Sunday, December 21, 2014

11/28-11/29/14 "Staff Duty/Buddy Team Fire Drills"


11/28/14

SLOW, BORING, DAY. We had a split day today. Platoons 3 & 4 had combative while 1 & 2 packed and took off to the firing range. One of our DS had staff duty today, which is an “Admin/ Secretary” coverage type fill in. it goes for 24 hours and 2 of us soldiers from 3rd rotate every hour to help cover. I had morning shift at the same time combative started so I was going to have to show up late to that. Or so I thought. Right before my shift ended some Sergeant Something brought in a huge stack of tests. He needed them graded today so my Drill has us stay to help the next shift. All of this, 8 guys total in all, as 5.5 hours later we finished. Good part: it was the end of the cycle test we have to take to graduate and have family day so we got a pre-study guide. Always a positive side.  The rest of the day was chow and cleaning.

11/29/14 Fire team movements

Today was another fun day for me. It was a bad day for chow. We had morning chow at 0700 and trans at 0730 which summed up to only 5 minutes to eat breakfast. So no cereal, no big fruit platter, no time to enjoy. Pshhhhh…lunch was MRE and I drew a dang vegetarian pasta one. Usually vegetarian ones have the best snacks and candy. Mine had nada, a dang pound cake and strawberry shake. LAME.

As for the firing range, it was Buddy Team Tactics today. It was set up with an outer fence and a building in the middle. A dirt road down the middle and on either side was 4 different barriers at about 10-15 yards apart. There was a 25 meter target and then another 5 or so starting at about 100 meters and beyond. The team members would start patrolling towards the targets. The purpose of the drill was to move as a team, cover each other as we advance to the target assault. A Sergeant would yell “Contact” and the drill would start. The first run was done with blanks and final run was live fire with 2-20 round mags a piece. We would hit the first barrier and “return fire” at the close target. 3 hits and it would remain down. From there the members took turns advancing while the others did suppressive fire at the “enemy/ other targets”. At the last barrier the inner guy would throw a frag grenade at them after we would expend the remaining rounds if any were left. The other big key was SAFETY of course. Most don’t have barrel awareness so keeping it forward while running, initiating setup, and withdrawing from a barrier were main items. I had a blast. My team members and I moved through with no issues while slaughtering the targets. These are the kind of drills I love here.

Rest of the night…packed rucksack for our 4 night final FTX on Monday. Last big event then recovery week and graduation. Excitement is in the air.

BOOM

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