To Whom It May Concern

Crawl, To Walk, To The Run Phase

We’re into our hardest two weeks of training here at Ft. Riley in Kansas. This first week consists of how we are to drive our trucks and react to the bombs that are being left on the roadsides and also to insurgent attacks. Because I have a wealth of 11B infantry background, I don’t have too much trouble doing any of this because it’s basically like applying a bit of polish to a slightly rusty area, it all comes back to me pretty quick.

The last couple of days we have been working on hand to hand combat, room clearing techniques, and individual movement techniques. This, again, is some of the bread and butter of the infantry, so I’m loving it. As a truck driving unit we really don’t get a chance to do too much of it, and as a squad leader I find myself frustrated when I’m trying to get my young guys to do these tasks because, while it may be second nature to me to execute a button hook maneuver and enter a doorway in an urban environment, with the weapon at ready, eyes on sights, it’s a pain in the ass to teach it to someone who has never done it before.

The nice thing about our unit, is that while we are technically a transportation unit, nearly every E-6 SSG and above has at least 5 years of infantry experience, and was trained at boot camp at Ft. Benning at the infantry school, so this wealth of experience is now being put to work to get our younger guys up to speed. The young soldiers really seem to be enjoying what we are doing and picking up on it really fast, even the instructors comment on this, how it’s hard to believe we are a truck driving unit when they see a private doing specific techniques that they shouldn’t really know how to do, except that the NCO’s are teaching them how during our rock drills and sand tables.

Next week we will spend the entire week in the field at a makeshift base camp, simulating one in Iraq. There we will take everything we have learned thus far and turn it into one fluid movement, so to speak, where everyone is working together like a well oiled machine. We expect a few ‘breakdowns’ so to speak, but here is the place you want to work on that, not over ‘in the sandbox’, because over here you can correct your deficiencies without loss of human life. That just isn’t the case over there.

One thing is for sure, I do NOT envy what the actual infantry and MP units are doing in the middle east, because it’s not exactly the jobs they are meant to do. You have a lot of the infantry doing police work along with their usual jobs and geesh the MP units are getting totally overloaded with the infantry tasks along with their usual police work. We heard some real horror stories about what one particular MP unit that was tasked to the Big Red 1 (1st Infantry Division) had happen to them, I felt really bad, like you wanted to be there, to do something for them (I do miss the 1st and 2nd 134th Infantry MECHANIZED of the 35th Infantry Division, both of which I was with during my 12 years of infantry).

Our job will still be dangerous enough on it’s own. These explosive devices they are planting on the roadways are absolutely treacherous, there isn’t any real way to completely avoid them, sometimes you just have to hope for the worst and really use the armor and gear that they give you and work hard to keep your armored up vehicle up to date with the best of equipment. I just don’t want the people who care about me to worry all the time, with good training and vigilance we can really eliminate a lot of the threats we might come across. We’ve never been the ‘typical’ guard unit, something we hear a lot from our trainers, something we’ve always been used to hearing. “Your unit is better by far than any regular army transportation units we’ve worked with”. Well, that’s because we still remember being infantry and we still hold ourselves to that same high standard.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
There's too many places I haven't seen

Freebird – Lynard Skynard