the maximum effort unless absolutely necessary. I shouldn’t have done all of those sit ups on Monday, even though I felt like I could have kept going. It did me in.

I’ve made my peace with the whole thing, although I was really dejected at the time. I never fail at anything I put a decent effort into. But now, being on special pops, I get to cut out of work early every day (except Thursdays) and go to the gym three of those days to work out, which I’d want to do on my own but never would. All of my friends know I always pass and that this was a fluke, so that’s really all I need.

Thursday mornings are “sergeant’s time.” I was hoping that was like the occasional Wednesday in grade school when we’d have a half day of classes and then go home early so that the teachers could meet together. No, instead we skip PT and show up at 0700 in ACUs and “full battle rattle,” which is Kevlar vest, helmet, and canteens or a CamelBak (a small backpack of water) strapped to you. This week we did a road march of about four to five miles then had a couple of classes on passwords and range cards. After lunch it’s back to work as usual.

For $10 each, anyone in our platoon had the option of getting out of PT, a six-mile run with the first sergeant, on Friday. It was a fundraiser to replenish the money used for buying people plaques when they PCS out. (PCS means permanent change of station, as in moving from one station to another, but it is often used as a verb. “PCSing” is common, too.) After walking all week and having to do PT twice a day now, I was happy to pay the $10. It made my Friday so relaxed. I got to sleep until 0720 and stay up until midnight the night before, and still had plenty of time to eat breakfast, pick up a copy of the bus schedule, and arrive to work 22 minutes early.

So far all I’ve done for work is help pull up the floor boards—hundreds of tiny bolts hold them down—on two aircraft and reinstalled them on one. Some guys went to the motor pool when my squad was pulling up floors and did basic maintenance like checking the oil. Friday we cleaned the hangar in preparation for the four-day weekend. Friday afternoon there was threat of actually pulling out a transmission, but it wasn’t going to be my squad, and nothing came of it anyway.

The Army offers an extra $300 per month for anyone who signs up for an extra year here, and the pay kicks in the day you sign up. It’s called AIP, for assignment incentive pay. I could really use the money, but everyone I’ve talked to has said, “don’t AIP”; the guy on CQ the day we got to the barracks just volunteered that advice. One year is plenty. So far I think I’d agree. Korea is just bearable. (Why am I not an officer?)

Korea weeks 1 and 2

2008-01-17T13:49:00.000Z

Korea: Dec 31, 2007 – January 13, 2008

We’ve gotten a few briefings in the last two weeks on what the Army calls OPSEC, operations security, which amounts to, watch what you talk about, and to whom. It made me pause and think about whether to continue this blog or not but I’ve decided that I feel I’ve been judicious about what information I disseminate—for starters, I never use people’s names—and I’ll certainly be more cautious now that I’m in a foreign country where potential enemies are on all sides. I refuse to live in fear to the point that I can’t talk about common knowledge or ordinary experiences.

So what if someone, even a terrorist, knows that some random guy from Massachusetts is in the Army, serving in Korea, as a Chinook mechanic, and flew Korean Air two weeks ago into Incheon Airport before going to several Army bases? The only secret is the name of the traveler, and it only matters to him. Heads of state travel to Afghanistan and Iraq all the time and tell us about it after. Now, no one would publicize the plans beforehand, and nor would I.

I’ll admit I was pretty specific about experiences at Ft. Jackson, but it doesn’t matter. Every Basic Training session is different. Different companies and battalions do things differently; the time of year affects training; circumstances can ruin the plans for a week; and most importantly, there’s someone training everywhere on post every day, so the only secret is the name of the trainee. That last point is true of BCT anywhere and of AIT anywhere and of Korea, too, since people rotate through Korea all the time, serving one year each, typically.

OK, now that the legalities are out of the way….

I’m in Korea! Getting here took longer than it should have since I had to fly to Norfolk, VA first. If I had flown from Virginia to Massachusetts after graduation on government expense I could have flown to Korea from Boston (albeit with a possible layover) on government expense, too. (I’d also be reimbursed for cab fare.) But because I drove home on my expense I had to go back to Virginia on my expense before getting a free flight from there.

I left home on the morning of the 31st (all times are Eastern Standard until I say otherwise) to take a bus to Logan International Airport. I flew to Newark, NJ (and saw the Empire State building and Statue of Liberty, very small, for the first time) for a couple of hours, then hopped over to Norfolk. (You know, I’ve never been to the same airport twice in all the times I’ve gone up and down the East Coast, except for the end points of Logan and Newport News—near Ft. Eustis.)

At Norfolk I got my luggage (two 50-lb checked bags and one maxed-out carry-on and a backpack) and went out of the terminal and then right back in. I was taking two separately-purchased flights so I had to lug around my luggage (hey, I get it!) until the next morning when I could check in. I forwent a hotel and spent a long night in the airport. Fifteen hours, to be exact.

The night was, of course, New Year’s Eve. I pulled out my iPhone about a minute before midnight and counted down the seconds silently. Good cell phones are synchronized to atomic time via their network, so I knew I really was counting down to the true midnight, January 1, 2008. And precisely at midnight an announcer came on the loudspeakers and said “Happy New Year.” Why do we put so much emphasis on being awake and aware of the passing of one particular moment of the year? (I say this affectionately.)

I got my flight to Atlanta in the morning. Atlanta, or Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, is really nice. There’s a subway that links all the terminals. The food court had lots of options and the prices were reasonable. From Atlanta it was a non-stop flight to Incheon (or Inchon or Inch’on) airport, just outside of Seoul.

You would think crossing ten time zones would make for a 10,000 mile flight, but the path we took was only about 7,000 miles. It turns out the shortest distance between Atlanta and Incheon is an arc that goes over Michigan and near the North Pole. (Well, the shortest aside from boring a tunnel through the earth.) On the Korean Air plane monitors on the back of every seat let you track the flight in real time on a map and gave you speed, altitude, time at the departure time zone, and the time at the destination. The flight left at 1 PM, Eastern Time, and arrived at 6 PM, Korean time. We were in the air for 15 hours.

The easiest way to think of the time change is that Korea is 14 hours ahead of the East Coast, or 15 hours ahead of the Central time zone, etc. Yes, you could subtract 9 or 10 hours but you have to add a day because of the International Date Line, unless it happens to be the same day in both places. So, yeah, just add 14 or 15. Until daylight savings time comes.

The flight was rather enjoyable. Those same monitors also showed movies on demand along with some TV episodes and documentaries, played music, and offered free games. I watched some little independent movie called “Rocket Science” about an awkward, bumbling, stuttering kid who joins the school debate team because of a girl. Thumbs up. We were served two meals (I passed on the Korean food and stuck to more traditional fare) plus several non-alcoholic drinks. I got some sleep, too.

At Incheon I ran into three of the four other guys from AIT. One got married over the break. That’s all I’m saying about that. We got bused over to a reception company in Yongsan where we spent less than 24 hours. We did a little paperwork, spent the night in a hotel there, did some more paperwork, then got our assignments and shipped off to another reception company.

I’m in the Second Infantry Division (no, I’m not in the infantry all of a sudden), or 2ID, in Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul. Their reception for 2ID is in Camp Stanley, north of Seoul. I spent a week there sitting through briefings and doing paperwork until being shipped to Humphreys with my friends from AIT. When we got to Humphreys four of us stayed together and one (not I) got put in a different battalion. Now we’re doing more paperwork and sitting through more briefings.

The room I’m in right now is temporary; all the other Chinook mechanics are in the neighboring building. The rooms are all set up the same: two people per room, private bathroom with sink outside the bathroom—a very good feature in the morning. A good friend of mine is my roommate for now. We’re both quiet and responsible, which isn’t always easy to find in the Army. They say it’s hard to get a room with both beds open in the other building; usually you share a room with a relative stranger. I’m happy enough with the rooms here.

One thing they’ve really emphasized here in Korea is that we should go out and experience and learn the Korean culture and not be a “barracks rat” (one who never leaves post). At Stanley we had a morning of classes one day on Korean culture and another time we were taken off post to a Korean buffet restaurant and a local department store. Directly outside the gates of every military post in Korea is a “ville,” which is a strip of locally operated stores. The one at Stanley was pathetic but the one here is supposed to be much bigger and more worthwhile.

Click here to see pictures of my visit out to Uijongbu, outside of Camp Stanley, and pictures of the trip to Camp Humphreys.

Korean male citizens must do military service and some join the U.S. Army as KATUSA soldiers. That’s Korean Augmentation To the United States Army. I really haven’t had much experience with any yet. Funny story, though: At Camp Stanley someone asked the date and I said it was the third. The KATUSA behind the desk said it was the fourth. I paused to make sure I was right and then reasserted, “No, it’s the third.” He says that Korea is ahead of the U.S. by a day, so it’s the fourth. Plus he pointed out, “I’m Korean; I know.” I go to the next room and ask another KATUSA behind another desk and asked him the date. He said, “It’s the third.” Now, granted, I’m a stranger in a strange land, but I know the date for crying out loud, and I’m not afraid to be sure of myself. But I wasn’t going to make an issue of it. I mean, seriously.

I finally saw the movie “300.” It was definitely a good movie, but I didn’t think it was THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER like EVERY GUY IN THE ARMY seems to think. It’s absolutely unbelievable how many people I’ve met in the Army that have seen it. I honestly don’t think I’ve heard anyone say, “I haven’t seen it either.” No one. My roommate said he makes it a point to watch it “at least twice a month,” which is why he brought the DVD with him.

I also saw “Lions for Lambs” at the free theater here at Camp Humphreys with my roommate and a Warrant Officer we met at Stanley. I really liked the movie a lot. There was a Photoshopped picture in the movie of George W. Bush and Tom Cruise standing next to each other and smiling for the camera. Everyone in the theater chuckled under their breath; I was thinking (and said quietly), “That’d be the day.”

But anyway, the two central characters in the movie were Army soldiers who joined the Army during what seemed to be their last year of college. It was a cool scene where they were giving a presentation about everyone complains (about nothing in specific) but no one takes action and they suggest that everyone should be required to do some sort of national or local service or volunteerism. A classmate says something to the effect of, “Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?” and they then put on the projector their enlistment contracts. At that point others are saying, “But you could go to Harvard Law or any grad school you want!” It all sounds so familiar….

I can’t help but thinking that I’m one rank away from being an NCO (a sergeant) and then could live in the NCO barracks in my own room. Even more often I think that I could be an officer and be living a much, much better life. Every time a sergeant of some sort annoys me I just think, “You could be working for me right now,” since even the lowest officer outranks even the highest enlisted person. But…

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. (Philippians 4:11-12)

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more…. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22)

The Last Week at AIT

2008-01-17T09:23:00.000Z

AIT week 18—Nov 30 -Dec. 7

Yes, it’s been over a month since this happened. I’m in Korea now, finally catching up to writing about what happened in AIT. I’m picking up on the same afternoon where I left off because that’s when Foxtrot company began its final week of sandbagging us.

What got me through the week of FTX was the promise that for the first time in seventeen weeks we’d have a Friday night off (which never could happen for nighthawks) and a full weekend off on Gold Pass. No Saturday competition to cut the weekend short and the barracks were acceptably clean. Even if there was a punishment for something that had happened at the company the last week, we had been away the whole week so how could we be punished for it? And we’re seniors. What could go wrong?

After getting all cleaned up from FTX that Friday the dead-horse beater gave us a 30-minute speech but I was ready to suffer through it just to have a normal weekend. Instead we find that there’s an “esprit de corps” run tomorrow morning to boost company morale, and for some reason we must attend it and that means that we’ll have a short night, too. Can we be exempted because we’re graduating next week? Of course not. (And if they wanted to boost morale they could just treat us with some dignity and let us have a full weekend for once.)

We were allowed to go to the PX Friday night, which I needed to do anyway, and the time in the barracks I spent getting organized and beginning to pack, so it wasn’t a total loss. I wasn’t looking forward to getting up by 5 AM for the run but at least we’d be free by 0630/0700. Later that night everyone in the building was called outside (the other nighthawks were still in school then) because of an incident about which I won’t go into detail. Naturally no one fessed up, so it was another Red Stat weekend.

I really felt bad for the other nighthawks because they had to get up at 0500 after coming in at 0100, then they get punished for something that happened when they weren’t even there. This was typical treatment of the nighthawks. We didn’t exist to the cadre at Foxtrot.

The run was enjoyable, but that wasn’t the point. After the run and breakfast and time for showering, the head drill sergeant, whose idea it was for the run, sat us down in the day room and discussed several issues. Finally at lunch he released us to our original pass status because, he said, we gave 100% on the run.

That afternoon I went with a friend to Best Buy and spent three hours looking at a Mac computer. I’ve never been a fan of Macs because I just found them oversimplified, yet difficult to use. My friend is a big fan of Macs and I’ve always wanted an expert to show me why he likes the Mac so much, to show me how someone uses the thing every day, something commercials and pamphlets and even websites can’t do. I was really impressed, though the prices are outrageous.

Monday was the big final test in school. My score was enough to secure distinguished honor graduate for myself. The final grades for first, second and third were 97.83%, 97.369%, and 97.330%. The guy in third place only needed one more point on any test to have been second, and on an early test he had gotten 10 points taken away for writing something in pencil instead of pen; with those 10 points he would have been first. (Another class that graduated with us on Friday had a tie for first; they settled it by PT score.)

The rest of the week was walking around to offices on post getting paperwork signed off. Thursday was graduation practice. I found out that I’d have to read a speech—a prewritten one that is always read at every graduation—called “The Conscience of the Aviation Maintainer.” A top grad from another class had to read “The Aviation Mechanic’s Creed.” The kid that read it did just fine on graduation day but he struggled in practice with where to pause naturally. Now I don’t want to brag, but when I read….

Graduation was fun. It was nice to have my mother there. Some guys who had their fathers or uncles there had them pin the aviation wings on their ACUs. Mom could have but was too shy. Only one dad gave his son “blood wings” where he used a little extra force to make sure the pins were in good.

The battalion commander gave me a battalion coin for being top grad. Each top grad in the other two classes that graduated that day presumably got a coin, too. A coin is specially minted and unique to that unit. It’s a tradition common throughout the Army. My friend got a battalion coin when he was the best marksman at FTX—a 39 out of 40 (and he had a round left over because he couldn’t see a target!). It was funny because he didn’t want anyone to know and told me in secret at first. So much for that. Other than that, I don’t know of anyone else getting a battalion coin at Ft. Eustis, though I’ve met many people who’ve gotten coins from command sergeant majors from other units; our DS at Foxtrot had a coin from the Sergeant Major of the Army. (That’s pretty good.)

After graduation the real fun began. The two that had been in a fight on FTX never did get Article 15s or any UCMJ action because, with hat in hand (figuratively), they apologized to the company commander. They got their HRAP (hometown recruiting, i.e. free leave time) taken away, as that’s traditionally reserved for the more “squared away” soldiers. They were told they could take additional leave in the absence of HRAP but on graduation day they found that was denied, too. Instead they would have to stay at Foxtrot an additional two weeks, through the 20th, and then take their leave over Christmas and arrive in Korea with the rest of us.

For the rest of us, a minor glitch in the paperwork for our leave and HRAP dates meant we spent the whole day running from office to office getting things straightened out. Some guys had to rearrange their Army-paid flights because all the running around made them miss their scheduled flights. Foxtrot just had to send us off with a bang!

What ticked me off that day was that my mother had nothing to do but wait around for me for six hours. She couldn’t do much because you need a military ID to go into places like the library. At one point I threw my folder of paperwork down on the ground in disgust in front of my classmates—because mom was forced to wait; I don’t care what they do to me; I’m used to it. Now I know that’s pretty tame for a fit of rage, but it’s the only time anyone has seen me visibly upset, and, really, it’s the only time in a long time I’ve been that upset. One guy commented on that a few days ago, and it happened a month ago. I guess it was noticeably out of character.

Finally at the end of the day I rented a car, and after eating pizza at the PX food court we drove up to Washington, D.C. and got in the hotel at 9:30 PM. I was sick as a dog the next day and for a week after so the trip was cut a little short. We did get one good day of sightseeing in and the road trip back to Massachusetts was fun and a first for me.

But best of all, I’m done with Foxtrot company, first of the triple deuce (1-222d Aviation Regiment)! Another thing you’ll rarely see is me visibly ecstatic, but I have never been happier to be out of a place. (Although wild horses couldn’t drag me back to high school—or middle school!) I’m free! Free!

AIT weeks 16 and 17

2007-12-14T02:23:00.000Z

AIT weeks 16 and 17– Nov. 18-30

I know, I know. It’s been over a month since I’ve written. Now I’m back home and typing these things up myself. I start with the week before and of FTX.

Sunday, the 18th, I didn’t lead singing at the church but I did get some more compliments for the week before and the minister wanted to know if I’d do it again. (I never did.)

Monday, the 19th, I found out I’d be getting HRAP, the Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program. In exchange for tagging along with your recruiter for a fortnight, you get an extra two weeks of time at home—without being charged leave—before reporting to your next station. I wasn’t interested when I joined the Army, but seven months away from home makes me excited to do HRAP.

Also that Monday those graduating soon that would be going overseas had to take an anti-terrorism “class” on a computer. It all amounted to, when you suspect a terrorist or an IED, run away. Apparently hotel staff abroad are far more qualified to deal with terrorists and explosives than the average U.S. Army Soldier.

The whole week before Thanksgiving was a “sham” week. We really didn’t do much of anything. On Tuesday we disassembled the wheels and brakes. We inflated a tire and packed the wheel bearings with grease by hand. It was the first time we actually got our hands dirty. Wednesday we had some take-out from the restaurant owned by our instructor.

Also that Wednesday we attended a safety briefing for the Thanksgiving holiday called “Street Smart,” put on by some EMTs. There was a mention of drunk driving but the main point was the consequences of driving without a seatbelt. They showed many gruesome pictures of crashes and the people ejected from their cars and walked us through what it would be like to treat such a victim who barely survived a crash. It seemed to have an influence.

I spent most of Thanksgiving traveling. I arrived in Plymouth at 1300 on Thursday and left at 1300 Saturday. Forty-eight hours of a four-day weekend at home. Sunday I was too tired to go to worship service.

We were scheduled to get up at 0330 Monday (the 26th) for FTX. As a result we were supposed to be asleep by 2030 the night before but no one could sleep. Our fellow nighthawks were making noise until 0100 as usual. I was up until 0200; I didn’t even try to sleep but listened to my music collection on my phone for hours. At 0400 I was dressed and ready to go, my body still not absorbing the fact that it won’t be getting any more sleep, and jumping up and down in the hallway saying, “FTX! FTX! FTX!” The excitement was sarcastic, naturally.

FTX was amazingly relaxed. (Aviation tends not to be as hard-core as other branches.) We were done by noon/0100 every day except one or two, and after dinner we were on personal/sleep time until wakeup the next day, usually at 0500. There were some school of music soldiers mixed in with us, too.

There were around 200 soldiers total from all MOSs and we were split into three teams, Assault, Scout, and Attack. Our class was part of team Assault. The main reason for the split is that there were three main activities to accomplish on FTX, so each team does the activities on different days.

The FOB—forward operating base, where we stayed—was set up a lot like what you’d see in Iraq according to those who’ve been. Sometimes in Iraq you get concrete buildings, sometimes tents; we had tents. The tents were big enough to hold 15 cots and ours, since this is TRADOC, had heaters and air conditioners. It was still cold. The heat wasn’t consistent.

There were 28 tents for males, though we didn’t need that many, at least one for females (all Hotel co. or SOM), one for drill sergeants, and two for (dinner) chow. Breakfast and lunch were MREs and dinner was hot food. It wasn’t bad.

Day one—Monday—was all classes. It was the usual stuff: first aid, nine-line MEDEVAC, radio communications, etc. We started at 0845 and finished around 1500.

On day two the half of our class that is active duty had to go the clinic at 0730 to get blood drawn for an HIV test. At 0830 we joined up with the rest of the team for MOUT training. I got into arguments about this but it is MOUT, not mount. MOUT is Military Operations on Urban Terrain, also called urban ops. Everyone just assumed we were doing “mount” training. (Well, what is that?)

So, in MOUT training, we raid a pretend city, storming buildings, shooting attackers but not innocent civilians, even if they’re carrying guns. Gun ownership is legal in Iraq, so someone with a gun must pose a threat before you start opening fire. Those of us with HIV were late to the briefing and were stuck on security teams. That said, I was dreading the experience but I really enjoyed it when we did it—twice.

That night we visited the hangar to fix a downed aircraft. All we did was remove one part we’d already removed in the past. The exercise was pointless and the instructors knew this but it’s part of the curriculum. Afterward the instructors had a little powwow with us on what’s good/bad and how to improve the school training. Most said that we should get to go on one flight on a Chinook. Not likely. I suggested that they should find a way to have all incoming students attend the Army Transportation Museum at Ft. Eustis.

Wednesday was rifle qualification. I was never good at this. I barely qualified in BCT after four days. First we had to group and zero. Grouping is getting five of six consecutive shots in a (any) 4 cm circle from 25 m. Then you adjust the sights to get your shots in the 4 cm circle on the center of the target. The little black silhouette in the center of the target represents a person at 300 m. It took me 30 shots to group and zero, even though 27 of those were in the black. The guy was very dead, but my shots weren’t consistent enough. When I got to the qualification range I hit the minimum 23/40 on my second try. (My rifle was on the wrong elevation setting the first time.) I still rush shots. But I was happy to be done.

For a couple days we had BNCOC (that’s “bee-knock,” or Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course) guys with us and they attacked us on Wednesday. We didn’t respond well.

Also on Wednesday two of the guys in our class got in a little tussle in the tent. It wasn’t much and they don’t hate each other but the specialist from Hotel co. in our tent, who was unofficially in charge of the tent, ran off to tell a drill sergeant who brought in the first sergeant who was out there. We never got along with that Hotel guy before or after that. The two got yelled at, smoked, taken to the company, yelled at some more, arrested by the MPs, and served Article 15s. They came back in time for 2 AM guard duty that night. More about them in the next letter.

Thursday we did convoy ops, where we shot blank rounds from a truck in a convoy then scrambled off the truck, neatly, when an “IED” went off nearby. How we dismount depends on which side the IED comes from. Boring day.

Friday we marched back from the FOB to the Alpha/Bravo/Charlie/Delta company area. (Foxtrot is about a mile away). The march was about three or four miles and we briskly finished it in 40 minutes. We had to march from there to Foxtrot and we got shook down at the company to make sure we weren’t carrying any brass (spent rounds) or ammo. After that we cleaned weapons until 1300, ate lunch at Delta, and then turned in our weapons.

AIT wk. 15

2007-11-24T02:33:00.000Z

AIT wk. 15 - Nov. 12-17

“We lost the battle.” That’s what my platoon drill sergeant had to say when he told us Thursday, Nov.15, that we cannot leave on Wednesday, Nov. 21, for the Thanksgiving holiday. He can’t come out and put all the blame on the first sergeant (his boss), but a lot of people in the platoon think it is the 1SG that strung along our DS. I tend to blame our DS for not being more frank. We’ll never know. So Friday afternoon I rescheduled my flights at the cost of $162. For most it would cost a lot more and many just cancelled their plans completely. At times like this I’m not angry but, rather, dejected and disillusioned to the point where I won’t discuss it any further than this.

This short week made me realize how close I am to graduation. After the three-day workweek that just passed I have a three-day week next week, then Thanksgiving, then our week of FTX (field training exercise - a five-day camping trip with M16’s), then it’s my last week.

The last few days at the schoolhouse have been pretty light and won’t get much harder. Our final test is on the Monday after FTX, so we’ll have 11 days between our last class and the test. It should be pretty easy, though.

This week and next are (and last Friday was) phase inspections and loading gear in class. Phase is learning about periodic inspections (every 200 hours). Wednesday the class broke up into five teams and took a fine-tooth comb to every square inch of the aircraft. Thursday we pulled up the floors and put them back for the first half; in the second half we removed and reinstalled the APU. (The “auxiliary” power unit is not a backup engine but a tiny engine used just for startup.) Friday we finished up on the APU and then studied PID most of the night. Our instructor warned us not to waste the study time, but he ended up talking our ear off half the night. We’re getting a lot more respect now.

This weekend we FTX-ers were supposed to be on “Black Stat” (that’s what we called it at Delta, though the name hasn’t stuck here), where we have the freedom of Green except we couldn’t leave post, like Red. We went downstairs at 0700 to turn in weapons for the weekend, as planned, and our platoon DS said we were released to our normal pass status - Green, Gold, whatever. No complaints. That’s the first pleasant surprise I’ve had at Foxtrot.

Today was very relaxing. I left the barracks at 0800 and didn’t return until about 1830. Went to the PX, the library, then the mall. I bought the “Bourne Identity” and “Bourne Supremacy.” (“Ultimatum” comes out next month.) Watched “Identity” tonight. I bought “The Incredibles” on Tuesday and watched it then. Those are three of my favorite movies. Monday a friend had “I, Robot” and we watched that.

Other than watching those two movies I didn’t do much on Monday or Tuesday (part of the Veterans Day holiday). Mostly I caught up on my sleep.

One of the new guys who started class this week had a little incident on Friday. He’s shorter than me at about 5’0” and looks a bit like Quasimodo. I’m not trying to make fun; just being descriptive. No one was initially making fun of his appearance but I’m sure he’s always on edge about it and assumes people are looking down at him (no pun intended).

I don’t know what started it, but playful ribbing from guys in the platoon was too much for the soldier. He responded to every comment with one much nastier and profane-laden. He tried to act tough - which no one would take seriously in a million years - and even threatened to kill people (in general; no one specific) in Iraq or on FTX here. We were in formation throughout this, but he walked off twice. The DS finally pulled him off to the side when the DS walked back in the area and talked to him.

I feel bad for the guy, and am also a little scared for him, but these are demons he’ll have to overcome. Every “newbie” gets put down constantly for the first few (or several) weeks. I got harassed all the time by the upper class. Lately, now that I’ve been the upper class, people don’t bother me at all (except when it’s actually funny), and it’s not like I’m physically imposing or threaten to beat people up. I’m just myself. Eventually people respect that.
(A note about FTX: only three to five classes at a time go, so I won’t be in the field at the same time as this new guy. It’ll be months before he does his FTX, and I hope he cools down by then.)

Hey! I kept it to five pages this time!

J.McD.

AIT wk. 14

2007-11-18T01:01:00.000Z

AIT wk. 14 - Nov. 5-11

The sergeant-instructors at the schoolhouse keep insisting that there will be classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and that we must attend - or else! Our DS said of the instructors, “Well, then they’ll be alone.” He has every intent of releasing at least those of us who have bought tickets already for that day.

The barracks, run by the DS’s, and the schoolhouse (aka “the hangar,” or CHD, cargo helicopter division) are completely separate entities. They talk to each other, but as far as I know the schoolhouse can only charge me with being absent from class if I don’t show up. I wouldn’t be AWOL if I had gotten permission from my chain of command - my DS in the company I belong to. The instructors want us to think otherwise. The higher-ups at the schoolhouse haven’t said anything to us, and I think there’s a reason for that.

Thursday we had a test on the APU/powerplant (engine)/rotor systems/drivetrain; it’s the second-to-last test we take. I haven’t been too caught up in the grades - our overall class averages - probably because I’m in first, but my competition has. We’ll call them student B, who’s currently second, and student C, in third.

Myself and student B got a 100% on this last test and C got a 99%. I did the math and figured out that B needs to beat me by 4% on the final test to pass me and get “distinguished honor grad.” If so, he’d win by 0.009% overall. (That’s not a misprint.) Student C needs to do 2% better than B to pass him and thus 6% better than me to claim the top spot.

The distinguished honor grad (first place) and the honor grad (second) both have to memorize a prewritten speech and recite it on graduation day. I don’t want to do that. (Although I’m not always afraid of the spotlight, if you read the end of this letter.) The speeches are corny and I hate pretending that I really mean what I’m saying. I guess it’s good practice.

Monday was supposed to be my EOC, the final, official PT test for AIT. You’ll recall I missed the first one because of pneumonia. I had asked the DS the night before when the EOC would start, figuring it would be earlier than the normal PT time of 0900. He said 0900. Monday morning I was outside at 0845 and they were gone. I didn’t get in any trouble, but there’s no plans to do another EOC until after I graduate.

I took a normal PT test on Thursday. I asked a DS if it would count as my EOC. He said that probably “it’ll have to.” (Regular PT tests are graded by upperclassmen, while EOC’s are graded by cadre and prior service guys. People tend to do better on the tests graded by their peers. Hmmm.) I met Gold standards again, thank God. Fifty-six push ups for 78 points, 65 situps for 80 points, and a 14:00 two-mile run for 89 points. I didn’t try my hardest on the run.

We finally have another specialist in the platoon. He’s from Africa. Apparently he also has a mechanical engineering degree. and he ran the two-mile in well under 13 minutes. Some of the guys felt the need to point out, “He’s got a mechanical engineering degree, too. And he runs faster than you. And he’s killed an elephant and a leopard.” That’s true; they weren’t exaggerating.

Another guy went AWOL last week and still no sign of him. Very quiet; mid-30s, reads his Bible all the time. I don’t get these people.

As of Tuesday the night owls - the third shift - have their own platoon. I don’t think I ever mentioned the final names of the groups here. We officially adopted the name “Spartans” as our company mascot. On. Oct. 26 the company was officially activated - during the change of command ceremony - complete with a new, bright blue guide-on flag. My platoon, 2nd, is the “Hellraisers.” I’m not terribly fond of the name, but I understand the intent. (Our rooms each have our names on the doors and a picture of Pinhead from the “Hellraiser” movie.) First platoon is the “Gladiators.” Third platoon is still unnamed.

This Veterans Day weekend is a four-day holiday for us - Saturday through Tuesday. We actually got released right away after Friday’s class, so this weekend has been rather enjoyable so far. Friday morning we turned our weapons back in, to retrieve them Tuesday afternoon.

Saturday I woke up at 1100 then caught up on Time and Newsweek at the library. (I read this month’s Vanity Fair last week. Seriously.) Then I just went shopping, buying some nice clothes to wear to worship service, and an iron. I figure I’ll need one eventually, anyway.

Today, Sunday, I dragged myself up in front of the congregation (in Gloucester) and led songs during worship service, voluntarily. The man who’s been giving me rides to service and back, he asked a couple of weeks ago if I wanted to do the songs one Sunday when I mentioned that I used to do it at Kingston. I said, maybe, once I get accustomed to their order of worship. He wrote out the order for me. Last night I went through a songbook I had borrowed and picked about two dozen songs that I liked that I hadn’t sung in a while (many of which weren’t in the books at Kingston) and went over the list with him this morning to make sure the congregation was comfortable with the songs.

The experience was somewhere between okay and pretty good. The hardest thing is leading the songs the way the congregation is used to. I tried to pick songs of which I was sure of the melody, because I’ve found that there are songs that I’ve been singing forever that are sung differently in other congregations, and after looking at the notes I realize I’ve had it wrong, though it sounds decent.

I started off with “How Great Thou Art.” Same melody, but they sang it much slower than I’m used to. I made a little comment about that right after the song. After service several people came up to me and said that they found the slowness to be true in general. Other song leaders, especially, noted this and said they’ve tried to speed things up.

Gradually I tried picking up the pace, which was a little rocky for the next two songs. The thing is, I wasn’t going to slow down because the only way I could be effective is for me to go at my own pace, since I can’t know how slow the congregation would go. Besides, I’m the song leader, and they’re supposed to follow me. Eventually they caught on.

The fourth song I led was “It Won’t Be Very Long.” My friend there said that the congregation didn’t know the song, but I figured there’d be a few that would. I saw this as an opportunity. If they don’t know the song, I’m free to set my own pace. I love that song, and I think I can sing it pretty well, so I belted it out. I think it went well. Plus, I had my confidence back.

The last two songs went well enough, too. Everyone was nice and complimented me afterward. I enjoyed the experience. I would do it again, but I won’t volunteer. I don’t want to wear out my welcome.

J.McD.

AIT wk. 13

2007-11-18T00:55:00.000Z

AIT wk. 13 - Oct. 28-Nov. 4

This was the worst week I’ve had since the first week of Basic. In Basic Training they deprive us of almost everything we know of modern civilization. In AIT they give a lot of it back, but are free to take it away at will, and they do that a lot at Foxtrot co. I think that is more cruel than just being deprived.

This week proved how much we liked being at Delta company, those of us that remember, and how much we loathe Foxtrot. I took pride in being at Delta; we all did; and I never took it for granted. There was no other company I wanted to belong to. I feel no loyalty to Foxtrot. My fellow soldiers here? Yes. The company itself? Not a shred.
What really raised my blood pressure is how much we get yo-yoed about, being told one thing, then promised another. And we get shafted so much in second platoon. We have to do all these mandatory company events while first platoon has the option of participating in fun events, and not vice versa. Plus, when first platoon competes (and loses), they get pass upgrades. We get grounded at the company for the weekend.

The shenanigans for this week started with the Class-A inspection on Tuesday. Class-A’s are the dress greens, the suit and tie we wear for special occasions. The inspection consisted of the battalion commander (an LTC) and the CSM stopping by each company and doing a one-hour inspection of 10 soldiers’ uniforms and 10 other soldiers’ rooms and wall lockers. The 20 were chosen at random by the LTC and CSM from the nighthawks, since we’re free and awake during normal business hours. All participants were quizzed on the chain of command and general Army knowledge. The company that does the best on the inspection claims the title of “honor company” and gets a banner to hang on its guide-on (and, of course, we had no banners yet).

In short, we failed miserably. (I wasn’t one of the 20.) People didn’t know the chain of command, which is to our shame; our uniforms weren’t on spec, for which I’d blame the DS’s for not giving us time to square those away (I stayed up until 3 a.m. working on mine); and the wall lockers didn’t have an SOP since everyone’s locker and cabinets are different sizes and shapes. I don’t know who to blame for that one. They’re slowly bringing in new lockers, though.

Our 1SG really wanted to win honor company, and our DS chewed us out and put us on Red Stat for the coming weekend. Two weeks ago the dayhawks competed for the drill and ceremony banner and lost, and they got pass upgrades! The nighthawks that attended the chain of command ceremony last week and lost several hours of sleep because of it, they didn’t get any pass upgrades for that, either.

On Thursday another DS ordered us to clean the barracks at 1245 - an hour earlier than usual - and if we didn’t, we’d be Red Stat’d for the weekend. Too bad! We already were! I don’t think any of us upperclassmen did any cleaning that day. We get punished for doing right and punished for doing wrong, so what’s the point. This is part of why morale is so low here.

Saturday morning everyone in the company was effectively Red Stat’d so that we would attend the combatives/boxing tournament, which I’ll describe later on. Our 1SG and the new company commander were really pleased with how our team fared. We did really well in the combatives tournament, but didn’t win (and maybe should have); and they also awarded us two other banners as part of the closing ceremony - one for PT and one for marksmanship. It was a great dayfor us. And the nighthawks were still on Red Stat.

Saturday night we cleaned our butts off in the hope that our DS would give us our pass status back. He did, at 9:30 p.m. He inspected our rooms one by one and then decided our work was sufficient. (Now, we didn’t fail the Class-A inspection on cleanliness - that was actually one of our good spots - so this seemed an odd way for us to redeem ourselves, but I’ll take it.)

When he released us Gold Stat-ers and restored the others’ status, he called us all into the big, seldom-used room in the middle of our 3rd floor and gave a little speech about teamwork, then had us huddle together and pile our hands on top of each other’s and shout our platoon name. It was a cool, almost touching moment. But I was still ticked off that it ever happened in the first place.

As much as I wanted to get far away from the company that Saturday night, I stayed here. Many people did leave, even going all the way to VA beach (that’s Virginia), despite the fact that most of those guys had to report back 18 hours later to be issued the M16-A2’s we’ll be carrying around for the next month. One Green Stat-er left, too, not realizing he had CQ, and got caught. As we say in the Army, “DEE duh-dee!” (I hope that comes across in print. Maybe, “DEE d-dee!” Any thoughts? Leave a comment by clicking “comments” at the bottom of this post on the blog.)

The highlight of the past eight days - other than the Pats beating the Colts to remain undefeated - was on a Friday when we marched the one-tenth of a mile from the buses to the DFAC for lunch. There was no drill sergeant with us and our APS was marching us in route step. (It’s jargon, I know.) He wasn’t singing any cadences but someone from the middle of the formation started off a cadence we used to do at Delta company, sort of Delta’s signature chant. Others led another cadence after that one ended, one that we only sang at Delta. About half the nighthawks were at Delta and by the end of January there’ll be no former Delta residents at Foxtrot. With class 33 leaving in about a week, it was a nice send-off, and something I’ll probably always remember. We that sang are Delta Knights at heart.

The combatives/boxing tournament was actually pretty enjoyable. I have no problem cheering on the other guys in my company because they’re not who I’m annoyed with when I’m angry at Foxtrot company. I even bought the $7 Spartans t-shirt to wear at the event. (Did I ever mention we actually adopted the name “Spartans”?) A stranger to me who’s in our company (probably a dayhawk) said there’s a lot of upperclassmen who refused to be enthusiastic at the tourney because they don’t want to give credence to Foxtrot at all. If so, that’s really sad.

I mentioned Unarmed Army Combatives (aka Modern Army Combatives, or some combination of the two) in a letter from Basic Training, but suffice it to say it’s a lot like wrestling. Our guys have been practicing every day for weeks, sometimes from one to two in the morning, and they did great. We officially won six our of 10 matches, but a seventh should have been ours, too. Our guy put the competitor in a headlock and he briefly passed out because he refused to tap to end the match. Two of the referees saw this but the third did not, so he lost. Had we that victory, we’d have the Modern Army Combatives banner on our guide-on right now.

At that same tournament we lost every boxing match (five) we competed in. The boxers only had one day of practice beforehand, so it’s understandable.

OK, so after eight pages, time for a new topic.

The soldier that went AWOL on Oct. 21 came back on Tuesday, Oct. 30. The word is that he said that if he ever got too drunk to come back he wouldn’t bother. Now that he missed at least three consecutive days of class, he must restart class. That’s a CHD policy, not a Foxtrot one. He was only one class behind mine, so he was pretty far along. Another guy who I mentioned before that had come back drunk, he was in a lot of trouble, but he’ll still graduate on time. Whether or not they take away money and rank I guess is the deciding factor on coming back drunk or on time.

We did nothing but team tasks in class this week. My team of four removed the forward transmission and took some accessories off of it Monday and Tuesday. On the second half of Tuesday’s class my team swapped with the team of three that removed the combining transmission, or C-box, to include six of the driveshafts. Then we installed the other team’s part through Friday. A separate team of four worked on the aft transmission the whole week. My team was far and away the first one done on both tasks, thanks in no small part to my filling out the paperwork. In all seriousness, I was team leader since the week before and didn’t do any paperwork (or much of anything) until Wednesday. On Tuesday I had to give up my paperwork guy to the other team. The team leader isn’t supposed to be doing much hands-on stuff, and things went smoother without me interfering. (I didn’t take this job to be a mechanic my whole life.)

My weekend, in other words, Sunday, was rather abbreviated. I attended worship service again at 1000 and got back on post at 1300. My ride dropped me off at the PX and I ate and shopped for an hour, then spent a half hour at the library and went back to the company to get ready for a 1545 formation. At 1545 class 35, 36, and 37 headed over to battalion headquarters to pick up our rifles for FTX. Thankfully it went very quickly because the Pats-Colts game started at 1615.

There were 20 or 30 of us watching the game and the DS on duty let us order in food and eat it inside - quite a treat. I enjoyed that a lot. I wore my Pats hat upstairs all night long. I acquired several new enemies tonight.

You know, a friend of mine wanted to come to the church with me today but couldn’t because he’s Green Stat and they had a room/hall/bathroom inspection at 9:30. They really can’t mess with soldiers’ ability to attend religious services like that. Ooh, that makes me angry.

I said a few weeks ago that once I settled in to AIT everything would go by the numbers and I wouldn’t have much to write about anymore. Looks like I was wrong. This will be the second- (well, third-) longest letter I’ve written.

I spend about four hours a week on these letters and maintain my paper journal, which is how I recall many of the details for the letters. I try to organize these by topic more than chronologically because I think it makes it more interesting. I know some stuff can be dry, or confusing, or I go into too much detail, but a lot of this is for myself to look back on in the future. And you can always skip the boring stuff. But please give me suggestions; tell me what you don’t like and tell me what I should add or address.

Lastly, I noticed something really unusual just now. A characteristic of my handwriting is (or was) that I write the lowercase letter “T” in one penstroke so it looks like an off-kilter charity ribbon. But not at all in this letter. I looked back through my journal and noticed it about completely stopped (and they look normal now) on Oct. 1, two days after arriving at Foxtrot, and now I don’t do it at all unless I’m really in a rush. What does that mean? Has Foxtrot improved my handwriting? Nooooo!

J.McD.

AIT wk. 12

2007-10-31T23:40:00.000Z

AIT wk. 12 - Oct. 21-27

I got confirmation on Thanksgiving leave and return times this week - and ordered my tickets already. I can leave anytime on Wednesday the 21st and have to be back by 1400 on Sunday the 25th. I’m coming in at 10:30 and leaving Saturday morning.

As for Veterans Day, they extended it to a four-day (or maybe it always was), but I don’t know much else. The DS’s haven’t said much, and I haven’t asked because I don’t have any plans except that I won’t be leaving Virginia.

As promised I went to another church on Sunday, the Gloucester church of Christ. I enjoyed the service much more than the one last week; it was much more traditional. I missed the Bible class. The sermon was a little dull, though the preacher was trying (through tricks he learned from preaching school, no doubt) his hardest. The singing was great - even for a bunch of mostly white people. No one raised their hands during the singing, either. But above all, the doctrine was sound.

I took a cab up there, but got a ride back to base with one of the members. He offered to pick me up tomorrow, too. He agreed that the church on Denbigh Ave. is somewhat liberal; he’s been to a few churches in the area.

At the recall formation on Sunday night one of the guys in our platoon didn’t show up. It’s Saturday and he’s still AWOL. It’s so odd. He was here all weekend, even Sunday morning. One of the instructors said that when people leave, it’s usually on the Friday (or Saturday for us). He’s in his early 30s. We worried something (lethal) happened. I suppose no news is good news.

Also over the weekend one of the instructors - a night owl - died, in a motorcycle accident, reportedly. Monday afternoon the dayhawks ended classes an hour early and we began ours an hour late. I assume it was related.

One of my instructors, the sergeant that was there from the beginning of our class, he left last Friday (the 19th) to become a night owl instructor. (He’s not the one that died.). I liked him; he was a little nerdy. The new sergeant who started Monday is pretty nice and knowledgeable.

This weekend very nearly began as another Red Stat cleaning weekend. This coming week is the competition for “honor company,” which has to do with the cleanliness of the barracks. Our 1SG really wants to win it, so he threatened the Red Stat weekend. We were the only company the last time to pass inspection, but that wasn’t good enough, apparently.

On Wednesday night (or properly, Thursday morning) the DS made us buff the hallway floor and clean the common areas on the third floor when we got back from class at 1 a.m. We finished at quarter of 3.

The 1SG came by on Friday to inspect the barracks. While he as at it he quizzed us, room by room, on the (Ft. Eustis) chain of command and about the Chinook. He is a former “hooker,” too. He was pleased enough and told our DS that it was up to him what our pass status would be. That DS likes us, his platoon, so he let us go.

The Chinook quiz was fun. He asked really sophisticated questions about the Bernoulli principle (I know that one) and why the rotor blades are twisted, since airplane wings are not, though otherwise have the save airfoil profile (no idea). It’s because the tips of the blades spin faster than at the rotor hub at the same RPM. At that point 1SG had everyone gathered in the hallway to try and answer.

That chain of command changed Friday morning. Our company commander was leaving the Army and so there was a ceremony and a practice the day before. They only wanted 30 of us (no dayhawks or night owls, because of the time of day), and I wasn’t one of them.

The ceremony was about an hour and involved the 30 singing “The Army Song” (previously “...and the caissons keep rolling along,” but they changed “caissons” to “Army”) and “The Army Aviation Song.” No one knew the aviation song before the practice. Everyone said that when performed it sounded horrible and no one was very loud. Well duh. The lyrics to “The Army Song” are inane (“...Then it’s hi, hi, hey!”) and the melody and lyrics to the aviation song are pathetic. The Army has a band corps; why don’t they come up with some new material?

This week in class we started and finished rotor systems (fun fact: each of the six rotor blades weighs 357 lbs.) and had classroom instruction on the drivetrain. For that instruction the top sergeant for the nighthawk shift taught our class. He was being evaluated. His badge says “Master Instructor,” and he lived up to it. He really is a great teacher (though unnaturally measured that night) and has an easygoing personality.

So what did I do on my first full Gold Stat Saturday? Not much. It was great. But....

I’ll share another iPhone moment. I wanted to order those plane tickets, but I needed to cash in the credit I had from the tickets I had cancelled for Columbus Day, so had to call instead of ordering online. (Sigh.)

The whole point of Expedia.com is to find the cheapest flight - on your own - so I didn’t trust the customer service rep to assist me in this. Plus, I wanted to decide the best balance between departure time (early) and price (low).

The easiest way would be to sit next to a computer, viewing their site, while talking on the phone. Well, you can’t talk in the library, and I can’t use the same cellular signal to surf the ’Net and make a phone call simultaneously. So I went to the library, sat outside, connected to the library’s wi-fi network, pulled up the list of flights, and called up Expedia.

I keep thinking the same thing: information is power - when applied. Expedia.com gives customers a database of dozens of available flight times and prices for your departure, destination, and dates. Without sites like that it would be an immense amount of work to compile that info, and by the time you did the prices might change or the flight sell out. And even if some wily customer service reps wanted to try to confuse me with options to force me into a more expensive fare (or maybe he’d be confused), I have information in front of me.

Also, I had saved the “case ID,” the eight-digit number they gave me when I had cancelled, as a “note” on the phone, so I didn’t need to remember to have some random piece of paper with me when I made the call. And I was 20 minutes walking distance from the barracks at the time, so I would have been peeved if I had forgot to bring it. Or if I had lost it.

Lastly, an update. Graduation has officially been moved back three days to Dec. 7.

Go Sox and go Pats!

J.McD.

AIT wks. 10 and 11

2007-10-25T01:08:00.000+01:00

AIT weeks 10 and 11 - Oct. 10-20

I found out on the night of the 10th that I had pneumonia, so I’ve been trying to take it easy and haven’t had much time to write. I missed my EOC (end of cycle) PT test on the 15th - that’s supposedly the last PT test I’d ever have to take at Ft. Eustis - but will have to take one on Monday. No rest for the weary.

I felt horrible on Wednesday the 10th - the first day back after the Columbus Day weekend. I was fortunate that it rained that morning and we didn’t do PT because if we had I probably would have collapsed. I didn’t want to go on sick call because we had a test the following night and practice that night - practicing parts identification (PID) which we never practice any other time and there’s no way to study it on my own.

I got through the first half of the night and felt pretty confident that I had memorized all or most of the PID, so I figured I might as well go to the hospital (since sick call was closed at that time of night), get diagnosed with whatever, get prescribed medication, and be good to go for the test the next day.

After dinner (ending at 9 p.m.), I told the instructors I wanted to go to the hospital. They took my word, but everyone said I didn’t really look sick so I think they thought I was faking or exaggerating or being a wimp.

At the hospital I had a fever of 103°F and a chest x-ray showed I had pneumonia. That was the first time I’d ever been to sick call - in BCT or AIT. I probably had pneumonia when we did the battalion run the Friday before. But I hate going to the doctor unless absolutely necessary. The last time was when I was 15 and I needed an MMR shot. It was my pediatrician. So it bugs me that people thought I was malingering.

I was done at the hospital by midnight and came back to the barracks at the same time as the other nighthawks, so it was a pretty productive night. The next morning I saw the doctor at Ft. Eustis - the hospital, Mary Immaculate, is off post. The Army doctors usually have their own opinion on what you need.

The doctor wanted to put me on bed rest for 24 hours, but I begged him to let me take my hydraulics test, so he agreed to limit the bed rest until 3 p.m. so long as I got my prescriptions filled and came back for a follow-up the next day. The bed rest never happened because I got out of the doctor’s office at noon, then had to be at the pharmacy at 1 p.m. Why didn’t I go straight to the pharmacy? On the second Thursday of the month, the pharmacy opens at 1 p.m. instead of being open all day. Guess what day it was.

I got a 95% on the hydraulics test. I was just glad to be able to take it, but that’s my second-lowest grade so far. (I got a 94% in ULLS-A). I’ve still got the top average in the class, but the gap is narrowing. The two guys right behind me really deserve to be numbers one and two. Part of me wants to tank (slightly) the next two tests to let the other guys catch up.Ethically I couldn’t do that, however noble it might seem. That’s the kind of dilemma immoral Hollywood would love, though the decision really shouldn’t be that hard.

Spent Friday morning at sick call for the follow-up appointment; Saturday morning we had to wake up at 6 a.m. to watch a drill and ceremony competition all morning; Sunday morning I went to worship service; and Tuesday morning was lost to a final follow-up at sick call. It’s not easy to find time to rest when you’re sick in the Army. Fortunately I didn’t have CQ duty at all last week and I was also able to rest during personal time.

Sunday the 14th I went to the Denbigh Ave. church of Christ for worship. It was the first time I’ve been to a church near Ft. Eustis. It was the closest church of Christ to the base. What I’m looking for first and foremost is a church that is sound in the doctrine, preaching and teaching according to the Bible, and nothing else.

This church did that, so praise God, but I didn’t really like the feeling of the church. Example: the minister wore a suit jacket and pants with a solid black tee shirt. Does that make him less of a Christian? Of course not. But I’m just trying to paint a picture of the setting. The church, while decidedly non-denominational, was trying to have that hip, cool, edgy denominational vibe. The Bible study and sermon (as well as the intermission) utilized PowerPoint presentations. There were, like, three black families there, but segregation (or cliques, really) is common in churches. Still, there was a definite WASPy feel to it all. I’ll try another church of Christ tomorrow, but I wouldn’t mind going back to Denbigh Ave.

This week in class was pretty typical. We finished up the APU, moved on to the powerplant (i.e. the engines) and actually got to remove an engine as a team on Friday. I did the paperwork for the team.

As for today...Saturday..my second Gold Status weekend...cut short again. I was so frustrated today. Aaargh! I hardly even want to write about it.

We were forced to be outside this morning at 0600 - after about a 25-minute heads up because we thought last night that we had until 0730. We went to bed at 0200 this morning. The DS that I wrote about before that with his speeches could literally bore you to death - he was on duty all day today. He kept us outside until 0703. An hour.

The reason I had to be out there was that everyone in the company was Red Stat’d until the barracks were satisfactorily clean, determined by an inspection by the company first sergeant from 1330 to 1530. The battalion CSM (command sergeant major, who outranks the 1SG) thought the nighthawks did a great job on the 3rd floor, but the dayhawks ruined it for all of us in the 1SG’s eyes. Under normal circumstances, since I’m Gold Stat, I should have been released at 0100 Saturday morning.

At 1530 the 1SG said, through the DS on duty, that overall the barracks looked OK with some minor specific complaints. Yet DS Talkative kept us there until 1615, explaining the inspection in detail. I closed my eyes at one point and I saw black ink splotching across my eyelids, like the evil, black Spider-man suit that brought out the rage in Peter Parker. Overall I kept my calm today, though, since there’s nothing I can do.

They’re hiring a lot more Chinook mechanics lately, probably as part of the expansion of the Army. A week or two ago they started classing night owls, the third shift from 0030 to 0830. The 1SG said that by December the building next door will be filled with night owls and hold-unders (those waiting to be classed). You know, after we got classed there was a month before the next nighthawk class started because there weren’t enough enrollees. Now there’s three shifts and we’ll still have extras.

The night owls start their week Monday morning at 0300 - as in 31 minutes after Sunday night. They do PT with us at 0900 right after school, then go to bed. Their week ends after school Friday morning, so they have all day Friday off.. I’d love to have that schedule. I do like the nighthawk schedule better than the dayhawk one, though. Our personal time is more convenient.

Thanksgiving update: we’ll be released on that Wednesday (the 21st) after we get back from school at 0100. The sense is, since my class is scheduled to go on FTX the following week, that we’ll have to return on Saturday the 24th. I’m not buying any plane ticket, and I found that a Greyhound from Richmond would only be $80 one way. Getting to Richmond from Ft. Eustis would be an expensive cab ride, though. I want to leave from Richmond because I could travel overnight that way. We’ll see.

J.McD.

AIT wk. 9

2007-10-17T23:17:00.001+01:00

AIT wk. 9 Oct. 3-9

As most of you know by now, I didn’t get to come home this weekend. I cancelled the tickets on Thursday afternoon and got a credit to the airline. To claim the credit requires a $100 rebooking fee to U.S. Airways, and $30 more to Expedia. I did get to go to Busch Gardens, though.

Three of us went to Busch on Saturday. It’s a good thing because some people found out the hard way that it was closed on Columbus Day. We stayed out there until 11 p.m. Even though we didn’t get the mileage upgrade, some of us still got upgraded to Gold Status which meant we could stay out all weekend - all four days. We stayed as far away from the barracks as possible to avoid the drill sergeants, and they were on the warpath. My roommate got demoted from Green to Red because of a complication involving him going to worship service off post (which is allowed under certain conditions).

Busch Gardens was a blast. It’s hard to find people to go there with who don’t drink, but my 18-year-old friends didn’t. (Nor did I.) We still managed to spend a lot of money on food and drinks anyway. Admission is free - once - to members of the military. (A one-day pass is usually about $54.)

We hit all the major roller coasters, some twice. A couple required almost an hour wait. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a theme park. We also hit up DarKastle, an indoor 3D virtual ride. The animation was really good.

Friday we had a battalion run - of just nighthawks. Something like 15 people in our company alone went to sick call that morning. I felt lousy, too, but I didn’t even think of weaseling out. We did three miles in 30 minutes, a relatively slow pace.

Foxtrot Company does not yet have a “guide-on,” a flag with our company name that is marched in front of a company formation (like during a battalion run). So what did the flag bearer carry? A pole. A pole with a tan-line where a flag used to be. But it had a spade-shaped piece of metal on it (like all other guide-ons).

A DS from another company was making fun of the guide-on and said it reminded him of “300” (since it looks like a spear) and called us the “Spartans.” We actually liked that name a lot and want that to be our company name. (Though it might be too late.) It reminds me of the Saturday Night Live sketch with the cheerleaders seeking “the perfect cheer!” but that’s okay.

This week we finished up hydraulics and began working on flight controls. I don’t think anyone cares, but I like to write the progress of the class for my future reference. I figure someone might stop by the blog who is going in to the 15-U CH-47 Chinook helicopter repair business and be interested, too.

I realized last week that I had spent nine weeks at Ft. Eustis (including a week at reception), nine weeks at basic training (including reception), and, Lord willing, nine weeks left to go at Ft. Eustis. It’s amazing to think I’ve been out of Basic as long as I had been in it.

J.McD.

AIT wk. 8

2007-10-17T23:15:00.001+01:00

AIT wk. 8 Sept. 24-Oct. 2

We finally moved over to Foxtrot company this weekend. That means my address has changed from D Co. to F Co., i.e.,

SPC Jason McDermott
F Co. 1-222d Avn. Reg.
Ft. Eustis, VA 23604

Also, there’s a possibility I could come home this weekend. There is definitely a four-day weekend around Columbus Day (the 6th through the 9th), but whether I or anyone will get the pass/mileage upgrade is still questionable.

The move went very smoothly and was pretty relaxed. We packed Thursday and Friday and there were no inspections as a result. That’s a big stress reliever. It was bittersweet leaving our drill sergeants. It’s funny how attached you get in a few weeks.

Saturday we woke up at 0530 (after going to bed at 0130), got all our stuff outside by 0620, cleaned for a half hour, then ate breakfast at 0700. At 0730 people started loading their stuff on a pickup truck and getting bused over to Foxtrot. It took about four or five trips and was done around 0830-0900. The best thing is there was far less yelling than at basic training. A few guys were chatting it up with the Delta 1SG who just finished first sergeant school. (He was only the acting 1SG before.)

Once everyone had arrived at Foxtrot we had a laidback briefing with the CO and interim 1SG (while the permanent 1SG is on leave). The first order of business was to dispel any rumors we’d heard. Then we were informed of policies and procedures, and finally, given our room assignments. We got our rooms somewhat organized until 11:30, then we had lunch, then we were released on pass for the day.

Our company mascot at Foxtrot was the Phantoms for a day, and now it’s the Falcons. Umm, it’s OK, but we have a saying in the Army where you call someone a “blue falcon” if they rat out a fellow soldier or make them look bad in some other way. (It’s a phonetic spelling of an abbreviation of another phrase.) It’s up to us to come up with platoon names and mottoes. As in Delta, dayhawks are 1st platoon, and nighthawks are 2nd. Apparently there will be nightowls soon, too. I think 2nd platoon has settled on the phoenix as our mascot.

We’re back in the HHD building, and the building next door is vacant right now but will hold Foxtrot soldiers as necessary in the future. We stay in two-man rooms; I lost the private bathroom I had at Delta. The rooms were assigned by class, so I’m near my classmates, whom I generally like.

The cabinets and nightstands are old, warped particleboard creations. Because all the “lockers” are different there is no SOP for organizing the inside; we have free reign, and it just has to look good. The bathroom on my end of the third floor works horribly; none work well. The first day here we nearly froze in our rooms because the central AC was cranked so low. We can’t change the settings, but everyone figured out how to unplug the things.

There’s no PA here, so we can have alarm clocks - and radios. Bonus! I’ve taken to knocking on everyone’s doors in the morning to make sure everyone has no excuse for being late.

I don’t think we’ve lost any privileges but have gained a few. The standards for Green and Gold Status are the same or lower. The smokers can still smoke; no one is allowed to drink, still. Food is not permitted in the rooms, but on weekends we can order in food if we eat it outside. Recall formations on weekends is an hour earlier on Saturdays but two hours later on Sundays, for nighthawks. I just hope no one decides to ruin the trust for the rest of us. They will.

We have one new DS who wasn’t at HHD, a female. These DS’s expect more of us than at Delta, in terms of discipline and respect and professionalism. Good. They’re really cracking down on profanity here, where at Delta it was a free-for-all.

We get bused everywhere on weekdays. The drivers are civilian contractors. As a result of the busing we never sing cadences. At all. It’s great. I like singing cadence - it makes it easy to walk in step - but the HHD DS’s made it a chore. They just couldn’t sing.

There was a funny episode at Delta on Wednesday. We were marching to lunch with our main DS and we left ahead of Charlie Co. for once. (All nighthawks in all companies share the same DFAC during the week.) When we were coming up on the parking lot we noticed Charlie had taken some sort of shortcut and was already trodding through. Someone mentioned this to our DS and at first he says, “Hold on, we’re still in stealth mode.” As we got up to the grass he had us all run for the entrance. Then Charlie started running. We won. It’s things like that that won’t happen at Foxtrot because the DS’s are so uptight. (And yes, we don’t march anymore anyway.)

As for the schoolhouse, nothing unusual happened on our side - we spent our first week on the floor doing hydraulics - but the Black Hawk students were having some problems. Thursday night our instructors told us there was an accident in the 15-T (‘tango”) hangar where someone fell off a helicopter trying to catch a tool he had dropped. He shattered his arms trying to break his fall, but is OK otherwise, I guess. I think there’s been at least one other accident involving the Tangos - I don’t know what - since then, too.

I think I mentioned before that all the active duty people in my class are scheduled to go to Korea. It turns out most of the active duty guys in the class before and the class after me are headed there, too (plus some in other classes). Someone brought up the fact that next door the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics will be going on while we’re in Korea. I can’t imagine what the tickets cost for the Olympics - and what do you get? access to one event? everything for that day? - but it’s something to look into.

J.McD.

AIT wk. 7

2007-09-27T00:11:00.000+01:00

AIT wk. 7 - Sept. 17-23

In the twilight of our days here at Delta company the drill sergeants want to leave a lasting impression on us, so it would seem, or want us to look squared away for Foxtrot co.

Monday we had the usual room inspections, but when the DS came by our hallway, everyone from my room was standing by - and no one else. A similar thing happened when he went to the second floor. As punishment we all had to write out the room and wall locker SOP, or standard operating procedure. It took up eight 8½" x 11" sheets of paper (four double-sided). When he came by Tuesday afternoon for inspections (a half hour early), he told us he wouldn’t collect them. We stayed up Monday night until 0230 writing it and listening to music from my iPhone.

Tuesday some people didn’t heed the first wake-up call, over the PA, so the DS gave us all a personalized one room by room. That prompted a smoke session (a long, enduring punishment consisting mostly, usually, of push ups) before PT. Ironically PT on Tuesdays is “muscle failure” anyway, where we do nothing but push ups and sit ups. That afternoon after inspections we got smoked when one guy was caught with a dip bottle - a container, usually a soda bottle, that people spit into while chewing smokeless tobacco. You’re not supposed to dip (or “chew” or whatever) in the barracks, though outside is OK.

Wednesday morning brought another smoking, and I don’t even know why. I’ve never done the “crab walk” before. No punishment Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning probably because of the PT test on Thursday. Traditionally there’s no punishment for 24 hours before a PT test.

Friday morning was worse than all of the smokings combined. We weren’t smoked or physically punished at all, but instead we got to spend the morning with one of our future DS’s at Foxtrot. He gives the most unnecessarily long, pointless, torturous speeches if we do anything the least bit wrong.

Friday morning everyone was up on time but this DS stepped by the room to tell us, “Now soldiers, get up, get ready, do whatever it is you need to do. Shave, brush your teeth, put on your makeup, do whatever it is you do.”

Next we formed up to do PT and he gives us a speech on PT. It was sports PT, which requires no stretching or cool down and no supervision or guidance - usually they just give us a tub of balls and let us go. But this DS gave us a warm up and cool down, and told us to be safe, and not to have any physical contact - “Well, limited physical contact.”

Then after breakfast we had arrived back at the company, about to get mail and be released on personal time. He gave us the beginning of the command “left face” (a 90° turn to our left) when some people flinched before hearing the completed command. This prompted a speech on why it is important to pay attention and how commands can change instantly, and why we shouldn’t assume or get in a routine - but routines can be good.

Once we finally did the left face, someone pointed out that there wouldn’t be any mail since it was handed out the night before (and new mail doesn’t come in until noon). The DS went and checked anyway and yes, there was no mail. Nevertheless we were treated to a 20-minute speech about that and how it relates to combat; I think there was something in there about how someone swatted at a fly in formation, and in combat you have to be disciplined enough to stay still.

All of this was in the span of just over three hours. I’ve never had the urge to physically assault a drill sergeant before. Ninety-nine percent of the time I appreciate what a DS is trying to accomplish, or at least respect his authority. This DS just annoyed the daylights out of me. When you dip in to my personal time, it becomes personal. (I would never really hurt an authority figure, by the way.)

OK, so on an up note, I demolished the PT test, specifically the run. I ran two miles in 13:13. Only one person finished ahead of me (by a full minute, no less), and the next one after me (a roommate) finished 30 seconds later. That’s a 42 second improvement over my best time. I couldn’t believe it. People resent the fact that I have a higher rank (specialist) than all but one person in 2nd platoon, since I got it not because of anything I did in the Army, but because of college. So I love times like this when I can excel at something Army-related. Oh, and that one other specialist in our platoon - he’s the one that finished ahead of me.

Also on Thursday we had our first test in class on the floor. It was easy enough; I got a 99 percent. We had to remove and reinstall two parts that we had already worked on before, in four hours, and we had a 25-question multiple choice test and a 25-item parts identification (via a Power Point slide show).

Another class of nighthawks started on Tuesday. For some reason the DS’s appointed four of them to be the new squad leaders on Thursday. They have no idea what’s going on. On the plus side, the new APS (assistant or acting platoon sergeant, equivalent to the PG, platoon guide, we had in Basic) is from our class.

Yesterday I went out and finally saw “Harry Potter” (the newest one). I also picked up “The Good Shepherd” with Matt Damon and a DVD of “Pinky and the Brain.”

I’ve been thinking about Korea some more. I’m even more convinced it’s best to get that overseas tour out of the way first. And yet I still want to get out of it and stay in the States.

J.McD.

AIT week 6

2007-09-21T00:44:00.000+01:00

AIT week 6 - Sept. 10-16

We didn’t move this week. Wednesday we found out it would either be the beginning or end of October, and if not then, then after the Christmas “exodus.” Some of the dayhawks said the captain told them we’re moving on the 30th of this month. (On a Sunday?) We’ll see.

Our DS gave us a speech that Wednesday night that made me realize how much I don’t want to go back to HHD/Foxtrot. He told us the DS’s over there weren’t put there because they were the best. Our DS would bend over backwards for us here; at HHD they couldn’t care less. The discipline is more rigid here, but that’s a worthwhile tradeoff.

Since Foxtrot company will be comprised of only 15-U’s (“uniforms”), it will be the

Foxtrot
Uniforms (15)
Battalion (1st)
Aviation (222d)
Regiment

or “FUBAR” (fouled up beyond all recognition). That’s about right.

This week went by pretty fast now that we’re out on the floor. I’m getting used to things now. Wednesday we started on the electrical system; I got the better part of three parts removed and reinstalled (that’s all we do) on Wednesday. Thursday I spent almost the whole night on one part and didn’t finish it. It was one of the AC generators. It weighs about 40 pounds and when I was pulling it off I dropped it, but caught it - with my head. It only fell about six inches, so it didn’t hurt. I was mostly worried about damaging the part. Next week we start on the fuel system, then a test on Thursday.

I usually don’t mention PT because nothing eventful happens. On Friday, though, we went for our usual ~40 minute jog, and I couldn’t believe how many people fell out. As we were heading back to the company, I was in the lead group (it just worked out that way) and we looked back and two-thirds of the platoon was missing. We circled back a couple of times, but the rest couldn’t keep up. I wanted to go another few miles.

Here’s a great example of the power of having the Internet on a phone. Saturday I wanted to go to the mall. I went to the bus depot (near the PX, which will also be farther away when we move) at 0930 to catch the #113 bus. The #106 came by; I asked the driver if she went to the mall; she said no; I said I’d catch the #113; she said it didn’t start until noon. She said I could hop on her bus and transfer to the #116. I don’t really like transfers because you could be waiting for an hour for that other bus to come by. I got on anyway because I figured anything was better than waiting 2½ hours for the #113 bus to start up.

As we were driving along I pulled out my iPhone and looked up the schedule of the bus I was on from the Internet. I saw that if I skipped the stop where I was supposed to transfer and went up to Oyster Point Road, I’d be pretty close to the mall. I wasn’t sure how far of a walk it would actually be, so I opened up Google Maps and charted the distance between the intersection of Warwick Road and Oyster Point Road, and the Patrick Henry Mall. It was 1.6 miles, so I decided to walk.

I love that I can go anywhere without planning and find my way around with just a tiny device that fits in my pocket. If I wanted I could easily look up nearby movie theaters or restaurants, etc. Who needs a laptop? (Well, I did just to set up the phone...)

Once I got to the mall I bought three new books and some clothes. Plus I ordered a couple of funny T-shirts online.

Today I didn’t do anything. I’m looking forward to watching the Patriots at 8 p.m. in the common room. I’m still a fan of the team, anyway.

J.McD.

AIT weeks 4 and 5: Aug. 27-Sept. 9

2007-09-15T19:08:00.000+01:00

AIT weeks 4 and 5: Aug. 27-Sept. 9

First, it was great to see everyone last weekend. I didn’t realize how much I missed home. It felt nice to walk around without constant supervision and to go where I wanted. I keep thinking, when is the next time I can go home? At least Thanksgiving, though probably not sooner. Ironically, I’ll end up graduating the next week after Thanksgiving.

Oh, sorry I skipped a week in writing. I stayed busy Labor Day weekend and didn’t get to write. I mean, yeah, I got to talk to most of you in person instead, but I like to keep the blog up to date.

So, I’ve been putting off releasing this, but I know where my permanent duty station will be, after AIT. I don’t have my official orders yet - the ones on paper - but on my AKO account (like the Army’s intranet), I’m scheduled to go to Korea. There was a very real chance that I could have switched assignments with a guy in my class. He had Fort Drum, N.Y., where I wanted to go, and he preferred Korea. I was waiting to get my official orders to make the switch, but in the meantime my classmate failed out of the class. I don’t think he really wanted to do this MOS anyway.

So, I’ll be in Korea (South - the one without the dictator with the inferiority complex) on Jan. 14, 2008; that’ll give me a month at home after graduating AIT.

I had been rethinking my decision to switch duty stations before my classmate failed. There are several good things about Korea:

Army personnel have to serve at least one “hardship” tour during their career, so why not get it out of the way, especially while I’m single?

The time required to stay there is only a year as far as I know. Usually you’re required to be at your first station for three years. After that year (or three) you get your pick of where you want to be.

Because it’s “hardship duty” I’d get an extra $150 monthly.

Everyone else in my class is going to Korea. Well, the ones that are Active Duty and not prior service. For the most part that’s a good thing.

I won’t have a car, so I’ll save money, in theory. The downside, of course, is that I won’t have a car.

Logically the best choice would have been Korea, I guess, and now I have no choice. But I still wanted to stay in the States. After six months of being imprisoned in training I was looking forward to living in the U.S., buying a new vehicle, settling in somewhere, and having a regular job with weekends off. Now I’ll be cut off from the world for another year.

In class we finished up TAMMS-A, the paperwork section, moved on to ULLS-A, the computer version of TAMMS and finished that, and now we’re finally on the floor taking off parts on the aircraft. After those first four tests I have the highest average in the class, but that’s sure to change.

This past Friday was the first and only day so far we’ve actually touched the aircraft. I don’t really know my way around a toolbox, and I got frustrated with the first task I had. We had to remove a fire detection sensor from either the left (#1) or right (#2) side of the helicopter. The right side one - the one I had - is in a really awkward spot and it took forever to remove. I’ll get better at this, I guess, but I’ll be happy to pass.

So here’s how the systems side works - “systems” is what they call it when we’re working on the actual helicopters. We’re given a fault on the aircraft (nothing’s really broken) and first we have to go to our manuals and look up how to fix it. Once we find that task number we go to our instructor and he gives us a printout of the task, which is a lot more portable than the laptops. We begin the “paperwork” on the computer (ULLS-A), then grab the tools we think we need from our toolbox and put them in our toolbag. (I kept going back and getting more tools.) Once we’ve removed the part we call “midpoint” and the instructor checks our paperwork. Then we reinstall the part (though really we should install a new one) and finish up with the paperwork.

This coming weekend there’s a big shakeup: all of us 15-U’s are moving from Delta co. to the new Foxtrot co., which is either the old HHD building or the one next to it. The rumors were true. Also, half of Charlie co. will be moving here. All of this is scheduled for Saturday.

The HHD building is on the other side of the base. Right now we are within a 10-minute walk to our hangar where we go to school, the PX, the library, and pretty much everything else. HHD is 20 minutes from the PX and about 30-55 from the hangar. We’re told that we’ll be bused to and from the hangar. I think “bus” is used loosely, since it doesn’t seem too practical to pay a bus driver to do one run at 4:30 in the afternoon and the next run at 1:00 in the morning. There’s no other use for bus service at that time of night. At Fort Jackson, well sure. We were traveling all the time there.

We will have the same drill sergeants we had at HHD, but the Delta DS’s will stay at Delta. No one really liked the HHD DS’s; the ones at Delta are pretty cool, though. The first sergeant at HHD was a lot cooler than the one here. I liked our company commander here, but I didn’t know much about the one at HHD. (I heard a rumor that they were married. At an event last Friday they were standing really close to each other.)

Also, I have confirmation on the switch from drill sergeants to regular sergeants, but no word on the time. I don’t think it’s soon, though.

Other things that happened in the last fortnight:

A guy in the room across the hall who is under 21 got caught coming back to the barracks drunk. No one in AIT is supposed to drink (excluding the prior service guys in Hotel co.), but being underage doesn’t help his cause. We still don’t know what his punishment will be, though it could be anything. I’d expect an Article 15 and 45 days extra duty. That’s where they keep you here after you’ve graduated school.

My roommate came back from Labor Day two hours late because the airline messed up his itinerary. He didn’t get in trouble.

Last Friday, before Labor Day, was Sports Day or something. Everyone in the battalion (over 1,000 soldiers) had the day off from classes and was invited to play sports for their company. I didn’t play anything, nor did most of the nighthawks since we were only invited to participate in tug-of-war. Ironically, tug-of-war was the only sport that Delta came first place in.

Being a helicopter mechanic is definitely what I need to be doing right now; I have no doubts about that. But it is outside of my comfort zone. I also have no regrets about going enlisted, but I do long to be an officer. Because all of this is out of my comfort zone is why I know it’s the right choice.

My plan is to do this for three years - from when I started in May - then hopefully transition to officer. Ever since my drill sergeant in Basic saw my ASVAB scores and said, “Why don’t you do intelligence?” I’ve been really contempleting being an intel officer. Watching “The Bourne Ultimatum” on Labor Day and “Casino Royale” on Sunday night here (great movie, BTW), gets me more excited about it.

The three year commitment has a few reasons behind it. First, I signed up for the Montgomery G.I. Bill since I couldn’t get loan repayment, and to get the full amount you must stay in the same MOS for three years. Second, in three years I’ll be 29, which is the cutoff age for getting commissioned as an officer, though there are waivers granted. Third, I think that will give me a good amount of experience in maintenance and working with working-class people before moving on. If I felt I had matured enough before then, I might apply earlier.

Right now I’m not worried about it and just going along for the ride.

J.McD.

Homecoming 1

2007-09-03T03:55:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm home for the weekend and typing on my laptop again. I'll have more later, but right now I just wanted to share some pictures of how built-up Plymouth is getting.

Below are pictures of Colony Place -- a sort of outdoor mall that started with a Super Wal-Mart. A couple of years ago none of this was here; when I left 3 1/2 months ago only half of it was here. The town -- yes, town, not city -- has not grown that much! I don't know how the economy can support this. There's also "Shops at 5" and the Home Depot plaza, which are two exits down the highway. They sprouted up about five years ago and have a bunch of stores and restaurants, too.

In addition to the new shops listed on the sign, there is also Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Circuit City, Dick's Sporting Goods, Michael's (arts and crafts), Bed Bath and Beyond, PetCo, Office Depot, La-Z-Boy, TGI Friday's, Bertucci's, Chili's, Red Robin, Jared diamonds, and a Hampton Inn. The Bertucci's, Chili's, and hotel may not technically part of Colony Place, but just next to it.

What's funny is the reundancy. Within a year of Bertucci's opening, now we have an Olive Garden in the same area. Ten years ago we never had a home improvement store, but as soon as Home Depot opened a Lowe's popped up just over the border in Kingston. And do we really need a 24-hour Walgreen's directly across the street from a 24-hour CVS? I think we have eight Dunkin' Donuts in town, too.

I tried to go in a circle. These shops are in the Wal-Mart section. There's a little overlap with Michael's and PetCo, but in all the rest of pics there is no overlap. There's actually that many stores -- and room for more.

These three are in the middle of everything. Yep, we finally have a Starbucks. It's the beginning of the end now.

And the rest are in the new section, called The Village at Colony Place.

So I'm guessing condos are next....

AIT wk. 3

2007-08-30T23:49:00.000+01:00

AIT wk. 3 - Aug. 20-26

This being my fifth weekend at Ft. Eustis, I’ve been on Green Status. I could travel off post if I wanted (at my own expense), but to me the biggest advantage was not having to do details or show up to formations every two hours and stand there for 20 minutes. I felt so relaxed.

Some guys went to Busch Gardens on Saturday. I almost went too, but I’m glad I didn’t. They came back smashed. (It is Busch Gardens.) The DS didn’t notice since we have such large accountability formations on weekend nights. A guy from across the hall crashed on a bed in our room. He didn’t know what room he was in and had to be carried into his. If the drill sergeants were smart they’d try and find blogs like this one to see what really goes on.

We had another test this week in class. I got a 98%, so I’m alone at the top of the class. The test was a hodgepodge of things, including written questions on safety and the AGPU (“ag-poo,” an external power source), and a hands-on part where we secured bolts with safety wire and used precision tools: a torque wrench, micrometer and multimeter.

After the test we started on TAMMS-A (The Army Maintenance Management System - Aviation), which is all the logbooks and paperwork associated with the helicopter maintenance and repair. Fun stuff. You have to be incredibly detailed and precise and a supervisor (a TI, technical inspector) must sign off on everything. The irony is that everything is done in pencil except for the status symbols, which represent flyability of the aircraft. Why don’t they do this on computers, you ask? They do; we learn that next week. Some places might still use paper, though. The test on TAMMS-A is the last one before Labor Day.

Monday did not bring a new class of night hawks like I’d hoped - I was tired of being the newest here. Oddly, a group of soldiers arrived on Friday. It turns out they finally did away with HHD, the reception company, so soldiers waiting to class will just trickle into their respective companies and wait it out there.

It’s still not clear what will become of the HHD building and the one next door to it. Since they’re packing in all the newbies in here and the other companies, the rumor that they’ll shove the senior classmen into the HHD building might be true. It looked like they were writing these buildings for Internet access ad cable TV.

An upperclassman said that there will be no more drill sergeants as of Oct. 1 and only regular NCO’s to watch over us. That’s not the first time I’ve heard the rumor, but it is the first time I’ve heard a date attached to it. I get annoyed with the nitpicky supervisor sometimes, but some guys still need the authority. Perhaps things will get more strict: instead of being yelled at for doing something wrong, the NCO’s might just write people up. Keep getting in trouble and get administrative action against you. No lectures, just laws.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone next week!

P.S. I love this iPhone!

J.McD.

AIT wk. 2

2007-08-23T01:18:00.000+01:00

AIT wk 2 - Aug. 13-19

Well, I finally got my iPhone this week, and if you haven’t figured it out, that’s really all I care about lately. It’s really cool, but the (virtual) keypad is too annoying to use to type a whole letter, so I think I’ll continue to write out these letters longhand until I get to have my laptop again. I’ll go in depth about the iPhone later in this letter.

I scored high enough on my PT test and academic test that I should be able to come home on Labor Day weekend. I got a 75, 83, and 83 on the pushups, sit-ups, and two-mile run, respectively, on the PT test (70 is required for leave). In class I got a 100% on the first test, thank God. There’s still at least one more test between now and Labor Day, but this is a good start.

To pass time on Monday in class, since I had finished all the classwork so early, first I started reading through the manuals. After four hours of that I got bored, so I drew a map of the United States freehand (it ain’t pretty, but reasonably accurate), then listed all the states, then named all their capitals. (What is the capital of West Virginia, anyway?) Tuesday after the test several people were done early, so I did the same thing with European and Asian capitals, but I quizzed the other guys. Then we tried to name all 32 NFL teams.

The night instructors at the hangar allow us to bring books to read on breaks, though officially it is CHD (Cargo Helicopter Division) policy to not allow any personal reading material. (Why?) Most people bring paperbacks they can fit in their pockets (ACU pockets are pretty big), but I brought a 500-page hardcover on the day of the test. The DS saw it and confiscated it. What’s the lesson? Rip off the hardcover and tear the book in half if necessary. That’s what I did with the newest book I’m reading.

Another policy at the hangar is that IET* soldiers (that’s us) can’t bring cell phones to class. On Thursday night one of the sergeants there turned on the Bluetooth on his phone and set it to search for other phones. Most students are aware of this and turn the Bluetooth off before going to class, but the sergeant found someone and did an integrity check and went to each class asking them all if they had phones on them, promising amnesty (from CHD, not our drill sergeants). One soldier had been given permission by the DS to have his phone on him because a relative was near death. Twenty-one others turned in cell phones, but two of those got them back for one reason or another.

There were no repercussions that night, but our DS smoked us for a half hour the next morning, then lectured us after breakfast. While we were waiting in the bleachers for the DS after breakfast, when we usually get mail, the company commander came by. He asked what we were waiting for. Instead of saying “the mail,” everyone almost in unison said “a [behind] chewing.” We knew.

The 19 probably won’t get their phones back for two weeks - just before Labor Day - and are on Red Status this weekend and next. DS also put many others on Red Stat this weekend because some rooms had a speck of dirt on the floor during inspections on Friday. He was on the warpath.

On the first day of class we were also warned about messing with the computers. We are not to open any programs or change any settings unless directed by the instructor. The guy that sits next to me had a weird computer glitch where the background picture on the desktop disappeared and was replaced with a solid blue one. Now, he was one of the ones that had his phone taken, plus he’s been caught sleeping in class. He’s a good kid, but still trying to push the boundaries.

Anyway, he tried to fix the background on his own. I told him not to, and said, “well, just turn off the computer and turn it back on.” He did; the background flashed on the screen for a split second, then went back to solid blue. At that point you have to say, OK, this is just some freaky thing with the computer and I can’t do anything about it. The computer knows what background it should have, but doesn’t want to display it. It’s like talking to a brick wall. Well, the soldier keeps trying to fix the problem. I should have been more forceful in trying to stop him, but anyway the instructor caught him messing around with the screen. He was called into the office for a counseling statement after class. If the computer’s logs show a legitimate glitch, the statement gets torn up, never discussed with our DS, and he’s off the hook. So, we’ll see.

About the iPhone: my biggest disappointment so far is that I get busy reception in my room, so the Internet can be painfully slow. It is the full-fledged Internet, though, so it can be worth it; for some things, like news, I’ve gone back to using the mobile versions of pages.

There is a mail client which makes checking e-mail a lot faster than waiting for a web page, but I’d rather use Gmail’s web interface. I’ve got my Gmail, Yahoo! and Army e-mail set up on the phone now.

You can’t really download to the phone straight from the Internet - no songs or videos, and you can’t save PDF’s or pictures or files either. Apple likes to simplify and streamline their technologies, but I’m a power user - I want options and lots of them. Especially for what the thing cost.

Once it gets going, surfing the Internet is easy and intuitive. The screen can zoom in and out so easily that you don’t notice or care how small the screen is compared to a laptop or desktop. I can access pretty much any page - even the Army’s AKO page, which requires certificates. That keyboard, though - well, they did their best. I wonder if they’ll come out with an add-on keyboard like the iPaq (from Compaq) had.

I read online that the iPod feature of the phone was the best iPod had to date. I’d agree. Being able to just touch the screen and scroll and select makes things so much easier.

When I go outside I get full reception; then the Internet is fast enough. I’ve gone to the library a couple of times to use the free wi-fi - that’s really fast.

For me, where I can’t have a laptop or desktop and I wanted a new phone any my last contract had just expired, the price was completely worth it. I love this thing.

So, feel free to e-mail me now anytime. I don’t plan on having my phone taken anytime soon.

*IET is Initial Entry Training; that’s basic training and AIT. There are nine of us IET soldiers in the class and three Hotel company soldiers. “Hotel” is the Army’s way of saying the letter “H” but some of the guys actually stay in a hotel. They have almost all the privileges of a permanent party soldier - they come and go when they want, can have their own vehicles, and smoke and use their cell phones on break.

J.McD.

AIT wk. 01

2007-08-18T19:26:00.000+01:00

AIT wk 01 - Aug. 6-12

I classed this week! My roommate didn’t, which I’m kind of bummed about. I think his paperwork is messed up. I’m a night hawk as I thought, and I still get to see my friends from Basic on weekends.

I wake up at 0800, do PT at 0900, then eat chow at 1000. After breakfast we have personal time until 1430, at which time is the daily locker inspection (sometimes). Then we eat lunch at 1500 and walk next door to the hangars where our classes are. Class doesn’t start until 1630, so we usually have about 45 minutes to an hour of downtime, plus two half hour breaks during class, and an hour and 15 minutes for dinner. I bought a book (270 pages) on Sunday the 5th and finished reading it on Thursday. Class ends at midnight, then there’s a half hour of cleanup and we go to bed when we get back - around 0100.

My roommates here are cool, but many of the guys here are immature. They like to pull stupid pranks; so far I’ve been safe. My platoon - 2nd, which has over 70 people - has no females in it. Our drill sergeants seem reasonable.

Monday I left HHD at about 2000, had the usual intro speech at 2200, then organized my locker until 0100. The locker display is specified to annoying detail, but a lot of the stuff on display doesn’t get used much. The lockers are huge and we get two big personal drawers and a shelf. There’s two other guys in my room and one empty bunk. One guy came from HHD with me and the other is only two or three weeks ahead. Our room has its own bathroom, though many rooms don’t. The hot water takes a while to kick in, though.

Tuesday us newbies woke up at 0415 to attend the orientation briefing with the higher-ups, but I got to go back to bed because I had the briefing last week. At 1000 we had breakfast with the rest of the night hawks and we were on their schedule. The first class was all introductory, including a tour of the Chinook. Sleeping in class is NOT allowed.

I was right that Chinook mechanics can work on any of the Army’s other helicopters, but not vice versa. Our instructors are sergeants, but not drill sergeants, and there are some civilians that work there, too. It makes the environment a lot less tense. We still have to respect the sergeants, of course.

Also, the big news is that I have the opportunity to come home on Labor Day weekend. I should e-mail you all by the time this gets posted anyway - I’m getting my iPhone back tomorrow or Tuesday. The catch is that I have to meet the requirements for Gold Pass, except for time. I must have 70’s or above in my PT test and 87% or higher in school, but it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been here. I’ve already got a flight booked. I’ll be home Saturday through Monday (Lord willing) and return on Tuesday morning.

So far the class has been learning how to read the manual. Really, that is the whole class - any maintenance is done by the book. Every bolt must be tightened to a specified torque. The main manual is 11 volumes, some 1,500 pages long. We get the benefit of it being digitized in PDF format so we can search it (at least one volume at a time). I’ve found that the search feature isn’t all that helpful and that it’s much better to know how the manual is organized. Besides, it wasn’t long ago that there was no computerized version.

Thursday was our first night of practice tests; the first real test is on Tuesday, I believe. We had two practice tests to complete in two class days, and I did them both on Thursday night. Now I have nothing to do on Monday. (Friday there were no classes.) Yes, I’m doing well with the book work, but I’m still apprehensive about what will happen when we get to the hands-on stuff.

Friday was “Super Day,” the 65th anniversary of the transportation corps of Ft. Eustis or something like that, and the beginning of a three-day fair. We attended the opening ceremony. There was an Army drill team composed of infantrymen who did this amazing routine that lasted about 20 minutes. (A drill team takes rifles and maneuvers them around in sync.) There were 21 performers and one commander. They used these old wooden rifles (1906?) with chrome bayonets affixed. That was probably the highlight of the ceremony. Also there was a solo parachutist from the 82nd Airborne (in neighboring North Carolina) and a flyby of two fighter jets (F-18’s?) and a Huey helicopter.

Weekends involve doing a detail, like raking or mowing, if we’re in Red Phase. Once the detail is done we can go to the PX or other places on post. If you’re on Green Phase you don’t have to do detail and can go off post for the day. On Gold Phase you sign out Saturday morning and sign in Sunday night. For the first few weeks we have to attend all the sensitivity classes.

I’m settling in here alright. Everything is pretty easy here, since we spend eight hours in classes and three and a half hours on personal time every day. As a result, this letter is much shorter than all the other ones, and they might get shorter. I think every day is pretty much the same, except for an FTX toward the end of AIT.

I should be up and running on the Internet with my iPhone soon....

J.McD.

(Note from Beth McD.: He DID get his iPhone back, Aug. 15, and it IS up and running! Yay!)

AIT wk. 00

2007-08-10T02:48:00.000+01:00

AIT wk. 00 - July 28-Aug. 5

Well, this would be week 12 of my Army career, but I don’t really see the point of keeping track anymore - it was really just for basic training.

So I’m here at Ft. Eustis, but haven’t started AIT yet. Right now I’m in a reception/holdover place called HHD (headquarters and headquarters detachment). People here are either waiting for enough people to arrive to make a class, or there’s so many people in that MOS (like the 15-T’s) that they’re waiting for a class to open up. Some guys have been waiting six, even eight weeks, for a slot; a couple know they won’t be classed until September or October at the earliest; and several have AIT’s that last 29 or 30 weeks! (Mine is 17 weeks.) In all likelihood, Lord willing, I will get classed tomorrow.

Oh, sorry about how long it took to send the last letter. There are no mailboxes anywhere around the HHD building or cafeteria. The irony is that I sent the last letter today, after I hopped on the Internet at a place on post and posted a comment on the blog. Now the blog is going to be out of sequence. Mom, you seem to be doing a good job with the site, by the way.

Here’s a long, boring explanation of how HHD works. Feel free to skip this section.

The HHD I’m in is just for MOS’s (jobs) in the aviation field, which is all the 15 series. I’m a 15-U (that’s “fifteen uniform”). 15-U and 15-T (“tango”) are the two most common MOS’s in the 15 series by far. Us 15-U’s class pretty fast because the ratio is just right of students signed up to classes available. On the other hand, there are many more 15-T students than classes, so they’re stuck waiting.

A 15-U is a Chinook helicopter mechanic, and a 15-T works on Black Hawks. Our first sergeant feels 15-U is the best MOS in the Army. Chinook mechanics get to work on more aspects of their helicopter than other MOS’s, and a Chinook is more complicated. Plus, a friend who is in class told me that 15-U’s can work on Black Hawks, too (and maybe other helicopters), but a 15-T can’t work on a Chinook.

So, why does almost everyone pick the Black Hawks? Well, they are cooler; there’s no denying it. The Chinook is big and ugly. But another reason, I think, is because most of these guys and girls are aspiring to be pilots (via being a Warrant Officer) and want flight time on a Black Hawk - a combat helicopter. Me, I have no desire to be a pilot and just want the technician, mechanical experience.

Back to HHD, the guys (and girls) that are stuck here a really long time have unusual MOS’s, like 15-F, 15-G, 15-X. The drill sergeants don’t know what half of these are. Some work on other helicopters; one is a general helicopter electrician - that’s one of the longest MOS’s. My thought was, why not cross-train these guys in some other MOS while they’re waiting? It doesn’t cost the Army much more money, since the soldier gets paid either way.

Well, maybe those middle two paragraphs are worth reading.

Everything is more relaxed here; maybe that’s just because I’m in reception, but I don’t know. We still have drill sergeants, though I understand that soon there won’t be; it will just be NCO instructors who aren’t DS’s. The main difference from BCT is that we are given more freedom and more self-responsibility here. No DS wakes us up here (although at BCT we always woke up before they work us up); after chow we walk back to the barracks ourselves (albeit still in buddy teams - *sigh*); and on the weekends you get passes to go on or off post, depending on your status.

Red status is the lowest, but you still get a few hours of freedom on post. Amber status is pretty much the same, plus a few hours. Green lets you go off post for the day; Gold lets you leave overnight. Your PT test scores and academic grades affect your status, as does time served - I mean, spent here.

As I think I said last time, no one is allowed to have laptops here. C company has it the worst: they can’t have any electronics at all. (C co. is the 15-T’s.) In my D co. (the 15-U’s), we can have everything up to, but not including a computer - DVD players, radios, iPods, and game systems; the PSP is a popular choice. I think everyone is allowed to have cell phones, just not during the day.

Speaking of day, I hear that if I class tomorrow I will be a “night hawk,” meaning I will have evening classes. There are “day hawks,” too, and then the “night owls” have classes in the middle of the night.

What did we actually do this week? Classes, speeches, moved furniture around in another building (I’ll tell you why in a few weeks, I think), took a PT test (passed, anyway), and went to a museum.

The museum was pretty cool, actually. It’s Ft. Eustis’s own Transportation Museum. (Truck drivers and watercraft operators train here, too.) Outside the museum building they had actual, full-size helicopters, planes, and boats (LARC’s), as well as some old experimental craft. Inside were some full-size displays as well, plus a lot of reproductions, displays, and scale models.

The inside of the museum was organized chronologically, grouped largely by wars. First were oxen- and horse-drawn carriages; one particular carriage was in use from 1878 to 1949. In each section was displayed the uniforms that Army soldiers wore during that time. The last display was of Humvees and bulletproof battle gear. It’s amazing how many watercraft the Army has used - mostly for transportation, not combat.

The experimental craft were interesting. There was the jet pack, and another personal flyer with two helicopter blades directly beneath a platform the operator stood on. Yikes! The flying saucer was being repaired. Seriously.

The visit to the museum was a great idea. It gets soldiers into the spirit of their MOS, and connects them to a long history and tradition. I’ve thought new BCT soldiers should attend a BCT graduation in their first week for similar reasons.

Yeah, it’s a lot of sitting around here. After dinner chow we’re done for the day every day. I’m not sure how that will play out with night classes, though. Hopefully next week I will have some experiences to write about.

BCT wk. 09

2007-08-10T02:36:00.001+01:00

Week 11 - July 22-28 - BCT wk. 09

Nine weeks is half of a semester in college, or maybe more appropriately, on accelerated summer schedule. At the beginning of BCT so many people didn’t think they could make it through nine weeks. Mostly it was because they had a wife or children they missed back home. Yeah, so many guys at BCT had a wife and/or children. And those guys weren’t all married, or if they were, a lot got married after they had children.

So, to state the obvious, I’ve graduated BCT. I try to make sure that I don’t get complacent when coming close to graduation or other milestones, but I really wasn’t worried about getting through BCT.

In the end, our platoon started with 41 and finished with 41. Mr. Pine Oil went back to reception, probably to be sent home, and we picked up one restart. He had gotten caught with a cell phone, selling talk time to others, so they sent him back a few weeks. It’s somewhat amazing that we essentially ended with all we started with, except for Pine Oil, who couldn’t handle it after two days.

A few guys got shuffled from one platoon to another: one carried a loaded rifle off the firing range, then got into a fight; I don’t remember why another one got moved. (He might have been the one that pointed an unloaded M16 at the back of a female’s head.) One in another platoon got shipped home after he went AWOL. Love notes got passed around, but I don’t think anyone got caught for fooling around. It’s not good if you do get caught - especially if it’s adultery. Then they throw the book at you.

On an up note, one guy in our platoon got married on graduation day. He was the only one in the company; the chaplain says that usually there’s several weddings on that day, according to the groom.

Getting back to my usual chronological format, after a weekend of cleaning, we had the big inspection on Monday. 2nd and 4th platoons had the battalion commander and battalion command sergeant major (an officer and an NCO, respectively) do their inspections, and they did a great job, says our company first sergeant. Our platoon had the first sergeant and company commander inspect us. 1SG was less than impressed. The inspection was of all the gear issued to us, and not of our lockers or the bay. All was going well until he smelled the inside of one of the helmets. A group in our platoon cleaned all the helmet pads, and I guess didn’t do a great job. Well, there was the usual talking to afterward and the threat of hours of cleaning, but we ended up just putting new pads in and turning everything in.

They say you really can’t pass the inspection, anyway, because they’ll always find something wrong. The other platoons did well, I’d say, because the higher-ups aren’t as thorough. They don’t have time to get into the nitty-gritty. They’ve got places to be.

By the way, I’m writing this on the bus ride to Ft. Eustis. I usually write these letters with my journal next to me, to keep things in order, but the journal’s in the cargo hold, so this letter won’t be as organized as in the past.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning, from about 0700 to 1000, we had graduation practice. We went to Hilton Field to rehearse the march onto the field, reciting the Soldier’s Creed, passing the "review stand," and standing at attention or parade rest or saluting after a sound from the band, instead of a verbal command.

Other than that, the week was filling out some final paperwork and sitting around the barracks, even watching movies.

Thursday was Family Day. For those of you reading this on the blog, my family wasn’t able to make it because they all had other commitments. They made it to my college graduation, which was just before I left for the Army, so I’m pretty happy about that. To me, graduating college after five years of hard work is more of an accomplishment than going through the motions for nine weeks at BCT. It’s a big deal for a lot of other families because this is the biggest accomplishment their soldier has ever had, and that’s great. Plus, I’m not married or anything, so I wasn’t longing to see my wife or children.

You know, someone at my church pointed out before I left that in the Old Testament, God commands that if a man is newly married he should not go off to war. Today many people get married because their significant other is joining the military. I’m not going to go on about this, but doesn’t that seem like a bad idea? You’re splitting up a relationship just as it’s beginning. And if you think that a marriage certificate will stop your boyfriend/husband from cheating on you while he’s abroad, you’re dead wrong. People were cheating on their loved ones at Basic Training - prison - and even on the plane ride to BCT. I can’t imagine what goes on when soldiers have more freedom.

Anyway, on Family Day there were five of us that I know of in our platoon that didn’t have any family coming, so we banded together. The Solomon Center was sort of command central for family activities. There was a mini-arcade with a few games and they had an optional dinner there at 1700. That was a good chance to meet the families of our comrades. For the most part we just walked around, buying stuff at the larger PX’s around post; one is like a Super Wal-Mart, with a food court and eyeglass place and UPS store and other outlets. The main concern was having enough luggage to carry all we’ve acquired.

It was so great to be out and about, not walking in rhythm, not having my fingers curled at the seam of my trousers, drinking something other than water (lots of Gatorade), not being yelled at by drill sergeants. Of course there were still officers, NCO’s, and drill sergeants everywhere we went, and if we’re outside we still have to render the proper salute or greeting if one passes by, but it was a lot more relaxed.

Graduation ceremonies started at 0900 on Friday, but we were on the field at about 0800, waiting the whole time. The ceremony took less than an hour. I got a few chills the first time the audience applauded us all and when we recited the Soldier’s Creed. "Us all" was, if I recall, C, E and F companies from 2-13th and our E Co. from 1-13th. They said it was over 600 soldiers. (I forget the exact number.) Another thing that struck me was when they had all the veterans in the bleachers to stand up. It was about a third of the crowd!

Friday afternoon was like Family Day, part 2. Four of the five of us loners hung out again. We went to see the new "Die Hard" movie at night. I didn’t even know about it, but I was just excited to see a movie. (It was pretty good. It gets a thumbs up from me.)

My cell phone contract expired about two weeks ago. When we got our phones back on Wednesday night, someone saw I had a Motorola RAZR from Cingular and wondered if I wanted to trade phones. I was planning to get a new phone when my contract was up, so I said yes. There was some money exchanged, too.

Thursday I bought the new iPhone. Yes, I’m a nerd. It’s the 8GB version. You can look up the price if you want; let’s just say it’s a lot. What’s killing me is that I can’t use it until I can connect to a computer with iTunes 7.3 and Internet access. Yes, I’m sure of this, though no one believes me. I’m just itching to use it.

I guess I should explain the phone switching, too, since that also seems to baffle people. Cell phones today use SIM cards. The SIM card holds all your stored phone numbers (of other people) and your phone contract information. If I put my SIM card in someone else’s phone (the physical hardware), then that phone is now attached to my phone number and my plan. When I make calls from that phone with my card in it, I’m calling from my phone number and using my minutes. So my friend and I traded phones (handsets), not calling plans, and not phone numbers.

Today I’m on my way to Ft. Eustis in Virginia for my AIT (advanced individual training - it’s job training for your MOS). I’ve heard a lot of good things about Eustis from my buddy who’s going there with me and has a friend or cousin that just finished his AIT there. The one bad thing I hear - and this kills me - is that we can’t have laptops. We’re allowed to hop on the Internet cafe on the weekends, I guess. Free time is supposed to be abundant there.

We had breakfast at Ft. Jackson one last time then got on the bus around 0800. It’s a normal Greyhound-style bus, and us 10 are the only ones on it. There’s a DVD player and TV’s; someone popped in "Ghost Rider." I slept through it. I’m thinking we’ll be there around 1500. We stopped twice already. It’s weird to be among civilians again.

Today is the most relaxed I’ve been in 10 weeks. Yeah, we had freedom on a Thursday and Friday , but there was that pressure the whole two days of getting ready to ship and being back at the barracks on time (2000, or 8 p.m.). Today we’re just sitting on a bus for hours with no deadlines, no drill sergeants, and no worries. Maybe I’ll be in for another shock at AIT like I was at BCT, but for now there’s nothing I can do. I haven’t had that feeling in a long time - longer than 10 weeks.

Next week you’ll find out what Ft. Eustis is like. And maybe what the iPhone is like too.
P.S. My new address at Ft. Eustis is:

SPC Jason McDermott
D Co. 1-222d Aviation Reg.
Ft. Eustis, VA 23604

If you want to send mail you can do it right away.

Graduation and new address

2007-07-31T23:25:00.000+01:00

Jason graduated July 27 from BCT! He is now in Virginia for AIT, advanced training.
His address for the time being anyway is

SPC Jason McDermott
D Co. I-222d Avn. Reg.
Ft. Eustis, VA 23604

Reflections on Basic Training

2007-07-31T04:02:00.000+01:00

Every soldier I’ve met has had something to say about the training here at Fort Jackson. One thing we all know is that today’s Army is not the same as our parents’ or grandparents’ was. That’s good and bad. The other notable thing is that in all the Echo companies we had Army Reserve drill sergeants that rotated out every two weeks (and one permanent DS in each platoon).

Our first sergeant feels that this cycle proved that the reserve DS program is a success. I didn’t really see any major problems with it either, but many other soldiers had complaints. We in 3rd platoon loved our first two reserve DS’s and didn’t want them to go, but we generally liked all the ones we had. They were all different - some were strict and some were just weak on discipline - but it was kind of nice to experience different styles of teaching and leadership. In the feedback session we had on Tuesday (the 24th), some said that some of the drill sergeants that we had in the middle of BCT treated us like we were in Red Phase (the first few weeks). Again, that could be a good thing, but it’s nice to have your independence, too.

The whole experience in general is not what I expected. The first day at reception and the first day at BCT scared me to death, then it got much easier after that. Much easier. Sometimes I feel we had more discipline at reception, even though they couldn’t give us PT as punishment - all they did was yell and make us be quiet.

After the first week of BCT, which was madness, we were disciplined so much less. I guess in the end it all came together when it really counted. For inspections we would all work hard to make sure everything was clean, organized, and consistent. In graduation practice everyone is trying hard not to make us look bad. (I’m writing this just before graduation.) There’s a few soldiers that are not as disciplined as they should be, but I think they’re competent enough to continue in the Army. As first sergeant said, the system will weed them out if they don’t buckle down. When the rest of us get promoted, they’ll still be in the same rank.

Another complaint was about the lack of PT and other training. I know I could have been pushed harder to get stronger. The AGR’s were good to help improve my running ability, but we didn’t do a lot of them. 1SG says it’s because we couldn’t do them at night, and by implication because we did a lot of stuff early in the morning instead of PT, so that we could get an early start on those days. That’s all part of training in the summer in North Carolina, I guess. It would have been nice to maybe visit a weight room at night or something.

I wish we had more strategy-type training, especially at Victory Forge. We focused on drills and individual skills throughout BCT but not as much team-building stuff (despite the “team development course” we did). Tasks like raiding a city and clearing rooms (or being the enemy in the same situation) should have been done more, even repeatedly.

As far as I can tell, our platoon received the least punishment of the four platoons but we were the most disciplined. Other platoons would get smoked for the littlest things but we’d get a free pass, or at least a good talking to. And we were the only platoon not to go back to Red Phase after going to White Phase. I think we had a pretty good group of soldiers, but maybe there is something to be said for less punishment and more trust and threat of losing privileges.

My biggest fear coming into the Army was how I would fare socially as a timid, quiet, weak, introverted, non-confrontational wimp. Well, I’m still a klutz, but I think a little less of one. I think it’s because when I say something I have one meaning in mind but the people here, drill sergeants and soldiers, will mean many different things with the same phrase. I can’t think of a great example, but if you’re down doing push-ups and they yell at you “get up!” they mean push up in the push-up, not to stand up on your feet. It’s like when you first encounter people from the South and they use the word “cut” for everything. “Cut the light off!” Cut? Why “cut?” To some people, all words are interchangeable and context is the only important thing. To me, the meaning of words is paramount. They say I think too much, which is true, to an extent.

Everyone thinks I’ve changed a lot, becoming more extroverted, but really I was just scoping everything out and deciding what parts of my personality I’d let show and when. I didn’t know what the guys would be like - if I acted too, um, energetic, then they might tease me or whatever. But all the guys here are pretty cool and can be as goofy as me. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with everyone.

The living conditions were pretty good here. Our barracks are portables - trailers, essentially - but they have air conditioning that works really well, comfortable beds, new wall lockers, and a laundry room. But 75 percent of the washers and dryers worked at any given time and there was always one toilet broken. The cafeteria always has a good selection of food. Not the best food, but you have several choices and still can hit all your food groups.

The drill sergeants we had - especially the toughest ones - had great senses of humor. It seems like the more a DS was likely to smoke you, the cooler and smarter and funnier he was. The ones who disciplined us the best had no personality. The best DS’s would make the most random jokes and be wicked sarcastic. They were constantly yelling at soldiers coming into formation from across the parking lot, mocking them. Mockery is funny when you deserve it, and we’ve all had our fair share of it. I’ll miss a few of those DS’s.

In the end, the training was there if you wanted to learn from it, and if you didn’t, the DS’s weren’t going to absolutely force you to improve. We’re adults, and it’s our choice of whether we want to succeed or not. Even physical punishment like it was before will not make a soldier want to be better. Only the soldier can do that. But a little fear does help. The spirit is willing sometimes, but the flesh is weak.

J.McD.

BCT week 7 and 8

2007-07-27T03:08:00.000+01:00

Weeks 9/10 - July 12-21 - BCT wks. 07/08

I can’t remember what was the last day I wrote about; I think it was Wednesday. On Wednesday we did “Omaha Beach,” and the power failed so we couldn’t finish it. We never did end up making up that training. Like it matters.

Thursday we got to fire about 20 rounds on a .50 caliber gun, and 50 rounds each on two machine guns: the M24OB and the M249 SAW (squad automatic weapon), which is a small version of the M240B. It is somewhat portable. We also got to watch a claymore land mine explode. That was all pretty cool.

On Thursday night and Friday morning we got our last set of Reserves drill sergeants. The two male DS’s are E-5 sergeants; usually they’re E-6 or E-7; I’ve never seen an E-5 DS, except as a trainee. One had been in 10 years, which means he’s had a few demotions as punishment. The female DS was incredibly strict, far stricter than any other DS we’ve seen. She’s from Colombia (the country) originally and came here because of all the corruption there. She’s a medic, working toward being a doctor and thus an officer. She told us all this before chow on that first Friday. That morning she introduced herself by coming in the bay at 0530 screaming at us. Everyone was in fear the whole time she was here. But she was only around every other day, and I hear she’s already gone for good. Many of us appreciated the discipline she brought. Others didn’t.

The Reservist first sergeant is unusually strict. Everyone lives in fear of him. All the DS’s seem stricter than usual at the same time the restrictions on us are supposed to be lessened. Also, normally there are three DS’s per platoon; during Victory Forge there were five for us (3rd platoon), five for 1st platoon and four each for the other two platoons. They’re all itching to have a few people not graduate. We’ve actually had a really good retention rate so far.

Friday morning was our final PT test. You need a score of 50 in each category to graduate BCT. I did 52 pushups - that’s a 74; 68 situps - that’s an 84; and the two-mile run in 13:55 - that’s an 89. I think I did the run a little faster than that, but the DS didn’t record my time. She asked me afterward what my time was and I said I thought it was about 13:50, but that she should write 13:55 to be safe. She trusted me.

And then there was Victory Forge. There was so much talk about how physically exhausting it was going to be, but it was a walk in the park. We only had a few hours of activity every day.
On Friday afternoon we bused out to the Anzio range. It’s at a different site than the main area for Victory Forge - 17B (“bravo”) - but it’s still considered part of Victory Forge week. We spent two days and one (and a half) night at Anzio. The campsite was like any other we’ve seen: we have our tents (“hooches”) set up in a 360 (a circle) so that we have full security. At 17B it’s an FOB - forward operating base - so we don’t have to do a 360 because the FOB is already secured. There’s walls all the way around made of constantino (sp?) wire and bunkers for guard posts.

At Anzio we rode around in the back of five-ton trucks, first firing no rounds, then blanks, then live rounds. When the truck stops, supposedly because an IED went off, one side fires in the direction of the IED (for cover) and the other dismounts the truck. When they’ve done dismounting, they’re all firing on ground level in the direction of the IED and then the other side of the truck can dismount. On Friday we pretty much just practiced getting on and off the truck.

Saturday we got up at 0400 to do the live run. We had MRE’s for breakfast for the first time. Some people liked that. Not me. In the past they’ve done Jimmy Dean’s or Heater Meals, which I think are much better and just as portable. We were done with the convoy fire by 1030. Then we did “battle, march and shoot,” where we ran around for about 400 meters to get our hearts pumping, then jogged over to the Anzio firing range and laid down some live rounds. That was kind of cool.

It rained a lot after lunch so we spent most of the time from lunch until 2100 (9 p.m.) in the cramped bleachers of the LPA (lightning protection area). Played a lot of hangman. In the evening I guess one of the soldiers was humming or singing in the bleachers, so one of the DS’s tried to make him get up and sing. He was all bashful and kept giggling when he went to sing and never really got anything out. People were saying he sang in their bay all the time. The DS made four other soldiers sing - he called them “The Four Tops” and they were all black, sitting four in a row - but they were just as bashful. I suggested “My Girl”; the DS liked that suggestion, but still they wouldn’t sing.

Then our platoon - the whole company was in the bleachers - kept yelling my name because they wanted me to do the sick call cadence. Now, I don’t have stagefright. I led the whole stinkin’ company (163 soldiers) in the cadence - and I didn’t forget the words. One of our guys did his own cadence, about the drill sergeants. There’s a lot of improv in it, and he doesn’t pull many punches. Our DS was out sick, so all the other DS’s cracked up when he said of him “I haven’t seen him in a week.” In another line he said one DS “seems kind of gay.” It’s obviously a joke. At that moment the DS came from around the corner and the soldier bolted off in the other direction. We rounded out the jam session with impersonations of the DS’s. That was a fun night.

After all of that, at 2100, we did some night fire. I thought it was rather pointless. Then we had to run out and pick up all the spent ammo before we bused over to 17B. We arrived about 2245. Most of us didn’t bother setting up our hooches - especially because we couldn’t see anything - and instead just laid down sleeping mats and sleeping bags. Again, it was an FOB, so security wasn’t as urgent.

The next day it took forever to set up camp. Our platoon’s section of the FOB only had so much room, so the tents had to be tight together. The way they were starting to be set up, there was no room to walk and the openings were right next to each other so that it would be near impossible to get in and out of them. I said, why don’t we spin them the other way, creating rows instead of columns. Then we had easy access and a wide-open lane down the middle.
Thirty of the 41 in our platoon were issued MILES gear. I don’t know what that stands for, if it even is an acronym, but it turns you and your rifle into a player in a game of laser tag. There are big sensors around your helmet and a vest you wear with more sensors and a speaker, and a laser attached to your rifle. If you hit someone’s sensors with your laser beam, their speaker beeps until a DS turns a key.

That Sunday afternoon we went out to one of the “lanes” - an area designated for one of the planned activities - and recovered some “casualties.” When we got back to the FOB, our weapons should have been cleared, meaning empty of ammo. One soldier fired a blank round at the ground after we should have been cleared. There’s really no danger, but everyone takes that very seriously. He could have been written up for that. As punishment, he had to dig a grave for the soldier he would have killed. It wasn’t shallow. He’s kind of an odd guy, and the discharge was negligent, not accidental. He was a squad leader.

And then more hangman.

Some confusion on the wake-up time on Monday meant I didn’t have time to shave at all for the first time in BCT. Only one DS commented on it all day. I don’t think they expect glamour on a seven-day field excursion.

We raided a city on Monday; our platoon has four squads and we raided four buildings. Another platoon, 2nd, was the OPFOR, or the enemy. There were also innocent civilians from 2nd platoon as well, to add to the confusion. As before, foreigners, enemy or civilian, were dressed in inside-out ACU tops. Civilians had no gear on. We were wearing the MILES gear, though mine was broken.

I certainly get the overall concept of attack, don’t get killed, don’t shoot civilians, and don’t leave behind the dead and wounded, but when it comes down to the details I get lost. Add to that that people don’t always stick to the plan, either. Afterward we did an MR, after action review, with the DS’s and the permanent first sergeant. Everyone agreed we acted somewhat slowly, but overall we did well. In the end we were considered the best platoon at the exercise, with no help from me.

When we got back to the FOB, me and one of my good friends did CQ duty. There’s a nice, big tent where the NCO’s and officers do their paperwork, and we manned the radios for about three hours. It was actually pretty fun because we got to just sit and talk. Played lots of hangman.

No activities after dinner, and an early bedtime because we had to be up at 0200 for our big 15K (9.3 mile) road march the next day. No fireguard duty either. We start so early so that we can beat the heat.

We set out Tuesday morning at 0321 on the march. We finished at 0703: that’s two hours and 49 minutes of walking and the rest was two breaks and a 3-minute pause because someone left her rucksack. It was actually pretty easy, so that and the time it took make me think it was less than 15K. Whatever. This time our rucks were a lot lighter compared to the 10K because we left most of our stuff in our tents. No fallouts, amazingly. After the march, and breakfast, we were ordered to sleep - until lunch! After the nap we were OPFOR for the day and went around harassing the other platoons at the FOB and in the lanes. Didn’t do as much hangman that day.

Wednesday we had to guard the FOB all day. In the morning my friend and I did CQ duty again for two hours. More hangman! Then we joined the rest of the platoon in pulling security. There were two bunkers at the entrances and another al fresco bunker at the front gate. Some people manned those - three each - while others walked the perimeter or guarded the ammo point within the FOB. Anyone else was on the QRF - quick response force, I think - and they ran around when one of the posts got inundated by attacks. 4th platoon was the OPFOR team attacking us.

Thursday was the last day of Victory Forge. We had all our stuff packed and ready to go by 0530, then spent the whole morning walking around picking up trash and spent ammo. Finally got to go back at 1430 after sitting around for a few hours. In all of these letters I’ve tried to emphasize the unofficial motto of “hurry up and wait.” It’s very true.

The best thing about coming back to the barracks was eating in the cafeteria again. We all filled our plates. Hot-A’s and MRE’s are only good for so long. Plus we had a very light breakfast.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday are listed in the schedule as “Victory Forge recovery.” We’ve done twice as much work during the recovery as we did during Victory Forge itself. Thursday night we took apart our LCE’s (utility belt with suspenders) to be cleaned for inspections. Everything has to be cleaned: ponchos, canteens, rucksacks, PT/sleeping mats, helmet pads and covers, entrenching tool (shovel), wet weather tops and bottoms....and our weapons.

We all spent an hour and a half cleaning our own weapons on Thursday night. Friday morning several of us spent hours cleaning them again, assembly line style. It was a slow and confused assembly line. Weapon cleaning continued on through the afternoon and into the evening. Of course many people didn’t help at all. By 1900 we were told to stop and assemble what we had so they could be put away for the night. We’re about 75 percent done, maybe less.

The laundry room has been going nonstop for the last two days I had extra clothes, so I waited until today (Saturday) to even try to throw my clothes in.

On the one hand I’m thrilled that Victory Forge was so easy, but on the other hand I feel like I was cheated out of valuable training. Some things, like raiding the city, I wish we had done more than once. Since I’m active duty, I know I’ll have plenty more training ahead of me, though. If the MILES gear worked better, or if we had some newer equipment, then we could have done more combat/strategy stuff.

Now that we’re back we keep running into some new soldiers at the cafeteria. On Thursday we saw soldiers on day one of BCT. These companies are huge. As I said, ours has 163 soldiers in four platoons (and four squads per platoon). These summer cycles have 230-240 soldiers each. Still four platoons and four squads per company.

Our DS did a joke on one company. He pulled off his DS badges and his SSG rank and put on a patrol cap instead of the big brown round and jumped into another company’s formation as if he was a soldier. That company’s DS couldn’t figure out why they had an extra soldier, because it was day one and the DS’s didn’t know names and faces yet. They left anyway and as they were marching our DS took off running with DS’s in pursuit. Ah, basic training.

Friday me and another friend walked to the chow hall alone (long story) for lunch. We shuffled in with some of those newbies. It wasn’t a secret, especially because we were wearing a different uniform. Those newbies moved and ate so slowly! They’ll learn. Their DS’s seemed much more strict than ours.

Just like college, I won’t accept that it’s all over until it’s over. “Five days and a wake up” as they say. I can’t wait for AIT when we can have some independence again. Computer, iPod, Internet access, and the ability to go off post occasionally. I’ll be going to the same AIT as another friend of mine - same place, same MOS - so hopefully we can room together. He says at Ft. Eustis “we get treated like kings” as 15U’s. Two-man rooms, supposedly. Now that, I’m excited about. We still won’t be allowed to have a POV - personally owned vehicle - though. Also, I’m really looking forward to the training, learning about something I know I’ll enjoy.

The next letter I write will be after I graduate (Lord willing)!

J.McD.

BCT wk 07

2007-07-17T04:26:00.000+01:00

Week 9 - July 9 - BCT wk 7

I’m writing this letter on Wednesday night instead of Sunday because I don’t think I can send mail from the field. Friday afternoon we ship out for Victory Forge, our seven-day FTX (field training exercise).

Monday was Remogen (and not “Ramoggon” or whatever I said before). We threw two practice grenades, which produce a loud burst of smoke, and two live grenades. If you didn’t clear a certain point with the practice grenades, they’d write “CW” in chalk on your helmet. “CW” officially means “close to the wall” - meaning the bunker you threw it from - but most people, especially the DS’s and range cadre, say it stands for “chicken wing.” Fortunately, I threw it far enough.

Oh yeah, Sunday night the usual suspect did something wrong earlier in the day to get punished with two fireguard shifts that night. When it came time for the first shift, where he had to report to CQ (directly to the DS on shift), he outright refused to. That prompted a “toe the line” at, I think, 2145 in the bay. The DS started screaming, but the private stood his ground, so the DS tried reverse psychology - or something. He basically said, “What would you do if you were in my shoes?” The result was that the private reported for that shift but got the other one off. And the CQ shift was less than a half hour long. Something similar happened before with him, with the same anti-consequences. I don’t know what to think anymore.

I’ll tell you, though, I’d rather take him to war than a lot of the other soldiers I’ve met. He has respect for people. Some of those guys, I can see them leaving me stranded in a firefight if it meant that they could get out alive. I got ticked off at one guy, and his buddy, who was trying to cherry-pick the MRE he got. We never get to pick which MRE we eat (there’s about 40 different “menus”); you’re stuck with what you get pretty much. But as the MRE’s were being passed out, these two were standing up trying to get first crack. If they didn’t like what they grabbed, they’d throw it to someone else. I screamed at one of them. I hate things like that. It’s saying that they’re better than the rest of us, so we are stuck with the dregs of what’s left. How can I trust someone who’s always looking out for himself only? Skipping a fireguard shift when there are other people on the same shift really only affects the individual, but stepping on other people’s backs (figuratively) to get what you want affects us all.

Tuesday and Wednesday were buddy team movements. That’s where two people are advancing up a lane step by step. One runs for three to five seconds while the other lays down cover fire. Then they reverse so the other person can advance. On the courses there are obstacles you can use for concealment.

Tuesday was “Chip.” It’s not an acronym, it’s short for Chipyong-ni, a city in South Korea where some important battle or event happened. All these courses are dedicated to a famous event or a heroic person, and there’s a big sign at the entrance telling you the story. They usually don’t make us read the signs, but I always do. Anyway, at “Chip” we did a run down the lane with no ammo and with blanks.

Wednesday was Omaha Beach, which looked nothing like a beach. We did a dry run and one with blanks. When it came time to do a run with live ammo, there was a power outage over the whole base. That meant that the cheesy, perfunctory pop-up targets couldn’t operate, so that was it for the day. We de-loaded all the ammo from the magazines back into the clips then waited around until the scheduled buses arrived at 1530.

Tuesday night we were back at the barracks but there was some sort of screw-up with the food, so instead of eating at the chow hall (or DFAC, which I guess means “dining facility”), we had to eat hot-A’s at the barracks. Hot-A’s is the catered DFAC food I’ve mentioned before. They never give us enough food with hot-A’s.

Wednesday night that power outage shut down the DFAC long enough to where they couldn’t prepare dinner chow, so we had to eat MRE’s in the bay. I miss having normal food. I can’t wait to start cooking my own food again. I’m looking forward to that more than anything.

Thursday we’ll do “Batone” where we’ll fire some more weapons. Friday morning is our final PT test. This one counts, but if you don’t pass, you can try again after Victory Forge. The idea, though, is that you should be in shape before Victory Forge because it will take a lot out of you.

I can’t believe we’re almost at Victory Forge. After that, we’re done. We come back next Thursday and then clean, clean, clean until family day the week after. There will be one final inspection of the bay and all the stuff we’ve been issued; the battalion commander and CSM do the inspection and ask a bunch of off-the-wall questions, too.

Since it’s so close to the end, I’m going to have to ask that no one sends any more mail from here on out, or at least for the last week.
Pray for me!

J.McD.

BCT wk 06

2007-07-13T01:13:00.000+01:00

Week 8 - July 2-8 - BCT wk 06

The leadership found new ways to waste our time this week. We had a few long, boring days, and on a few of them didn’t get back to the barracks until after our normal bedtime. The Fourth of July was awesome here. Also, more adventures in singing.

Monday was the Night Infiltration Course, where you crawl in the dirt and live rounds are shot overhead. The cadre at the range said the last death on the course was in ‘03. There was an ambulance on site just in case. A lot of the guys said it was mostly blanks and the shots were all way above our heads. I thought I heard a couple of rounds pass by pretty close. That started at 2100 - when it got dark - but we got there at 1615, did a small obstacle course, and then waited around for three hours.

Tuesday we basically played around with some big scary weapons: the M203 grenade launcher, and a modified AT4. The AT4 is a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. It fires 84mm rounds (a pistol fires 9mm rounds; our MIG rifles fire 5.56mm) and is used to take out tanks. We fired really tiny bullets from it, but two people - the best male and female shooters - in the whole company got to fire a real round from it. We also did a sort of IED Easter egg hunt, walking along a trail to see if we could spot the 15 IED’s a DS had hidden. Most of us found four to six. We did all that by lunch and just killed time the rest of the day.

Thursday was the biggest waste of a day yet. We were doing reflexive fire with live rounds (Monday we went to the simulator to practice). Reflexive fire is shooting as fast as possible. You start with your weapon pointed at the ground but tucked in your shoulder so you can swing it up and shoot at a moment’s notice. We went to a range first thing in the morning, did one firing set (meaning the whole company got a chance to fire), then sat around until lunch, did another set, waited another couple of hours, got up to do another set and then half of us sat back down when they realized they wouldn’t have enough ammo for the night. So from around 1500 to 2100 we waited for it to get dark. Then we fired our last set using night goggles. Lights out, at the bay, was around midnight.

Friday and Saturday we had bay/bunk/locker inspections. Friday the CO (company officer, a 1LT) inspected our bay and didn’t say much, which is good. Saturday the first sergeant did the inspection. He’s a lot more thorough. We still did alright. After the inspection on Friday we had three hours of free time, diner, then wasted another two hours with the DS. Saturday we were done for the day by dinner, but still had to sit in the classroom with the DS until 1930 doing nothing.

We did actually do some constructive things on the Fourth - that may have been the most productive day of the week. We got up at our regular time, did an hour of PT, had two classes, and watched some cool video of Americans annihilating some enemy Iraqis. In the afternoon our DS let us watch the movie “Shooter,” about an ex-military sniper. (Our DS is a sniper, and will enter the Special Forces in November.)

At around 1830 our company (160-something soldiers) marched out to Hilton Field, the graduation field, to observe the festivities. We sang cadence the whole way there and when we marched to our section of the field, past all the civilians. The civilians weren’t on the field itself. This was the one day they let us eat all the pizzas, candy, soda, and Gatorade we wanted. (We did have to buy our food, of course.) From 1900 to 2030 we were released to do whatever we wanted. Everyone was pretty well-behaved, and all came back by 2030 for accountability. I was amazed.

At 2100 the “Torchlight Tattoo” started. Apparently “tattoo” comes from some Dutch word about lights or something. It began with a procession where they paraded out the flags of all the states (plus D.C., Puerto Rico, etc.) in order of accession and said their mottoes. Then the band played a few songs and the fireworks began. We got to sit right underneath the fireworks. I couldn’t even detect a delay between seeing the flash and hearing the blast. It’s the military - they don’t care if you get hurt. It was great. The whole base was there, and civilians packed the bleachers and wandered the grass behind, as well.

Friday night after lights out some of the guys were improvising a parody of one of the cadences we sing; theirs was about a sick call. OK, I guess I need to give you a little background. If someone is sick enough to visit the doctor, they go on sick call. The drill sergeants mock sick call people to no end. Instead of saying “left, right, left,” they’ll chant “crutch, ready, crutch” at somone on crutches. I don’t think it’s meant to be mean; it’s just something you have to take if you’re sick. It seems like some people do abuse sick call, though.

The guys in our bay only had one or two lines about sick call, but I thought there was enough material to make an entire cadence about it. So Friday night I pulled out a pad of paper and we all worked on it. I did come up with a lot of the lyrics, but it was others that got the ball rolling, and a lot of good suggestions made their way into the song.

We did a rough version a couple of times yesterday, and our DS helped refine it. Today was the first time we did the polished version in front of everyone. The DS’s think it’s great and our platoon loves it, too. Our PG, who hates cadences, can’t get enough of it. He’s the one who I mentioned last week that invented a new MOS for fallouts. That got incorporated into the song, too.

Every night we toe the line in our bays for accountability; last night the whole company just formed up outside. We were out there for 45 minutes. At the end the CQ DS asked for one volunteer from each bay who could “halfway sing and knows the national anthem.” I waited about 30 seconds and no one came forward from our bay, so I said I’d do it. There were no complaints. The four of us got up there and the DS had one more female get up there to even it out. DS said we sounded pretty good, “even if none of [us] will be the next American Idol.” I got a few compliments of my own, and people said I was the loudest. I think the others were timid.

You know, my goal for BCT was to hopefully fade into the background and not be noticed. At first I stood out because my lack of physical coordination shined, then I became known as “the Brain,” even by DS’s from other platoons. Lately singing has been the theme. Also, a DS from 4th platoon took note of my unusually large forehead (or “fivehead”). He just learned my name recently, he said. I don’t know much about him either. I don’t take offense at any of this - it’s all in good fun, and at least I’m not remembered for being a screw-up.

My goofiness goes over well in the platoon, too. I expected Army guys to be all hardcore, macho bullies. Hardly anyone is, probably because if you’re too serious, you’d go crazy. There are some jerks in the other platoons, but our guys are pretty cool. Yeah, discipline isn’t our forte, but we get along with each other.

J.McD.

BCT wk. 05

2007-07-10T04:09:00.000+01:00

Week 7 - June 25-July 1 - BCT wk. 05

Looking back on the last week in my journal, I guess it was an eventful week, but it feels like we didn’t do much and it just flew by. The most interesting event was one that wasn’t on the schedule.

Monday was a trip to another one of those oversized playgrounds; it’s called the Confidence Course. The coolest obstacle was the "slide to victory." There’s a rope that starts about 50 feet in the air and ends about 10 feet off the ground, about 300 feet away. You get strapped in a harness and slide down the rope on pulleys. It was easy because you’re strapped in and all you have to do is fall. One woman - she’s 36, I think - was petrified to go down. She climbed up there well enough, but she had a panic attack at the top and vehemently refused to go down. A first sergeant had to convince her. Another girl, who is scared of everything, went down but cried when she got off. She was saying she’s like to transfer to the Marines. Yeah, sure.

Some people, I wonder why they’re in the Army. I know some - OK, everyone - thinks that of me, but I’m eager about it. I’m not afraid of any challenges. I don’t care who you are, how strong or fit you are, etc; the one thing you must have is the courage to try new, difficult things. If you don’t, you don’t deserve to be defending this country. What are these people going to do in Iraq? Cry when a bomb goes off? Yes, they have paper-pushing MOS’s, but everyone stands a real chance of being smack in the middle of combat.

Anyway, Tuesday to Thursday we spent three days/two nights in the field. It began at 0515 with a 10k (6.2 mile) road march that took three hours and 20 minutes, including about 50 minutes of breaks. Almost everyone was complaining that we marched more than six miles, but I’m pretty sure it was six, and someone said he was counting mile markers and verified that it was six. I think we’ve been spoiled with shorter marches.

The time we were out in the field went very slow. The drill sergeants promised a bit of downtime, and delivered. We were completely done for the day at about 1800 both nights.
We practiced more urban ops on Wednesday and Thursday - that’s storming into rooms/buildings. Tuesday we practiced getting on and off a 2½- and 5-ton truck A couple of times we did urban ops on a "city" of six buildings and a "mosque." The first time we had to catch an enemy, played by a DS, and the second time we had to rescue one of our soldiers.
Friday 25 of us each got to drink a bottle of Gatorade - labeled, not from a powder, ice cold. Made my day. We were doing part detail, which consisted of picking up trash and sweeping and spraying weed killer at various parking lots near the company. When we got back I participated in a survey for the battalion CSM and commander. I had a lot to say (well, write).

Friday afternoon our new DS’s came. One just transferred from 2nd platoon to us. The other guy is this tall, lanky, goofy-looking guy who doesn’t like to look up all the time. He’s actually kind of cool, though, and is big on discipline. He doesn’t yell, but people listen.

Saturday we spent seven hours getting fitted for and issued our Class A and Class B uniforms - the fancy ones, basically suits. We actually got back early from that, so to kill time, the new DS organized a venting session. Each person had their turn to say anything they liked or disliked about the platoon in general or people in specific, and we could name names if we wanted. It was pretty fun and almost everyone had a lot to say. Most of it was critical, but in a constructive way. But we hadn’t even gotten through the first row of people when people started voicing their opinions out of turn. I can’t stand that because it punishes the people who wait their turn and respect those who haven’t talked yet. So when it was my turn, that’s what I spoke to.

Oh yeah, and then about ¾ the way through, two females started bickering at each other; the DS told them to be quiet and they showed no signs of stopping; then the DS ran over just in time to prevent a fight from breaking out. It took four or five females to hold back one girl and push her into the latrine. She’s easily the loudest female in the platoon, if not the company. I haven’t heard of any disciplinary action yet.

I’ve mentioned before that us 3rd platoon males share a bay with half of the 2nd platoon. This week was more of the same stuff during the night where 2nd platoon does something stupid, like spray shaving cream or put toothpaste in people’s hands (Saturday), then we all have to wake up when the CQ DS comes in screaming. 2nd is the only platoon still in Red Phase. We go to Blue Phase tomorrow, I think.

Only "25 days and a wake-up" left to go. The last week is just cleaning up the bays. In the next two weeks we have NIC, the night infiltration course, where we have to crawl under live fire - bullets flying overhead; Omaha, which also involves live fire; and Rounoggan (sp?), where we throw fake grenades for distance and accuracy, and we have to throw one live grenade to graduate. The last useful week of BCT is Victory Forge, which is a seven-day excursion where we apply everything we’ve learned. It includes something like a 10-mile and 15-mile foot march. We’re less than two weeks away from that.

The other day our DS said that I should have done Army intelligence when he was looking at my ASVAB and composite scores. It got me thinking. I’m excited about doing helicopter repair right now, and have no intention of changing that (and it’s really tought to change your MOS, I understand), but it’s a thought. I’ve also thought a lot about going officer eventually, but, again, I know the path I’m on now is what I need right now.

Our PG came up with a new MOS. An MOS is your job. I’m 15 U (pronounced "fifteen uniform"), and PG’s is 63 B ("bravo"). He gets tired of people complaining about the heat and falling out of road marches, so he calls those people "62 fallouts." Don’t ask why, but we find this hilarious.

That’s all for this week.

J.McD.

BCT week 04

2007-06-28T23:20:00.000+01:00

Week 6 - June 18-24 - BCT week 04

I’m told today is the halfway point of BCT. I’m a little sad in a way, but mostly excited. Either way, I hate putting dates on things that are over a month away.

This week tensions rose as more authority and responsibility was shifted from the DS’s to the soldiers. Also this week was BRM qualifications.

First, an interesting event: last Sunday night, about 2 a.m., we had an exorcism. There’s this simpleton in our platoon who has a lot of self-inflicted problems. I could write an eight-page letter just about him. Anyway, there’s another guy who is really religious and he decided that the simpleton had some demons that needed to be released. I was half awake for this, and I think I heard chanting in Hebrew and then something in English, about the Holy Spirit. Then the simpleton started speaking in tongues. There’s always a drill sergeant on duty during the night for CQ (no idea what that stands for), and the CQ DS that night happened to be our DS. So he comes in and doesn’t say a whole lot, which is kind of like him anyway, but I think he just didn’t know what to say. He asked if the exorcisee was OK, then said “Now I’m going to have to figure out what to write in my CQ log,” since people were out of their bunks after lights out.

Everyone was either excited or mortified because of BRM (basic rifle marksmanship) qualifications. These are rewards for the highest score, like pizza and a movie, an extra day off before graduation, and a 30-minute phone call. The flip side is that there was a rumor that if you didn’t qualify (23 out of 40 targets hit), you’d have to restart BCT at week 1. It’s not true, but you hate to miss any graduation requirements.

Monday we went to the EST simulator. (I think before I said it was ETS.) The qualification range has targets at 50, 100, 200, 250 and 300 meters. The simulator used 75, 175 and 300 meter targets. The best I did was 23 of 44 on the simulator. I had done so well last week.
Tuesday we went to a practice range with 75, 175 and 300 meter targets. Everyone went at least twice; I went six times and didn’t meet the standard.

Wednesday and Thursday was pre-qualifications on the same range we qualified on, on Friday. Here’s how it works: You get two 20-round magazines. First you shoot at 20 targets in the prone supported position - that’s laying down and propping up the rifle on your elbows and resting the barrel of the rifle on sandbags. Next you do 10 in the prone unsupported position, which is with no sandbags. Then you do the last 10 in the kneeling position. There are two 50-meter targets, one left and one right. All the others are more or less in the center. The order that the targets pop up is in the same for every lane, every time, every year, pre-qual and qualifications. Everyone has a list of the order of the targets. The DS’s encourage you to memorize the order.

Wednesday, after four tries, the best I did was a 21. Thursday, after four more tries, my best was a 22 (on the first try). Friday, qualification day, I shot twice before lunch and got a 15 and a 14. After lunch, all the people who didn’t qualify just kept shooting until they qualified, or until about 1615 (4:15 p.m.), when the bosses came back. I was the first one after lunch to qualify, thanks to some very specific one-on-one coaching from one of our DS’s. I’m so relieved to be done with it.

One day last week a DS from 4th platoon marched us back from chow and led a cadence that we had never heard before. He has a great voice and we all really liked the cadence. I’d sing it in or around the bay occasionally (a 15’ by 20’ shower echoes really well), and everyone liked the way I sang it. Friday night we were back in the bay with our regular DS and some of my fellow soldiers decided I should try it in front of him. The DS said he had heard it before, and said it was stupid because 4th platoon sings it. A good introduction. (A cadence is when one person, usually the one leading the march, sings a verse that is in step with the march and the platoon repeats it.) Obviously we weren’t marching inside the classroom, but we did the cadence anyway. I belted out the cadence with the help of the platoon, and the DS said that he had a new perspective on me and that I earned “two cool points, which is a lot in my book.” I’ll take that over sharpshooter any day.

Discipline is deteriorating further here at Relaxin’ Jackson. Three of the four platoons in our company are back on Red Phase; we’re the only one that’s still in White, and that by a thread.
Within our platoon (41 soldiers - by the way, Pine-Sol guy left on Wednesday, probably to be discharged), we have a Platoon Guide, four squad leaders (commanding 10-11 soldiers each), and an Assistant PG. The squad leaders are the frontline in formations but also are accountable for their soldiers at all times. The PG is accountable for everyone at all times.

Two of the squad leaders wanted another one to be fired because she talked too much or didn’t march correctly or whatever. We also tried to get together to rehearse a new cadence that some of our guys wrote, and it was near impossible to get everyone to shut up and just listen. Everyone had an opinion, plus they were arguing about the squad leader. She’s still a squad leader, by the way. Other non-squad leaders think they’d do a better job; one squad arbitrarily split themselves into alpha and bravo groups. Now I hear about how these people don’t want this person in their squad, or that alpha is better than bravo, etc. No one wants to just get the job done quietly. Well, not no one, but it seems that way.

The last few days, one guy in our platoon was yelled at by a female DS for not wearing a shirt in the bay and having his underwear half exposed; another was sleeping on top of the washer/dryers during his fireguard shift, in the wrong uniform; and another was taking a shower during his fireguard shift. Someone in another platoon (but in our bay) went into a DS’s office and used his phone. Brilliant.

Finally, we had our third PT test yesterday. I did one less push-up, but improved on my sit-ups and 2-mile run. I attribute that to technique and health more than improved physical finess.
Oh, and I’ve acquired the nickname “Brain,” in honor of Pinky and the Brain. The guy that got exorcised - he’s Pinky. But usually they just refer to me.

J.McD.

BCT week 3

2007-06-21T20:42:00.000+01:00

Week 5 - June 11-17 - BCT wk. 03

This week - and next week - is all about BRM - Basic Rifle Marksmanship. It was the first time we had live ammo in our weapons. We also spent two nonconsecutive nights in the woods for the first time. On Tuesday we entered the White Phase, which is supposed to emphasize individual responsibility and teamwork.

Monday we did an FTX - field training exercise - and stayed overnight. It seems that the only reason for staying overnight was for the experience. The FTX included a few classes on first aid, radios, checkpoints, detaining people, levels of force and clearing a room (busting down the door and trying not to get shot). At night there was a thunderstorm and we had to hid in the LPA - lightning protection area. A few of us were quietly singing country songs to kill time.
While setting up camp - we camp in buddy teams just like everything else - one person would set up while the other would lay in the prone fighting position to keep watch. Our tent is called a “hooch” and consists of two ponchos snapped together plus some poles and stakes. As with most times we go in the field, lunch is an MRE and breakfast and dinner are hot meals, essentially catered. (It’s just like the food at the DFAC.)

Tuesday in the field we practiced formations for road marching: the wedge, which looks like a flock of birds; columns; and single file. Then we broke in to two teams: the enemy and the good guys. The enemy, which I was a part of, set up on the sides of a dirt road, laying low, getting ready to ambush the good guys. A drill sergeant led the good guys and a cadet (West Point) led us. They were both trying to outsmart each other; neither knew the other’s plans. The DS led his team through the woods parallel to the road we expected them to walk down, so they attacked us from behind, but half of our team was still free to counterattack. When we were done we sat around and discussed what happened. I wish we could do that every day. I guess that’s a big part of what they teach at West Point.

Tuesday afternoon was the beginning of White Phase - we were in Red this whole time. Our DS appointed a PG (platoon guide) the day before, and he assumes a lot of responsibilities that the DS’s were doing. There will be more transfer of power in the future, having soldiers lead formations and even PT. Our PG is one of the five of us from Massachusetts, and he’s a good guy. (Another of the five is PG of the 4th platoon and another one was our PG at reception.) The DS’s say that they will not be as controlling of us now. That doesn’t mean we’ll be punished less; it means we have to watch each other to make sure everything gets done that needs to be done. Like cleaning the bay during fireguard shifts. They also promise we’ll have more free time at night.

Wednesday we marched out to the firing range to get acquainted with it. It was about a 2 to 2½ mile march. We didn’t use ammo; we were just getting accustomed to proper procedures. After that we used the ETS simulator, which is like a big video game. It uses a modified MIGA2 rifle with sensors all in it, and there’s a 30- or 40-foot long screen with targets on it. The computer gives tons of feedback, not only displaying where you shot, but how much you were tilting the barrel and how much pressure you apply to the trigger over time. The idea was to group six consecutive shots within a 4cm circle at a distance of 25m. That means you’re accurate enough to hit a 300m target. It doesn’t have to be centered, because we adjust the sights on the rifle to zero it.

Thursday we started grouping for real. Even with 80 firing lanes, it still takes forever to get 160-odd people to do anything. Every three shots we’d walk down the range 25 meters to the target and a DS would inspect our shots. Everyone fired at least nine sets of three rounds to try to group. I was close the whole time, and on set 7, I officially grouped within a 4cm circle. The 8th set, I hit all three shots in a 2cm circle within that 4cm circle.
Friday we zeroed our weapons, using six sets of three rounds. After those six sets I was pretty much zeroed, but the DS wanted me to go again to make sure. When I went again, of the first six I hit three dead center, two just outside the circle and one was off. Of the next six, five were dead center and one was off.

We stayed the night at the range on Thursday night so that we could fire early on Friday to beat the heat. It ended up raining more than anything. Another thunderstorm sent us to the LPA that evening, and when the thunder was gone - but not the rain - we walked over to our campsite. It was pouring like crazy until we had our hooches set up. Our DS, an infantry guy, says, “If it ain’t raining, it ain’t training!”

Friday morning the first sergeant (he’s in charge of all the DS’s) was upset about how long grouping had taken the day before, so he had us do three-minute chow for breakfast. You get your food from a short assembly line and walk along a table about 100 feet long, eating the whole time. Whatever you don’t finish by the time you hit the end of the table, too bad.
Saturday we went to the LOMAH range. Sensors track the Location of Misses and Hits. It’s not a simulator; you use your rifle with live ammo. Targets pop up at 75m, 175m, and 300m. The targets are human silhouettes. It’s similar to what we’d have to qualify on, but slower. For qualification we’d need to hit 23 of 40 targets. I hit 26.

While some of us were waiting to go to LOMAH, we got to talking about the drill sergeants (we got new ones on Friday afternoon) and physical punishment. The four of us were from three different platoons and we all agreed that the DS’s have been too lenient. They don’t keep in line the people who want to be individuals, and we haven’t had the physical training (via punishment) that we wanted in order to get in good shape. I’ve been hearing those complaints a lot lately. I think I mentioned last week that our platoon actually asks to be punished at times. The DS’s are nice people, and it’s nice that they don’t yell at us all day, but I can’t remember the last smoking we had. Also, with all of these road marches, it’s been a while since we’ve done PT. They did it on LOMAH day, but I was on detail (being a “gopher”), so I missed PT, so for me it’s been over a week since I’ve done PT.

It’s funny. Just now as I’m writing this, our DS came in and chewed out a few people for having contraband - sweets from the chow hall. He gave this speech about personal discipline and threatened to check everyone’s lockers, but didn’t and never yelled. On one level I appreciate the trust and the guilt-trip approach, but it’s the same people who always get in trouble that got caught now. These people need discipline.

Things are so disorganized here sometimes. The unofficial Army motto is “hurry up and wait.” We spend so much time waiting around for other people to do something. And we all learn more and more each day how to beat the system. But when a new set of DS’s come in, or when the first sergeant is right in front of us, everyone gets in line and acts motivated. Yes, it’s hypocritical, but at the same time it means that these guys can buckle down when they need to. Of course, being good only when someone is looking in Iraq means being alert all the time. Can they handle that, or will they get lazy and put people’s lives at risk?
J. McD.

BCT wk 02

2007-06-15T01:37:00.000+01:00

Week 4 - June 4-10 - BCT wk 02
It’s been a very active week. We had five road marches, a land navigation course, a teamwork development course, the bayonet assault course, the “fit to win” obstacle course, the gas chamber and a second PT test. And we got some free time.

The road marches were about 1½ miles each way and we were carrying a rucksack that was mostly empty, an LCE (basically a utility belt canteens of water), and on three of them we wore our ACH helmets. I don’t care how much stuff I have on my back, but wearing those helmets are a killer. Because of high school and college, I guess I’m used to carrying a lot of weight on my back and walking around. But those helmets are hot and don’t wick away sweat like our caps do.
Yeah, believe it or not, it’s hot in South Carolina. The Army has this system of “heat categories” where Heat Cat IV (five) is the most severe. We hit Cat V pretty much every day. The other day it was over 100 degrees.

So many people have gotten injured or fainted from the heat/dehydration. They tell us we’re supposed to drink 12 quarts of water per day (but no more than that!) and we have these “hydration beads,” which is like a little lanyard that hooks onto your collar with 12 beads that slide up and down so you can keep track of how much you’ve drank during the day. We also carry around a two-quart canteen everywhere we go. Now I sweat more than anyone, and I never drink 12 quarts of water - more like six - but I’m doing alright. It’s somewhat exaggerated that we need to drink so much water because we have to go to the bathroom all the time if we drink water when we’re just sitting around.

Monday we had classes on land nav and Tuesday we went on the course. Map reading is the one thing I’ve really understood easily from the get-go, and of course we had three days of instruction on it. All it is is reading off the coordinates on a map and calculating distances and angles. Some people had a tough time with that, but to me it’s just trigonometry. To find the distance between two map coordinates, we were told to take a piece of paper, put the edge of the paper on one point, put a tick mark on the other point, then take the paper and put it against the scale on the map. If I had a calculator, I could just take the coordinates and use the Pythagorean theorum to find the distance. I wouldn’t even need to see the map (I need a calculator to do a square root.) I’d be way more accurate, too.

Monday we walked a stretch of 100 meters (the length of a football field) and counted how many paces it took. This then served as a guide for us in the field to mark off distances. That night we were given the course we had to navigate - every group had a different set of points - and we calculated the distance from one point to the next and the angle, or azimuth, we had to walk in. If we calculated and walked correctly, we’d end up at an orange and white post labeled with a letter and marked with its map coordinates. We got off course a couple of times and meandered our way to some other post, then charted a course from there to the post we should have been at.

Wednesday was the teamwork development course. It is a series of logic puzzles - physical ones - of which we only did three. The first was the destroyed bridge. There were ramps on each side and six posts in between, unevenly spaced. We were given three different sized boards and a drum, and we had to get all of these and our seven-member team across in 20 minutes. There were also restrictions, the biggest being we couldn’t touch the “water,” which was a gravel pit. We came close to finishing that one.
The second puzzle was similar to the first but trickier. No one finished that. The third one we did finish.

Thursday was the bayonet assault course and the pugle sticks. For the BAC we took our rifles, attached a bayonet, and ran through an obstacle course which included crawling under barbed wire suspended about 18 inches off the ground. I was exhausted after that because we had to wear our helmets through the whole thing.
The pugil sticks are those things that look like giant Q-tips that you’d see on “American Gladiators.” One end is red and the other black, representing the bayonet and butt stock ends of a rifle. That was for fun more than anything.

Friday was our second PT test. I improved and passed easily this time. The night before a PT test they’re not allowed to physically punish us, and they let us go to bed an hour earlier. It helped. I did 43 pushups, 56 sit-ups (2 min. each) and a 14:48 2-mile run. I’m very happy with the run. No road march on Friday either.

Saturday was the gas chamber and “fit to win” course. The gas is CS (cyanide something or other) and they gave us masks and put about 50 of us in at a time. First we had to lift up our masks and say our last name, first name, rank, and Social Security number (followed by “drill sergeant”). At the end we had to take our masks all the way off and recite the soldier’s creed, or at least breathe the gas in for 15 seconds. We were told that we’d all be throwing up and it would clear out any cold we had. Neither thing happened - I still have this cold. I was looking forward to getting my cold cleared up. A couple people did throw up, though.

People get so nervous at these events; in the gas chamber there was a little bit of stinging around the edge of the mask when we first walked in, like just after you shave, and people were whining, “ahh, it hurts.” Wimps. It’s not like they’re going to let us die. C’mon.

Next week - Monday - we camp out for the first time overnight. We’ll be entering White Phase soon - we’re in Red now. I don’t really know what that means, but I hear it means that training is supposed to be easier - or harder - or it makes no difference.

As far as my actual experiences here, it’s been cool. Most of the soldiers in my platoon are alright guys (we don’t talk to the females too much). Some don’t know when to shut up and get us all in trouble, and they don’t care because they like the exercise. The DS’s have been good and don’t push the weak ones too hard. But like I said before, if we weren’t pushed a little, we wouldn’t improve.

The guys that have a wife and/or children have it the toughest. No one has dropped out yet, and the guy who drank Pine-Sol is back, but he’ll probably be discharged soon. We have to keep a constant watch on him. There’s a lot of National Guard soldiers here, so they know that if they can just get through BCT and AIT, they’ll be home soon. Early on a lot of guys wanted to go home, but we gathered around and talked them into staying, and the DS’s and the chaplain comforted them, too. People who you’d think would never make it now seem like they’ll all tough it out. Plus, the Army doesn’t let you get out easily before your contract is up. And they say it’s easier to get out after basic training than before.

All of this is still outside of my comfort zone, but I am getting more used to it every day. I stumble around a lot but I’m growing in confidence, which is the whole point. Respecting the DS’s is still heavily enforced, but we are more able to talk to them on a more personal level now. Our DS actually smiles and jokes with us now (and not just at our expense).

I’m still looking forward to AIT, though.

2007-06-12T21:31:00.001+01:00

Week 2 - May 21-27 - BCT

I’ll skip to the interesting part: My address at BCT is:

SPC Jason McDermott
E Company, 1st Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment
3rd Platoon, “Warlords”
Fort Jackson, S.C. 29207

The second line can be abbreviated as
E Co., 1-13th Inf. Reg.

OK, so Monday-Wednesday we were still at the 120th reception battalion waiting to ship to BCT. Monday I got my dog tags. The week before they asked us what our religious preference was. I stated “church of Christ,” knowing they wouldn’t have it on the list, but the sergeant wrote it down, and my tags say “CHURCHES - CHR,” which is close enough. A girl passed out (we didn’t do any exercise there!) and was taken away in an ambulance. One of the drill sergeants said it was because she wasn’t eating or drinking enough. Also on Monday, we had a “briefing” where the nice people from Chase Bank passed out brochures about their credit cards for members of the military. It was actually not a bad offer for kids with no credit history.

Tuesday I got glasses. They’re -0.50 in each eye. I always figured I needed them, and these do help, but I just don’t like the idea of wearing them. the army ones are called BCG’s. I hear that stands for “basic combat glasses,” but everyone says it’s for “birth control glasses.” They are the ugliest things, with gigantic frames, probably for strength. We’re supposed to wear them for two weeks straight to get used to them, but they fog upso much when we work out (at BCT) that I just stopped using them except when I need it, which is for distance reading. The black elastic strap around the back of your head really completes the ensemble.

Wednesday was nap day.

Thursday morning, at about 1000 (10 a.m.), we actually shipped out to BCT. We got on buses and had to keep our heads down the whole time. When we arrived, we ran over to a gravel area and did some warm-up exercises, then ran part of an obstacle course. That was actually pretty fun. Our lunch was these shrink-wrapped packages with lunch box type food; Chef Boyardee meat ravioli, Pringles, oatmeal cookies, chicken salad, and a bun wrapped with silica gel (“Do not eat!”), and other stuff. Then we walked around the woods a little and did some basic drill and ceremony (D&C). Once we got to the barracks, the DS’s took the reins off. I forgot why, but someone did something wrong and we all got smoked. (“Smoked” means punished.) We did pushups until we couldn’t do any more and then turned over and did flutter kicks – lying on your back and moving your legs like you’re walking. It was horrible. The day didn’t end until 2030 (8:30 p.m.), and lights out is at 2100. There’s no free time to write or get organized or anything.

Friday was another big, tiring day. That night, at around 3 a.m. (that’s Saturday morning) we had another suicide attempt – maybe. A guy is in the hospital because, it is believed, he drank Pine-Sol. He was in a coma for a while.

Saturday we had our first PT test: two minutes to do pushups, two minutes for situps, and a two-mile run. I was five pushups shy of passing the whole thing; only eight people out of 41 passed in our platoon. I should have struggled to do the extra five.

We got our weapons on Saturday as well. They’re M16A2 rifles, and we can never call them “guns.” Ever. We haven’t used them with live ammo yet, though.

I skipped church services on Sunday. I had misgivings about the service at reception, and I wanted to finally get organized. I did, which was nice.

Week 3 – May 28-June 3 - BCT wk 01

This was the first enumerated week of BCT, even though I’ve been in South Carolina for 2 1/2 weeks, so there’s still eight more weeks to go.
I’ve spent the last week trying to catch up on everything, which is why I’ve been so late in sending these letters. We’ve learned the DS’s kind of turn a blind eye on the whole staying up after 2100 – we still have to be in the bunk and be quiet, but no one complains if we sit in bed with a flashlight. I’ve pretty much stayed up an extra two hours every night, plus I’ve had fireguard duty (a one-hour shift) more than half the time, so I run about five hours of sleep a night. It’s worth it, though. I’d rather have peace of mind than sleep.

We still have a lot of sleep-inducing classroom teaching, but we’ve been doing things outside more. They punish us a lot less outside, and we get to interact with each other. The overall rule is that we’re not ever supposed to talk to each other during they day, but when given the chance, we’d rather talk and be punished than be brainwashed robots. Peace of mind over physical suffering. Of course, some people just can’t shut up.

I’m really starting to enjoy this now. The first few days was meant to scare us, but we’re getting more comfortable with the system now.

We had three drill sergeants to start; one active duty and two reserves. The active duty guy is here for the whole nine (or 10 1/2) weeks; the two reservists went home at the end of this week. One of the reservists was the harshest DS – he smoked us on our first day. We all despised him at first but by the end we hated to see him go. He was serious when he needed to be but cool when he wanted to be. We all really miss him. Three reservists replaced the two that left. They act really nice, which scares me profoundly. The thing is, they don’t single people out for punishment much, they just smoke us all, which is a pain. Some of these guys need individual discipline, and a lot of it.

Friday was Victory Tower. It looks like an oversized playground. There’s a 65-foot repel wall, a cargo (??) net to climb down, and a set of three ropes – two to climb across and one we had to crawl down. It was a blast. I think everyone who went completed the course, but some had to be convinced.

Sunday I tried the Bible study again, but skipped any worship service. Since it’s a different area of Ft. Jackson, I was hoping the class might be more to my liking. It was okay again, but not what I want. It was nice to get away from the barracks for about an hour and a half, though. I don’t know if I’ll go next week.

I think I’m caught up now in writing these letters and in my journal. I’ll try to keep up in the future.

Send letters!

And one last thing: don’t send contraband – they will check it! No cookies or candy or anything.
SPC J.McD.

New address

2007-06-12T19:03:00.000+01:00

I will post Jason's newest letter soon but in the meantime he says this is the address to send him mail (no food or anything else, please):

SPC Jason McDermott
E Company
1st Battalion
13th Infantry Regiment
3rd Platoon
Fort Jackson, S.C. 29207

In the Army now

2007-05-25T00:34:00.000+01:00

I went to Jason's oath of enlistment May 16 in Boston at the Barnes Military Building and then had to say goodbye. He called at 11 p.m. to say he was at Ft. Jackson in South Carolina.

A letter from him came today, May 25, and he asked me to post it so here goes!

..................

First week - May 16-May 20 - BCT wk. 00

These four days have been long, but we really haven't done all that much. It takes forever to do anything because there are so many of us.

I'm in C ("Charlie") company, 83rd platoon, and I'm roster number 522. There's about 56 guys in our platoon, maybe another 50-60 in the 82nd, and then about 20-30 females. Yeah, we can't go near the females. If we're behind one in line, like in the chow hall, we must stay 5 feet behind. We cannot talk to them; they certainly cannot be in our barracks; and if any are on our floor (like to do laundry), they yell "Females on the floor!" and we must make sure to be properly dressed and stay out of their way.

This is just processing this week. Wednesday I started out at MEPS in Boston (Military Entrance Processing Station) where we had a mini-physical (basically height and weight), the official oath, a travel briefing, and then they bused us all to the airport according to where we were going. There were Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force there going to forts all over the country. The night before we stayed at the Hilton in Woburn. Nice. My roommate and I watched "American Idol."

There were five of us from the Boston MEPS going to Ft. Jackson. We were scheduled for the 2:13 p.m. flight to Washington/Dulles (that's D.C.), then a connecting flight to Columbia, S.C. at 7:40. There was a heavy thunderstorm over D.C., so we couldn't leave Logan until about 5:45 p.m., with many false starts in between. We arrived in D.C. at 7:30 p.m., but our second flight was delayed until 8:45 p.m. - if it wasn't delayed, we would have missed it because our departure gate was clear across the airport from our arrival gate. Also, once we finally left Boston, the pilot told us Logan had just closed. We just made it out in time.

We got to Columbia about 10:30 p.m., but had to wait for a set of recruits arriving at 12:45 a.m., so we didn't leave there until 1 a.m. We bused over to Ft. Jackson at 1:30-2:00. They went easy on us until then, but we did not have a warm reception when we arrived. We filed into a big room, and received our paperwork. They put such fear into us about if we filled out anything wrong, or if we took too long to do it. (Yes, this is all at 2 a.m.) Then we went into another room and had to empty out our bags. We were barked at to separate all our personal items we could keep, but not have in BCT (basic combat training), the things we could bring, and the things we had to throw away or were illegal to have. (No punishment, though.) We had to scramble to sort it all out. We then went downstairs and got some Army PT clothes - shorts, T-shirts and sweats. There were some speeches in between, and this took us to about 4-4:30 a.m.

At that point we went to our barracks (bunks) for the first time. We didn't know what to do at that point. Some soldiers who had been there a week and were about ready to go to BCT told us about morning formation at 5 a.m., so that probably saved us from getting in trouble. Some people napped in that half hour in between, but most didn't.

After formation was breakfast (that's essentially the point of any formation - to get us organized to eat or go somewhere), and then all day and night was medical processing and other things like going to the PX to pick up "optional" and necessary supplies. I think haircuts were the first day, too. Everyone was nodding off on the benches or in line all day.

They also gave us canteens and a book to carry around all day. The canteens are because we should stay hydrated all day. The books are called "smart books" and contain things we should know and will be quizzed on later. We have to memorize the "Soldier's Creed," the "General Orders" (about guard duty), and ranks and insignias.

The sergeants expected us to be silent at all times except in the barracks. Even on the first day, we were yelled at about that, but the rules were pretty lax. Now it's more serious. We never go anywhere alone. When not in a group, we must have a "battle buddy" to go somewhere. To talk to a sergeant (and probably officers, too), you need a battle buddy, unless you are standing in a sea of people. When addressing a sergeant you must stand at parade rest (that's feet apart and hands on the small of your back) and end every statement with "sergeant" or "drill sergeant" if it's a DS. (Or you can start the sentence that way.) People have already been chewed out for not doing that. At the end of the day, we found out that one soldier already asked to go home. (And he was singled out by the sergeant.) It was all pretty overwhelming. I starting doubting myself, too. We finally got some sleep that night (about 7 to 7 1/2 hours) and I felt great after that.

The next day (Friday) was more boring processing stuff. We got our ACU's (the green digital camouflage uniform) that day. I felt so much more confident that day, more comfortable with everything. I started enjoying it all on Friday. When we were waiting around in medical, one guy, who was not in our company, had a book - like a paperback novel - in his possession. That's against the rules. The sergeant absolutely chewed him out for that. They patted him down and made him empty his pockets and everything. I don't know what happened to him after that.

We really didn't do anything on Saturday, since all the offices are closed. One of the drill sergeants gave us this really cool speech, which lasted about an hour, about why he went in the Army, and about this soldier he trained as a DS. The Army really is the only option for some people - if they want to ever do anything with their life. The speech really lifted our spirits and inspired us.

I'm including Sunday in this letter (even though I think of it as the beginning of the next week) because something different finally happened - church. We signed up Saturday for either Protestant or Catholic service/Mass. I heard that the Protestant service is pretty generic. It was. They handed out Bibles, the chaplain read one scripture, didn't tell us where it was (chapter nor verse) and said "That's God's Word for today." What?! Why did they pass out the Bibles? After that, a guitar-wielding contemporary Christian wannabe sang some songs and told some stories. He was cool, but it was not what I was looking for for worship.

Next, in another room, they had a Bible study sponsored by Military Ministries, a division of Billy Graham's Campus Crusade for Christ. That was actually a lot better than the worship service, but still a bit too denominational for me. They passed out little Bibles to keep - NT, Psalms and Proverbs - at the Bible study; the cover was the Marine-style camouflage - green, black and brown. At MEPS an old Navy guy who was with the Gideons passed out similar little Bibles with the Army-style digital camouflage. Those look cooler. Now I have three Bibles here.

There's still a few more days of processing ahead before we go to BCT. Some have to get ID's, dog tags, more shots; some have to have to finish up at PAB (financial office) and sort out clothes.
I'm sure some of these guys will get us in trouble in BCT.

...............

I'm an engineer! (mechanical, not sanitation)

2007-05-08T04:18:00.000+01:00

Yep, I finally graduated college. I was shocked when they gave me a gold cord to wear at the ceremonies--apparently I graduated cum laude. I was never big into the whole honors rigmarole. You just do your best.

This is probably the last update I'll post before I leave for basic, and after that I won't have any access to the Internet (or much else) until basic ends, at the end of July. My mother should post the letters I plan to write between now and then.

Update 2

2007-04-21T23:01:00.000+01:00

OK, I gave in and went with the camo background and green/yellow/black colors. I think it's what everyone expects, anyway. I'm probably going to be sick of seeing these colors after a few months, though.

Update

2007-04-20T05:36:00.000+01:00

No one's reading this yet, but I figured I'd at least put some new info up here.

I finished classes on Wednesday at Northeastern; I have one final to take next week, and then graduation on May 5. I'm shipping out on May 16, so that gives me a month to get my affairs in order and get in (better) shape.

I'm still fiddling with the layout of this site. I wanted it wider than the standard templates, but I couldn't really figure out how to keep the same borders as before, so they're all square now.