Coming Home

Sorry I haven't posted anything these past two weeks, we have been busy training with lots of long days and short nights, but it has all come to end and we have Block Leave starting tomorrow. Over the past two weeks we to qualify with our M16 rifles to qualify you have to shoot at 23 of the 40 targets or 57% they pop up and down at distances between 50-300 meters shoot  26/40 which isnt the best but its good enough.

We also had training at the Gas Chamber which is when we go into this where this room with our mask on and there is CS gas spraying in the air, the gas is similar to tear gas. Something was wrong with my mask and some of the gas sneaked in there, it burned my eyes and my throat I couldn't see for 10 mins. I'm really hoping we don't encounter anything thing like that when we go over. We also had a Humvee rollover training, we were put in a Humvee and it rolled over three times once it stopped rolling we had to climb out of while it was upside down. That is another thing I hope we don't have to use in Afghanistan.

These last few months have been very hard, we have done all the training and preparation that most units deploying do in 6 months in 3. Staying at work until 9:00pm and coming at 5:00am. I'm just glad its over and I'm leaving to head home for two weeks. I plan to just take my mind off the Army for a while and just relax and enjoy myself, because once we come back we have less than 30 days before we fly out. Although all the training and longs will done the anxiety will increase as each day gets closer and things will be more serious.

Hoping to see all of you while I'm home, and look forward to sharing  the next part of this journey as I go forward.

MRX 1

This week was our MRX 1 which stands for Mission Readiness Exercise, basically our mission was to establish a network as if we were in Afghanistan so that we could all communicate. There were three seperate sites and each team was spread out throught the sites.

We started off on Monday morning with an alert call around 3:20 A.M. and were told there would be a formation at 4:30. I was already up because I didnt go to sleep the night before. There were 5 chalks that we left in spaced out by about 15 mins. My team and two others rolled out to Camp Spann, which was nowhere but behind our company offices. Once we arrived we had to set up all our equipment and get into the network. Then we were told that we didnt finish all of our certifications and that we would certifying on Tuesday. We accomplished that and became 100% certified.

I was on night shift which was 7pm-7am and on Wednesday around 2pm when I was deep in my sleep we were told that we had to jump to another site. So I had to get up and we had to tear down all of our equipment and move to the new site. It was about 10:45pm when were fully operational at the new site which I cant remember the name of it.

Thursday was pretty much an easy day but Friday we were told at 5am that we had to jump again only this time it was the same site just in a different area, wasnt happy about that but complaining isnt gonna do anything we still have to do our jobs. The job was too bad and we were in bed by 9am and around 5pm we found out the exercise was sucessful and that we were going home that night. If it had not been sucessful we were gonna be out there until Sunday so everyone was happy about that.

There were some complications with weapons and a few other things so we didnt leave our motor pool until 2:45 A.M. it was still better than being in the field.

The morale was down this week lot of tensions flared, lot of anger, arguing and stuff thats just not good for us as we prepare to head down range. I just stay positive and try not to loose my cool about anything, its just not worth it.

MRX 2 is this week we will we doing weapons training and drivers trainng Hummvee rollover training all the "fun" stuff thats not really fun.

Thanks for reading.

64 Days

Happy Easter to everyone, we actually got Friday off it was the day off we'd had off in a while other than the weekends. However the week was still long, we pretty much were up at 5:30am and we had to be at the training site by 6:30am and we were usually off by 9:00pm LONG DAYS. Our team did certify which was good and when I say certify that means we have to set up all our equipment, get it up and running and make a phone call to the distant end along with pulling web pages on the laptops, and it all has to be within a time limit.

We now head out for our MRX (Mission Readiness Exercise)which will last Monday-Friday and we will be pulling 24 hrs operations. I'm really not looking forward to that at all but it is what it is gotta do it.

I was talking with my buddy Brooks, who's like brother to me and we were saying how crazy it is that we'll be back home in a month with our families, and then a month after that we'll be down range in Afghanistan, its kinda like when I was first coming in the Army, I knew I'd be leaving home but it didnt until I got on that bus to leave and then it hit me harder when I got off that bus and had drill sergeants yelling at me. I know thats how its gonna be with this deployment its not gonna hit me until we are getting on the plane and its gonna hit harder when we get off the plane and hear gunshots in the distance. I'm just trying to be mentally prepared. 64 Days To Go