BOLC II - Weeks 3-6

SO, obviously I haven't updated in a while. I'll blame tiredness, you can probably chalk part of it up to laziness. That's ok.

Week three... I honestly don't remember what happened during week 3, except that we were in the FOB and I got chiggers. I know we did combatives, which was way better than LDAC, because we were allowed to use choke holds and arm bars in the spars, so I actually won one of mine (choked him out before he could close on me :p) and fought another one to a draw. Very fun. The rest of the week was spoent doing "infantry tactics"... aka running Battle Drills. Cue 'the suck'.

Week 4 was a short week, thanks to the 4th of July. We did convoy ops (the simulator was crazy fun,. basically like being stuck inside of a giant video game) and ran through Battle Drill 1a in preparation for Wednesday's live fire exercise - basically we went to a range with live rounds and had our squad maneuvering through an opbjective. Potentially very dangerous, since if someone messed up we could wind up shooting each other. Fun for the infantry guys, but after running the lane with blanks a couple times the live run wasn't as fun for me... it was a pretty tiring day all in all.

Fourth of July I went home and to St. Augustine. It was nice seeing (some) of the family again, but driving that much back and forth kind of sucked :(

Week 5 was back in the barracks. We did our 10 mile ruck march that Tuesday, MOUT (military ops in urban terrain), and a squad land nav exercise on Friday. The 10 mile march completely sucked. We did MOUT tape drills during the day, and started the ruck at 4pm. Let me make note of the fact that from 2-4 is the hottest time of the day, and it's in the high 80s at midnight in this place. Now let me mention that the majority of our 10 miles were uphill. For pretty much the first 7 miles, we didn't go downhill once... and here in Ft. Benning, there is no such thing as level ground. The sun, which had been hidden by clouds the rest of the day, also decided to put in an appearance for the first 2 miles. Thanks a lot. Now, the pace was slow (17-18 minute miles at the start, 20 at the end), and we stopped several time (4 or 5 I think). We had a LOT of people fall out as heat casualties. One of the guys had heat exhaustion so bad that the doctors thought he had a heat stroke, and he was on quarters for the rest of the week before they let him return to train with us. We also ran out of water in our coolers the last 3 miles, so people couldn't refill canteens or camelbaks. THAT was great planning... Whatever... I passed, but only because my squad members are awesome and helped carry my 203 (which is heavier than a regular m4...)

Had another weekend of fun, where I was DD for a bunch of the people in the plt. The first bar we went to, Scruffy Murphy's, is a cool place, and we've gone there a few times now. We wound up at a club called Flip Flops though, and I could have done without being there. Reminds me a lot of your stereotypical frat house party... I also was groped by a girl O.o awkward....

Every week, we look forward to Wednesday being finished. That's because Weds. is hump day. Monday sucks, not just because the weekend is over, but also because we know we have a whole week ahead of us. Tuesday sucks, because it's basically like Monday except we don't have the sadness of being separated from the weekend following us around. Weds... that is a pretty rotten day, right up until last formation, because then it's like, hey! All downhill from here! And Thurs and Friday we can actually look forward to the weekend.

In the same tradition of hump day, week 6 is hump week. It's not halfway through training, but it IS the longest week. We went out to the field Monday and ran 2 4-hour missions (should have run 3 but there was a thunderstorm so the last one was cancelled). Tuesday and Wednesday we ran 4 missions. Thursday we were only supposed to run 3, but we ran 4 instead (and skipped our 2am-6am mission on Friday). I was in leadership twice: the first mission as a squad leader, and one of Weds' missions as the PL. Go, go. You'd have to suck pretty bad to get a no-go out here. Thursday I gave in and went to sick call, because I had (have) poison ivy everywhere, including my face. Thank God for cortisone shots... my face still has traces of it, but it is no longer swollen and nasty looking - now it just looks like I have some dry skin and maybe a little bit of acne. My arms are continuing to get worse though... the rash is definitely springing up in new spots, and it hurts to bend my wrist and fingers because of it :( I also feel slightly ill half the time, because the feeling in my arms is way off. Anyway... I literally spent all day Thurs not doing anything. I didn't even get back out to the FOB until 1230 (I was up and reporting for sick call at 5...), and then I just sat in the TOC until midnight, when the next platoon relieved us. Given the stories of how the last couple of missions went for my platoon, I'm actually kind of glad, even if it was really boring. Major KJ was with the platoon for the last mission, and apparently it went horribly wrong because of it. As a result, they had to do it over, and didn't return to the FOB until around 015, shortly after our TOC detail had been relieved. Friday we spent policing the ranges for brass (which sucked), cleaning weapons, and doing CIF layouts, since we turn our stuff in on Monday.

This weekend is going to be pretty laid back. We went out to Longhorn's for dinner last night, but didn't do anything else because the people who fell out of the ruck had to do it again this morning at 345 (everyone passed this time). Tonight we're going to a place called the Hunter's Pub, which is 30-45 minutes away but supposedly has the best steaks in Columbus (even though technically it's not in Columbus :p). It wouldn't surprise me if we wind up downtown at Scruffy Murphy's after that. Tomorrow I'm going to lunch and a movie with a friend that I met last summer here (Harry Potter, hehe).

Next week is a short week, and our last one here. We have our second APFT Monday (the run is going to be horrible, because we haven't done a lot of PT here and we're not often released early enough to go to the gym AND get anything near a decent night's sleep) and CIF turn-in during the day. Tuesday they're doing the Iron Warrior competiton in the morning (the APFT with dips and pull-ups added on). Not sure what we're doing during the day... Weds. we have our company 4-mile run. It's supposed to be at a 9 minute pace, plus or minus 15 seconds. I've heard that what really happens is we start off at that pace, and it gets progressively slower. Great... it will suck because we haven't done much running AND because we'll be pounding our knees up on a slow pace. I suspect that we'll be mostly doing barracks maintenance Weds. Thurs will be graduation, finally. It's only supposed to be an hour long... then we get to piuck up all of our paperwork, and be released around 1. We'll probably get everyone together for lunch, and then it's off to Texas for me and a few other (and the rest will scatter to wherever their next duty stations are).

I'll type up a review of BOLC II, probably tonight sometime (we're going to have to turn one in for a course evaluation anyway).

All I'll say for now is, senior ROTC cadets beware, it's NOT being cancelled for at least another year!