I'm entering this week a bit late because we essentially did not have a weekend, due to the capstone event of the course, the "Red Ball Express."From Monday the 27th through Wednesday the 29th the class divided into five groups and operated nodes around Fort Eustis.
On Monday my group operated the LOTS (logistics over the shore) site. That's where a shallow draft "mike boat" brings a 20 ft. container onto the beach for a RTCH (rough terrain container handler) to pick up and put on the back of a flatbed trailer. That trailer is then driven off. I was the 2nd in charge of this site, and things went really well, so I got a good grade. (Of course, we only got one container in, so it really wasn't all that stressful.)
That afternoon, we moved over to the Port site, where we did the reverse of the LOTS site. We started packing up at about 1630 and went back to the classroom for the wrap up discussion led by the major in charge of the school. We got out at 1800.
Tuesday we ran the Truck site all day, where we basically dispatched trucks to go back and forth to all the different sites to pick up and drop off containers. The morning was stressful because I was assigned to be radio guy, but the afternoon was great because it was my job to man the gate. I sat in a chair in the shade with another guy under a clear blue sky for several hours. (Only in TRADOC would you get two lieutenants pulling guard duty.)
Wednesday we had Rail in the morning and TDC in the afternoon. We only had seven guys on the team at the rail site because of some unexplained reshuffling, but we got a lot of work done -- loading up vehicles and tying them onto rail cars. Tough work, but we made it happen and got some big praise from the instructors who were there.
That concluded our "Fort Eustis" phase of training. On Thursday we convoyed out to Fort A.P Hill in two parts; I was tasked with being the convoy commander for the second serial, for which I got my second evaluation.
We met at the schoolhouses at 3:00am, rode over to the armory and drew weapons, then set up the vehicles in the motor pool. We were set to leave at 6:30, but the first serial left late (because the armory opened late -- not our fault), so our schedule was pushed back also by about 30 minutes.
(I'll note here that everything went very well, thanks mostly to a couple very capable classmates and a LOT of input from cadre.)
With one rest stop along the route, we arrived at about 10:00, stowed our stuff in the barracks, and went out the the zeroing range. (It took me 42 rounds to zero my M16A2 this time; apparently I'm still not even close to proficient.) We did some reflexive fire drills with live ammunition, came back for dinner, and then sat through an intro brief at 1900 for an hour. Pretty tiring day.
On Friday morning I was assigned to the command post while the rest of my squad ran STX lanes. We had a convoy of seven trucks (a mix of M1115 Humvees and 2.5 ton LMTVs with mounted heavy weapons) that drove throughout the post under the command of an OIC and an NCOIC. They got evaluated on the way they react to attacks by a designated "OPFOR" (opposition force), and switch out after every iteration. In the afternoon, I swapped out with one guy and got to ride around in the back of a truck.
At 2100 we had a GPS tracking device class. Pretty dumb -- we're not even using the things on our convoys, so what's the point of having a class when we could be sleeping? If they're trying to stress us by soaking up our free time, they can certainly do better.
On Saturday, we did the convoy live fire exercise. For safety reasons, everything is completely planned and rehearsed, but it goes like this: We're driving along, we get attacked, somebody is injured, we recover the vehicle and move the casualty to a helicopter landing zone, we hypothetically load the casualty, and then we drive off. Along the way, the gunners shoot the bad guys.
In keeping with the "crawl, walk, run" Army training philosophy, we do a dry run first, then shoot blanks, and then (if everyone is kosher) we use live rounds. It's all really scripted, and many would like to see it replaced by more STX lanes, but it's not such a bad exercise if you're actually doing something besides manning a turret.
In the evening we had a night vision goggles class from nine to ten, but it wasn't all that interesting. I'd played with NVGs before, and more than anything I just wanted to go to sleep. There wasn't much point anyway --
We did more STX lanes on Sunday morning, but because we had a cool evaluator we finished early and had some free time in the afternoon. Everyone passed their evaluations, including me -- I was the NCOIC for one iteration of a convoy attack.
In the evening, having successfully finished our Red Ball exercise, a bunch of us chipped in for pizza and sodas. Nice way to end the week.
Oh, but wait! It wasn't over yet! We still had to get back! On Monday we returned to Fort Eustis the same way we came, but with different lieutenants in charge. And once we got back, the fun still wasn't over -- we had to clean our weapons.
So from about 1400 to 1800 we killed time cleaning weapons. Not to any particular standards, mind you -- we just had to clean. Before our M2s, M240Bs, and M16s could go back to the armorer, they had to be inspected by a civilian contractor -- an hourly paid civilian contractor. So it wasn't really until he got hungry that we got to leave. (My weapon wasn't even inspected.)
It was nice to be back.
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