Merry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I managed to get home for a few days, so am very happy to be able to hang out with the family. Once I go back, I only have a couple more weeks until I'm totally done. Then back to the civilian life, until I get called to go overseas. It will happen, it's just a matter of when. I am not looking forward to it, but I think it's something that must be done.

I still get some people asking why I did it (re-enlisted) and why don't I just let the younger kids join the Army and fight. I just don't understand that logic. Why should they have to do that, and not me. We all live in this country. Besides, most 18 year olds don't have the experience or knowledge that is required in leadership positions. I'm not saying everyone should join, but it's what I wanted to do, it's something I feel strongly about, and I'm glad I did it.

Sorry for the rant. My father in law got me going on this Christmas Eve.

Ready for Christmas

Not much has been going on here at Fort Jackson. Don't get me wrong, we've been really busy. We were out in the field for a few days teaching privates how to use the HR systems. It's really sad to see how undisciplined the young soldiers are these days. Although all of the sergeants went back to the barracks at night because it was too cold, so all the privates kind of went crazy.

Last week, we had another long week with our simulation exercise. With that over, most of our class is over, and we're just filling up the time with a couple classes and a lot of other useless crap. It just seems like they're giving us classes on the same things we've had classes on weeks ago.

Everyone is ready to go home for Christmas, and it's starting to show. It doesn't help that all of the other officer basic courses in the Army are already out, and we're not. At least we're almost done when we come back from Christmas.

Merry Christmas all!

Back to the grind

Well, after a weekend of a fair amount of partying, it's back to the grind. We have a three day week because of Thanksgiving, so it will be easy. So far the classes have managed to hold my interest, although I have been taking more time to do homework than I would have thought. Nothing too difficult though.

Friday night was my first dining in, and it was pretty fun. It was a cross between a fraternity party and a military ball. The uniform was our Dress Blues, or Class A's, and we got dinner out of it, along with some drinking. There were also some skits put on by the students, poking fun of instructors, the classes, or the Army in general. I was exposed to some of the Army's traditions including the Grog Bowl. It's basically a mixture of 20 or so liquors, and ours happened to look like it was in a toilet. It actually looked... well, I'm not going there, but use your imagination.

If you do anything stupid, or don't follow one of the many rules, you have to drink from the Grog. Of course there were some people who didn't leave under their own power, but overall, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We continued Saturday night with much of the class going to some of the fine bars in Columbia.

Vet's Day weekend

Well, here I am at the beginning of our first 4 day weekend. Things are going well here, and I'm learning way more than I ever wanted to know about the Army. The classes are actually much more interesting than I thought they would be. A lot of regulations, but like I said, I'm learning a lot about how things work in the Army. My classmates are pretty cool and we have a good group. I'm pretty excited (that's what she said!) that we can have a coffee maker in the classroom (my doing).

In case you're wondering what I'm doing this weekend, I'm going camping to the Smoky Mountains. It was supposed to be a group thing, but everyone else backed out, so I'm going by myself. Coincidently, Michael from the tv show "The Office", is also going camping by himself this week. I just found it funny that it worked out that way. I am actually taking more than Michael, who only took a knife and duct tape. I have all of my camping stuff in my car, as well as some MREs from my last school. I'm only going for one night, but am looking forward to getting away. Unfortunately I have to come back and do a presentation and short paper for my class.

By the way, a camo Bud truck came by the other day and restocked the AG school. Thanks Budweiser, for supporting our troops!

Start of OBC

Well, it's Tuesday, the second day of OBC ( the second school I'm attending), and things seem to be much better than at Fort Sill. I got here last week and was able to take leave for a few days and see the family.

The post here seems much nicer, as does the surrounding town. I have my own room with a kitchen, and it's about 200 meters from my classroom. I don't think we'll be out in the field much, which means we'll be bored by power point everyday. We're still doing in processing this week, but we've already gotten our "equipment" for the field. It was pretty standard stuff, although the rucksack we got was about the same size as my backpack that I take my laptop in everyday. It's kind of comical, if you've ever had a real rucksack. I guess that's so we can carry our laptops to the field, if we ever go. It's about the same size as my kids' bookbags.

So far, they've treated like adults much more so than at the last school. We're told what events are happening when and it's up to us to get there on time, as opposed to getting us all together half an hour before we need to be somewhere and bussing us to wherever and waiting around until everyone is done, which results in a lot of standing around and wasting time.

This seems like I could get a lot out of this class, so I'm looking forward to the next couple of months.

On my way to SC

I continued my tour of the South today hitting Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally Georgia. I think I'm only a few hours away from South Carolina, so tomorrow should be easy.

It was a pretty good day. I started out at the Clinton Library, visited the birthplace of Elvis ( I swear I heard the banjo from Deliverence as I pulled off the highway in Telupo), and saw a strip club called The Boobie Trap. I know, very childish humor, but I got a laugh out of it. I would have liked to gotten a picture of it, but didn't see it in time to pull over.

Done

Well, it's Friday night and I'm in Little Rock Arkansas. We "graduated" from BOLC II today and I wanted to get away from Fort Sill ASAP. I'm on my way to Fort Jackson for the second part of my school.

Overall, it was a pretty easy school. I'm still not sure of the purpose of this school. I didn't learn much, and that sentiment was repeated by many others. I enjoyed some of the training, but as an AG officer, I won't be doing any room clearing, but again, some of the stuff was fun. There were opportunities for leadership experience, but the leadership roles are not the same when all of your peers are the same rank. There are really no reprecussions for disobeying an order in this environment. The school itself was good for me personally since I have been out of the Army environment for 10 years after I got out of the Guard. As far as making me a better leader though, I don't know what this will do for me. Oh well, it's over and I'm on to my next school.

Coming into the home stretch

Well, another exciting week over with. In case you can't tell, there was a lot of sarcasm in that last statement. Yesterday was filled with bs time wasting jobs, and a lot of sitting around doing nothing. I guess that this is a new enough school for the Army that it's to be expected. Not a huge deal, it just seems that we could be either doing more training or they could just get us the hell out of here earlier, rather than making us sit around til the end of the business day.

That said, the training that we have done has been pretty cool. We did urban operations this week, which deals with clearing rooms and other, and yes you guessed it, urban operation types of missions. We used blanks and paintball type of rounds, which added a little bit of realism to the exercise.

One more week left until we start to out-process, so everyone is pretty excited. Not much more to tell, I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories to tell after this week. Stay tuned.

Week 4 DONE!

Well, we finished with Week 4 yesterday, by doing some convoy training and shooting a lot. Yesterday we did the land navigation course and got soaked to the bone, but that's about the only bad weather we've had. So far everything is going well. No one seems to be overwhelmed by the difficulty of the course, but the changing leadership positions takes its toll on some people. There's some complaining about how some people lead, but that's normal. I did think there would be more infighting amoungst everyone, but I'm glad I'm wrong.

We spent last week at the FOB, and we'll be there for the next two weeks also. We have a lot of things planned so hopefully the time will go by quickly. Although we have no access to a coffee maker, the makers of the MRE are gracious enough to include a little instant coffee with the meal. I have found that adding three instant coffee packets to a one quart canteen of water makes a pretty decent cup of coffee.

BTW, my laptop harddrive died (Thanks Aaron!) so haven't had much chance to update lately.

Week 2 Done

Well, Week 2 is done, and not a moment too soon. It actually went by pretty quickly, but was kind of rough. We worked on hand to hand fighting all week, along with a few classes, but the fighting was physically draining. Even the younger kids were tired. There were't too many injuries, just a lot of sore muscles. We also did PT in the mornings, so that didn't help us recouperate either.

Things are going well, although in the time that we get off, there's not much to do in the great metropolis of Lawton. It's not that bad, but I'm sure by the end of the cycle, we'll be going stir crazy.

I'm looking forward to next week. We start rifle marksmanship, which is basically shooting from various positions, and making sure everyone can hit the minimum amount of targets. Should be fun.

Devil Dog

Saturday a bunch of us ran the 10k race on post that the Marines put on. It was a good time and we all finished safely. Two of our guys finished first and second overall. Needless to say I wasn't one of them, but I did it in under an hour.

We have the weekend off before we start combatives. This is the week our real training starts, so everyone's looking forward to that.

This blog will probably only be updated once a week. Sorry, that's all the access to the internet I'll have. Anyway, here's a pic from the race.

super classified

Been here for a few days and things are going well, except access to the internet. We're doing very classified stuff that I can't talk about on this blog, or anywhere else for that matter.

Actually just doing a lot of in processing and getting up at ridiculously early hours for PT and such. I had forgotten how much fun active duty is.

Don't know when I'll have another chance to update, but all is well.

Here

Again, nothing too exciting today. I made it to Ft. Sill, drove around, went to the PX for a few things, and found where I need to report tomorrow. I'm guessing the next week in processing won't be too exciting either, but stay tuned.

On the way to OK

Nothing too exciting about today. Drove from Chicago to Springfield MO. Driving through Illinois was pretty boring but the drive got a little more scenic in MO. I will be at Ft. Sill tomorrow afternoon.

Just as a side note, I'm really impressed with technology. I'm at a campsite updating this blog with absolutely no wires. I should probably just relax and enjoy the campfire but I think it's cool that this is possible.

Test

This is my first post on my blog detailing my active Army days at Basic Officer's Leadership Course, phase 2 and 3.

While I'm not sure how much time I'll have to update this or how much access to my computer or the internet I'll have, I plan to do my best to keep this current.