Howdy gang...my apologies for the delay in posting a new message. It's been a fast-moving week (in retrospect), and time has just now allowed me to write. I must say, however, that I will be going to bed shortly because I'm waking up (as it were) at 3:00am for a PT Test...please wish me luck.
The majority of this week has been spent sitting through innumerable in-processing briefs. Some of them have been useful and informative, and some of them have been rather forgetable. Yesterday (Wednesday), the entire class was issued its TA-50 field gear: duffle bag, helmet and cover, pads, molle vest, etc. The prime downside to this particular event was, again, being at the end of the alphabet and having to wait for 250 other people to get their gear first!
Today, we had several class sessions on military writing, presentations, and...TA-DAH!...Power Point design! There is nothing quite like watching a powerpoint on how to make a powerpoint; what a beautiful thing! My favorite part of the day is that which applies to the title above, "Continuity." After our lunch break, we reassembled in an entirely different auditorium in an entirely different building (the reasons are still unknown to us) and were delivered the following lectures, in this order: Military Briefing Writing, Entemology and the Military Dangers of Pathological Vectors (i.e.: "bad insects to avoid"), Modern Army Combative Techniques, and a Field Training Exercise briefing. To this relatively random collection of presentations, all I can say is, "Wow." We are certainly receiving a diverse education!
The weekend is fast-approaching, and with it some much-needed sleep and exercise. I'm counting the days to when Kate and the girls can visit, and I wish the best for all of you always. See you again soon on the Daily Bugle!
Peach.
Your description of classroom lectures causes me to recollect sitting at the back of the room during mandatory classes with the elder Suddendorf jotting down new phrases that we had not heard, ad nauseam, before (“when the rubber hits the road”, “the Active side of the house”, heel and toe express, etc.). After a few years, we had a fairly lengthy list in our notebooks.
ReplyDeleteEarly in my career, most of the instructors were Vietnam vets who began the instruction with “I know what the “book” says but this is what works and this is what will save your life”. Those classes were really fun and interesting. Unfortunately, the combat vets eventually faded away and the non-combat vets just regurgitated material verbatim from the FM, putting everyone to sleep.
Yes, I’m sure many of your instructors wear a unit insignia on their right sleeve, but most were just housecats. Admittedly, cruising up and down the highway is quite dangerous due to IEDs, but unless they were going door to door while assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, it is not the same as nightly slogging through the Green Hell 3 out of every 4 weeks as in SE Asia.
Just remember, though, your instruction actually IS designed to save your life some day. If you absorb the material, no matter how humorous it seems now, it may be successful. Entomology, for example: I recall a couple of times at Ft. Sam that a sergeant was bitten by a Brown Recluse spider while sitting on his front steps and subsequently died a few days later. It was reported today that a young man in Colorado died from 19 Black Widow spider bites on his foot. And when I was assigned to the Preventive Medicine Directorate at Ft. Clayton, Panama, the entomologist had a soldier’s amputated index finger in a jar on his office shelf. The floating finger had a big bite taken out of it the shape of a reptile’s mouth. Seems the soldier didn’t listen to his class lectures and stuck his hand into some greenery at the Jungle School where he couldn’t see. So, Lieutenant Matt, don’t throw your sleeping bag over a Fire Ant nest while at Camp Bullis for an FTX. And if you make it to the Sandbox, don’t forget each morning to bang your boots upside down, very hard, to dislodge any homesteading scorpions before you insert your tooties.
You have chosen a dangerous profession, my young friend, whose narrative is quite reminiscent of a couple of wise-guy lieutenants I intimately recall (last names begin with “S”, coincidentally). Death comes calling without warning (even for a housecat eating chow at the mess hall in the Green Zone via a suicide bomber) and only luck and superior training can deflect it.