Second week of IRT

This second week of IRT was little better than the first, though thankfully it took up only three days of the week.

On Monday we did round-robin-style classes in the field. Due to the Texas heat, it was less than pleasant, but we got through it OK.

We spent Tuesday inside, mercifully. Although the lessons were boring, I'd rather waste my time in air conditioning than under a burning sun.

On Wednesday, we spent the morning doing a kind of tactical land navigation -- we divided up into squads and the junior enlisted members of our groups tried led us to find a few points. There really wasn't enough time for us to get anything out of it, and it was really hot, but it was just one of those things you gotta do.

In the afternoon, we had an IED awareness class, which was sobering, and two classes on throwing hand grenades and IED identification. In the end, the second one boiled down to this: look for things that are different in your area of operations -- if you see something that wasn't there before, that's a sign.

As if we couldn't figure that out ourselves. So glad we had a class on that.

Thursday was the "after action review," but our group just sent one guy and the rest of us found better things to do.

And that was it for IRT. Next week I start Driver's Training Academy, so I'm really happy -- I finally get to go through what everyone else in my company has done.