Well I didn’t reach my personal goal of a perfect score on the Army Fitness Test. As an athlete/in shape as I would consider myself, I never trained or conditioned my body to max at reps on sit-ups. My core and abs are great but my hip flexors and quads tired to failure. I started at maxing points on push-ups with 80 pushups in 2 minutes. I felt great. I needed to reach 82 sit-ups and I knew that would be a struggle. At 45 reps my legs were already feeling it…bad sign. I pushed it and never quit but 70 reps was all I could reach which is only good enough for 87 points. HUGE disappointment but I can guarantee that I will get a perfect score when the official test is taken at my Advanced Training in San Antonio
Next on the list. FTX2 (Field Training) we rode on the bus for over 20 minutes and were dropped off on a dirt road. Each platoon assembled a fire team squad of 7 guys to advance ahead of the group to secure base. I was part of my squad. The area we were in has been used for several years as a training area. The roads were lined with razor wire, barricades, foxholes, other defensive builds. We arrived at our base and each platoon spread out to different sections in order to provide 360 º securities. There was barbed wire perimeter, 10-12 guard towers an open field in the center. My squad setup security and then I took 3 guys back to get the rest of the platoon. When we got back we spread the rest of the soldiers up in battle teams and we were to setup our sleeping area. Past foxholes were still present. The weather projected rain so we had set up hutch’s and use our porches to create a dry environment over the foxholes or using trees and limbs to build a tent. Being the smart individual I am. I claimed the space under a tower so I already had overhead cover, dug it out more, and hung mine and my battle buddies porches up in a way that the rain drops would run out to the ground. It was also next to a back entrance gate so we had prime guard spot. After watching most of the guys setup, I knew any rain would get them wet.
The skies were getting darker and it started sprinkling. We took off for night training at 2000. Nick at Night is a live fire obstacle course crawl. 107 meters through dirt, mud, under wires, over logs, a couple of tower setups firing live rounds over our heads and more. It was completely dark so we would see tracers rounds going by, when the flares hit the sky we had to freeze, and smoke bombs going off. Rain had been coming down for about an hour by the time we went. Miserable and cold. By the time we finished we were caked with red mud and nasty. It was cool but I would be alright not doing it again. Crawling that far sucks. We had Kevlar vest with plates (25 lbs) boots and helmet, FLC (9 lbs), and weapon. I was glad when we were complete.
We got back to base about 2300. Rain was still falling and everyone was soaked.
As I figured…most of the guys foxholes had standing water in them and their gear was wet either because they didn’t support the poncho covers enough to block the rain, or they didn’t build a trench/levee around their site to redirect the ground water away from them. My tower hutch was NICE & DRY! By the end of the night guys were cramming 6 deep into guard towers to stay dry and get some sleep. We had to pull 25% security so one in every 4 guys ran security for an hour while the other 3 slept. This kicked off at bedtime (midnight) max sleep before wakeup…3 hours…bummer. The temperature dropped some but in my 3 layer sleeping bag with the rain, I slept like a beast for those few hours. 4ish am wake up for Field Training in the morning and Wednesday during the day.
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