The Creativity of the Bored Soldier

Remember when week ends were fun? I don't...I spent my Friday night saying a final goodbye to my car.  It was a terribly sad moment in my life...Hopefully I'll do some car shopping soon and find something that I love even more.  Saturday, I worked, ate some Arby's, and watched Netflix.  Sunday, I worked. Like always.  What a wild weekend.  I guess I'll spice up today's post with a little Military Monday.  It only seems appropriate as it is Memorial Day.  Photo Cred  With that being said, I hope everyone can take a moment out of their day to remember those that have fought and died for our freedom.   Although a lot of people think it isn't right to thank those who serve on Memorial day, I think it's completely okay.  Any one of us that raised our right hands and swore to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic deserve a little bit of thanks today.  Maybe they didn't die for your freedom, but they would. To me, that matters.  An all-volunteer-force where I chose to be the one that may have to risk my life instead of you...that matters.      And to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, I am eternally grateful.  Today, I've been cruising military pages and looking at all of these photos of memorial bracelets on a beer bottle...most of these men and women that have given their lives are my age...and I've barely lived any life at all...I can't imagine what that must be like.  They deserve all the thanks in the world.  Not just today, but everyday. 
And now onto...

At the Beginning of AT, there honestly wasn't a whole lot to do, so if you were on some specific job, you were able to sort of just, hang out.  The first few days of AT were probably the best part (besides my birthday)  I have a best Army Friend. I don't know if I'm his best Army Friend, but he's definitely mine. Well, he brought a tablet with a bunch of movies on it.  By the time we left, we had watched quite a few movie and found several ways to mount the tablet so that several people could watch at once. This was the first way.

That's a deployment bag, two pens, and a fleece cap.  At one point there were 6 or 7 people gathered around watching Batman around our little theatre.  Boredom makes you creative I guess.   The other variations of this mounting were in an MRE box (there's two little vinyl straps on the boxes before you open them. We stacked two boxes on top of each other and wedged the tablet in the straps while laying in the back of a humvee) and we also used duct tape at one point. The tape was probably the least creative, but it worked.  These little theatres made life much less boring when we had down time. 

Honestly, most of AT was kind of demotivating. Our work/rest cycle was all screwed up, so basically, we were on missions every night and never getting any sleep.  On top of that, the food sucked.   It was like we rarely had the actual chance to recharge. I also think that I went 7 days without a shower at one point simply because the time was never available to take care of business.  It wasn't the most fun thing in the world.

This is me about a week and a half in trying really hard not to lose my shit.

That green thing over my LBV is called miles gear. It's set up for war games so if someone's laser hits them you die.  The dumb thing? We didn't even use them. It was just...cumbersome. Also very expensive.  We literally couldn't go anywhere without our kevlars in hand because the also had miles gear on them...crappy. 

Basically AT was so stressful, it caused me to break my soda fast. 

I didn't drink a ton of it, but I just needed...something and I don't smoke, so a coke and a Red Bull it was.  

Since I got home, I've been drinking a little bit of soda, but not nearly as much as I used to. If I do, I drink something without caffeine usually and I don't tend to even drink it all.  I just don't have a craving for it like I used to.  I'll just order a sprite or something at a restaurant every now and then.  Life is better without a whole bunch of soda in it. Promise. 

Alright, so this conclude today's "Military Monday" I hope you are enjoying this little series and it's not too much Army for you all.  If you get sick of it all, let me know.  I'll write something more exciting, or at least try to!  I hope everyone is having a fantastic Monday! 

I Don't Know About You, But I'm Feeling 2[1]

While I was in Wisconsin, a very big thing happened.

1. 

I turned 21. I'll admit, I was pretty disappointed when I realized that my birthday would be during AT. 21 is such a huge milestone, especially when all of your friends family are there and have been there for a while. I've basically become the babysitter when everyone else goes out for a good time. Don't get me wrong, I love the baby, but it bums me out to miss out on the fun they all have.    Finally, here I am. 21.  On my birthday, I woke up around 5 am (why does the Army like to eat food so early?) and the first birthday wish I was given was this:  "Happy f%*@ing Birthday!" The Army is weird.  Once we all gathered for chow, everyone sang happy birthday. I figured that was pretty much the end of my Army Birthday festivities.  Wrong. 
After the duty day was over, we all got to together for a barbecue. It wasn't technically meant to be for my birthday, but I saw it that way anyway. They all sang to me again and treated me with tasty drinks. I got to know people on a much different level and it was so much fun. But whoever let me take the pictures is fired. There are only two good ones.  This is me with two guys in my unit. There were several other ones just like this with random other people that were blurring in and out...I guess that's how you know a good time was had. This one was taken with a fairly steady hand as well.  This was even later in the night, so I probably deserve a round of applause for it being so clear. The party ended just after dark per our 10 o'clock curfew.  We all had a really great time. I don't think that I could have asked for a better way to spend my 21st birthday. It was probably the best one I've had in a few years.When I got home, my family took me out to The Cheesecake Factory and I ordered myself a tasy legal pina colada, ate way too much, and got a tiny free desert.  
It feels good to be catching up to everyone. Now if I could just stay this age forever, I think that would be okay.

The Military Version of a Roller Coaster

To avoid dumping too much Army on you at once, I present to you the ever so exciting...

Each Monday, you'll get a piece of my training experience:  What I learned, how I feel about it and why I still like the Army after it all. 

 Today I'll share a bit about my experience at Annual Training which will be referred to from here on out as AT.  Let me start with this:  Wisconsin is cold.  It rained nearly the entire time we were there. If it wasn't raining, it was at least very gloomy  We saw the sun maybe 3 or 4 days out of the 21 days that we were there. That meant that we always had to have on warming layers as well as our vests with our magazine pouches loaded down with blank ammo, carry our weapons around as well as wearing all these thick layers to keep us warm. It's uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as that run-on sentence I just wrote... We were off to a very poor start.  Although there were plenty of things to complain about, there were a few fantastic training opportunities that we were afforded.  The first one we did was a humvee roll-over training. In this training, you get inside a humvee up on a machine, and they roll it around and teach you how to react when it happens.  As the lightest one in my group, I was selected for the "gunner" position. Each person sits in a certain seat and has a job to do in the even of a roll-over.   The gunner's job is to drop down out of the turret (that's basically the gunner's hatch) and be held onto by the other passenger in the vehicle (the gunner doesn't have a seat belt.)Well, unfortunately, my fellow passengers were not all on the same page, and I sort of flew all over that damn humvee. It was so scary! All I could think to do was press my hands up against the turret and hope for the best.  Everyone was shouting and there were little foam ammo cans rolling around and hitting me in the face...It was a crazy experience.  Lucky for you, I found a video of the exact simulator. Take a look.

When we all climbed out, I realized that my face was kind of hurting. Well I hadn't realized it at the time, but I smacked my face on the only un-padded part of the turret.  I walked away with a nasty bruise on my face that people commented on for about two weeks. Luckily, it's gone now, but it made my head hurt for days.  I guess that's what I get for embracing the military version of a roller coaster... Check it out.  See that dirt smudge? Not dirt.  It also stretched a little and changed from purple to green to yellow.  Gross. It sucked wearing that bruise around for nearly two weeks, but I think I got some valuable training out of it.  The Army can be frustrating and hard, but they sure let us do some cool shit every now and then. If you ever get the chance to try anything like this out, I suggest you go ahead and give it a shot.