Another drill weekend down. Friday I headed down to Fitzsimons with all of my gear for the field. I didn't read the schedule correctly and missed the first formation, but I was able to quickly catch up with everyone else in being issued the rest of my gear. SGT Lant was even later than me, and barely made the movement. We loaded the bus and drove down to Ft. Carson without a hitch. Once there, I met a bit of a surprise. The training schedule said that we would download our gear at Tent City and head directly to the zeroing ranges to calibrate our weapon sights. Instead we transferred our gear to an LMTV in a random parking lot and were told we could either attend "the function" or stay behind and train on the EST 2000 system. I had no idea what "the function" was, so I just went with the crowd and loaded on a bus for the event. About half way to Butts Army Airfield, I learned that Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States, would be speaking. Oh, goody. I'd get to listen to a politician spout his platform rhetoric to a supposedly friendly crowd, in hopes that he could bolster Republican election numbers. And it got even better! we were seated at 1030 hours (10:30 AM). Mr. Cheney wasn't slated to speak until 1315 (1:15 PM)! So we waited, and waited, and stretched, and waited some more. At least there was a halfway decent band playing a bunch of covers. When the vice president did arrive nearly 3 hours later, he read through a very formal speech thanking troops, and reaffirming the Republican stance on the war, that it was the right decision and that we're not backing out any time soon. The highlights are chronicled in this news article. Overall, the wait was not worth the speech, even if I did get to see the Vice President of the United States. In hindsight, I should have opted for the EST training.
Saturday was just crazy. While it was successful, it was extremely disorganized. As we had lost time due to the speech, we needed to get our company and all of our subordinate units zeroed and through the qualification range in only one day instead of two. In all, we had about 400 soldiers to push through. It seemed impossible that we would finish everyone in time, but we went ahead and rolled with the punches. After some initial confusion in the morning about where our company was supposed to be, we settled into a zero range. We waited for everyone else at the range to go through before our own company, as it was our primary mission to ensure our subordinate units completed qualification, and secondary that we finish. So after waiting around for half the day, I finally stepped onto the range and calibrated my sights. SGT Lant and the rest of the S6 (commo section) marched over to the qualification range down the road, and I hit the minimum 23 of 40 to qualify the first time. After that, Vaughn, SPC Pritchett and myself headed over to the EST 2000 site to get training on NBC fire and night fire. For NBC fire, we had to don a gas mask and attempt to fire at targets. I had never tried this before, and found out very quickly that trying to put your face to the rifle and get a good sight picture is much harder with a mask. Basically all you can do is "spray and pray." The night fire was a bit easier since you could actually see through the sights, but the interval between new targets was about 15 seconds, much longer than a usual qualification range. My arms began to get sore just from holding my rifle up in the prone position that long. It would have been a piece of cake from just about any other position.
Sunday was fairly usual. We packed up and cleaned out the bay, cleaned weapons, and headed home. There were a lot of questions flying around in preparation for our Class A inspection in December, and I found out I'm not allowed to wear one of the ribbons I've been wearing. When I got home, I found out about Jackie's little run-in with the law and that whole ordeal, and just unwound.
The whole weekend, I was trying to figure out how to say "It's a beautiful day to be in the Army." According to google it's ".انه يوم جميل ان تكون في الجيش" I'll have to check that later.
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