BCT Blog #12

Friday 9/18 1829 hrs

Hey everyone!

Sorry I've neglected to update this lately. I don't even remember where I left off. We are now in blue phase of Basic Training and it has had some interesting training events. We are hardcore learning how to be legit soldiers ready to ship to Afghanistan. That are making us into infantrymen, which interestingly enough, no one in the company will be directly involved with that type of combat. We are all "support" to combat jobs - such as truck drivers, cooks, or in my case communications. So it is just like fun training that we can absorb "just in case" we get into a hot situation.

Among the fun training we've gotten lately - we just did live convoy fire (firing at targets while in a moving vehicle) and a lot of urban operation tactics. Fort Knox has special "towns" with streets, building, and urban terrain created for out enjoyment. We got to run around it with paintball guns the other day and got ambushed by drill sergeants. We were set up to fail - but it made a bit impression on us regarding the chaos of combat and how important it is to function as a team during that stuff.

We are preparing for a 15 kilometer road march on Sunday which will launch a week long field training exercise (FTX). It is going to be intense! We will have realistic missions and will have to employ all of the skills we have learned on the last several weeks. It's like a big final test! Rumor has it that they will even gas us one more time - maybe in the middle of the night. So it is probably going to be one of the toughest weeks yet. I'm pretty excited that we are about to do it though because it is literally the last graduation requirement. The week after it we'll be handing in all of our issued gear and preparing to ship out of Knox! I can't stress how excited I am haha. While this has been a very bearable experience, I am so ready to be done. I really want my cell phone back - freedom to talk to my woman and parents. I want to listen to music and be free to roam! But I'm not complaining - this whole time was expected to be a lot harder.

Well I have a big final fitness test tomorrow. Very tired tonight but it's cool.

Love yall,
Tim