Today was grenade qualification. It was weird, strange, fun, new, punishing kind of day. We woke up early to the First DS not liking the way the command suite was done last night. We had to put it in high gear to get it to his standard. His standard was so much bleach that it burns your eyes and hair. Done…but put us in a time crunch to load transit. We got to the grenade range and we were supposed to eat chow. BUT…4th platoon has chow duty and forgot plates. This pushed chow back which made my stomach angry.
To start off grenade training, after the instructor course. We went through the line once to do a step by step demo, and then grabbed 2 more grenades to do a qualification drill. During all of this we used real grenades but they were just blasting caps. They still had the 3-5 second timer and popped loud but no explosion. We were monitored to ensure we followed safety protocol, had the right technique, and could throw far enough. After we threw we were to duck and cover so you don’t get to see your throw. I impressed the instructor with a good throw. (I really don’t know what good is but I’ll take it).
Next we went to the live range. This of course was pretty awesome. Again, what guy wouldn’t want to throw grenades? We rotated 4 at a time and throw two live grenades. The rest stood behind a blast wall and were able to watch. Some threw like girls and some could chunk it, but they all exploded the same. Amazeballs. Never got old watching this. During my time I was calm but giddy. After my throw the Sergeant said, “Damn boy…are you related to Peyton Manning? You chunked the sh_t out of that grenade.” That was just awesome. We had to clean the live and practice range. In all this was like 500 live and 600 dummy grenades. All that was left of live was the spoons, but the practice range had spoons, blasting caps and shells. What a bummer.
Then we had the grenade course. We competed for a level similar to rifle range… marksman (level 2)… (Level 1)…and (expert). We threw at targets like trenches and vehicles with an inner arcade of sandbags we had to land in. throwing from a standing and kneeling position; to compete for the platoon banner. Everyone that made it past one level, and then competed for their platoon on the next level as a team vs. team (platoon) set up. Out of 218 soldiers, about 80 made it this far. Next level was kneeling on one knee and landing a grenade in a circle about 25 meters away. I made it and one other from my team, as my DS says, we had a lot of “Weak Bodies”. We lost but only 15 out of 218 completed this successfully. We earned the expert badge for this. Another accomplishment in the books.
After making it back and eating chow, it got bad. The Drills were upset about something. Still not sure what it was but sometimes there isn’t a reason. My drill got us for about 20 minutes, doing all the exercises while holding our weapons, major pain. Then the night Drill decided to play “Dress up Barbie” and give us a weird time crunch punishment. We would have 4 minutes (impossible time for everyone to make) to change into mixed up uniforms of his choice. Part PT, one shoe, one boot, jacket, shorts and other weird combos. One hour of this dress up changing game. Soooooooooo annoying but just had to go with it.
Out free time was taken by cleaning duties so I’m writing from bed. Tomorrow is our combative competition.
This week has flown by and I’m thankful for all of it. Glad to see family, friends, my truck, dogs and my bed really soon. As close as it seems….we have a tough next couple of weeks.
Happy weekend everyone.
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