Hello again all, I trust that this posting reaches you all in good health and spirits.

      We have spent the last week or so learning how to drive, we went back to basic training, and we had some rainy fun.  Read on …. You’ll see what I mean.

      When we get to our destination for the next year our primary mode of transportation will be the humvee, which I am sure you have all seen before, but ours will have all kinds of armament to protect us.  Brilliant idea, but it dramatically changes the way that the auto performs, so we spent time learning how to adjust to the changes.  The new humvee doesn’t exactly drive like a new Cadillac by any means, but to tell you the truth I thought it actually drove better that the old ones by far.  The ride seemed to be much smoother than your basic humvee, and the vehicle handled well on all types of terrain.  The best part is that the damn thing will stop bullets and explosions, totally worth owning.  Did I also mention that the new humvees also have air conditioning, that right I said AC.  I’m thinking this is a much needed option, and look forward to having such creature comforts, next thing you know they’ll come with stereos and electric seats.  Then we get to the training and we find out that the AC tends to break a lot, and when we actually get our new humvees that we should not look forward to having the AC.  Oh well.  I am unsure as to how long the warranty lasts, but still the options totally outweigh the lack of customer service, and can’t wait to own one.   While I was waiting to drive the new humvee we got to drive what Camp Shelby calls “The Resister Course”, which is basically a four wheelers dream drive.  I got to put the humvee through its paces, and really see what it can do.  Let me tell you I drove it like a rental, I mean I beat the hell out it, driving over trees and hills.  All through the drive I was giggling like a little school boy because usually we are not allowed to be so abusive.  It was an awesome course.

      After the drivers training we spent the last four days in squad and platoon tactics.  The training is very reminiscent to the stuff we all learned as young privates way back in basic training.  For me basic training was about eighteen years ago, and for others on our team that date goes even further back.  Our instructors for this block called it “infantry kindergarten”, since it was such a return to what we all had learned so many years ago.  I don’t know about the rest of my team members, but I remember kindergarten being full of fun, with stuff like finger painting and legos.  The only thing that has changed from the early days is the amount of abuse my body can seem to tolerate.  If I remember correctly this stuff didn’t hurt as much back then as it did this time.  Now maybe it’s the extra seventy pounds of gear I’m carrying on my body, or maybe it was the abusively hot weather, but every night when I returned to the barracks my body hurt.  I’m not ready to admit to myself that maybe it’s because I’m old, as that can’t be the answer to why it hurts so much.  Anyhoo I don’t mean to ramble on … let me tell you what we did.   We started the four day session with individual tactical movements.  We learned again how to low crawl, high crawl, and we even had to climb over a five foot wall to get through the IMT (individual movement techniques) course, it just like the stuff you see in the “war movies.”  Pretty sweet huh??  Then we moved onto squad tactics, getting used to moving in squad sized elements, and reacting to such challenges like ambushes or snipers.  Finally we put the individual and squad techniques together to perform whole platoon tactics, reacting to the same scenarios, but in larger scale.  The last day was spent planning and rehearsing for a deliberate attack.  The mission was to attack a series of bunkers.  By the time we were done taking out those bunkers, there wasn’t much left of them.  Kind of … since the whole thing was done in blanks we nominally destroyed them.  Honestly damn it I’m old, and this infantry stuff is definitely for the young.  To top it all off at the end of the last day it started to downpour, and I mean downpour.  I don’t know how much rain came down, but we were soaked.  The amazing thing was that with the oppressive heat down here, the rain was quite welcomed, and we found ourselves actually enjoying getting wet.  We even posed for a few pictures of us having fun in the rain. 

      Then when we returned to our barracks I noticed that between ours and the neighbors barracks there was a stream running between the two.  What comes to mind …. Muslides of course, so myself and a couple of the other guys, to include our boss the colonel began to run and slide through the stream.  We were already soaked, so it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.  It was a nice release to what was a really tough four days.   Click here to download and watch us slide through the mud.

Well talk to you all again soon, and look forward to seeing as many of you as I can when I return in twenty seven days.  I can’t wait.  Until then be good.

Best Regards,
Mark