First week of IRT

Last Thursday I started "Individual Replacement Training," a two-week training program that kind of certifies you as ready for deployment. About a third of my company is in this session.

We spent all of the first day in briefings about sexual harassment, the laws of war, and the Army values. The hardest part was staying awake.

On Friday, we spent the whole day outside. We did combatives throughout the morning and then rotated around among three classes -- mine awareness, entry and access control, and searching individuals. I wish they would have included sunscreen in the packing list -- I got a little sunburnt.

On Monday we rotated again among the HEAT trainer, three weapons classes, and map reading. Again, it was pretty tedious.

On Tuesday we went out to the weapons range to zero with our M16s. This was dumb -- trying to zero when it was 105 degrees out, and we were wearing full body armor, laying on sun baked gravel. By the time I got the second of three shot off, a drop of sweat would fall onto my lenses and I'd have to wipe off my glasses, losing my sight picture.

Needless to say, I failed to zero. This, however, was no tragedy, since I had already zeroed and qualified in April. So I was annoyed at not being able to zero, but the irony that it didn't matter anyway -- that my day would have been wasted anyway -- made it worse.

Wednesday I exempted myself from training so I could get my unit's TC-AIMS junk ready to go. Given that I had already qualified, it wasn't super important that I sweat my brains out for nothing all over again.

Thursday was the first day that I sincerely looked forward to -- everything was inside, and the classes we had were genuinely interesting to me: counter-insurgency, cultural awareness, and personnel recovery, and human trafficking.

Friday was a pre-designated training holiday, so there wasn't anything scheduled (that's why I chose to take the DLPT then). This week we've got the remaining four days to finish, and then Friday we all go back to our regular schedules.