hand to hand combat

Today's training was what the Army calls Combatives, which is a form of Brazilian Jujitsu and is based around an alternative to the conventional way of fighting.  The idea is to get the enemy in close and to the ground as soon as possible and then to finish the fight with one of several blood choke techniques, which are designed to induce unconsciousness in about 4 seconds.  After learning all the techniques we paired off and practiced them at full combat speed for four hours.  The training was pretty cool but I am now sore in ways I haven't been for  along time.  So far we have learned every weapon system that can be fired by one to two soldiers and we have fired all of them in the day time and at night with night vision sights.  We have also learned to render the enemy unconscious in a few seconds and to break arms; not things that mental health professionals typically learn.  We are about half way finished with our training here and I am looking forward to getting back home and spending the remainder of my time with Liz and little Jacob before we go again. 

machine guns

The past three days have been spent in the classroom learning everything there is to know about the four most common machine guns used by the U.S.Army.  We started out with  the 240 B, which replaced the M-60 (Rambo's gun) and is a 7.62mm belt fed open bolt light machine gun.  Next, we learned about the SAW (squad automatic weapon) a 5.56mm fully automatic machine gun, which also fires from the open bolt  position.  After those two we moved to the M-2 (.50 Cal), which I knew a lot about from my Field Artillery days.  Today, we practiced on the MK-19 (Mark 19), which is the fully automatic grenade launcher effective out to 2200 meters.  I remember seeing them mounted to the stryker vehicles the first time I was in Iraq.  It always seems weird to say "my first time in Iraq", like any soldier or soldier's family should have to endure two combat tours, while the rest of the country sits comfortably by with no chance of being drafted (truly pathetic).  Tomorrow we fire all the weapons mentioned above.    

today

long day... We spent most of the day out on the range shooting our weapons.  I ended up qualifying "Sharpshooter", which isn't bad.  I finished at around 0900 and then had to wait for the rest of the detachment to finish.  Tonight we shot the targets with the night vision monocular mounted to our helmet and a laser device mounted on our M-16, which paints the targets with a white dot.  It was really cool to see the targets and shoot at them in complete darkness.  The sights use some ambient light and tonight's lunar eclipse wasn't a big help.  Anyway, it seems like we have one long day after another but the training is really good.  We're working together as teams pretty well the bonds that we are making will probably be tested in the near future.  Tomorrow is Reflexive fire and then on to the machine guns.

new intel

late word this evening that our teams will be covering (sorry, for opsec purposes, I remved the places) and one other.

California

Here I am stuck out here at Ft Hunter Ligget near Salinas California. Once I got here we have been going non stop ever since. Internet access is very poor here but I did find somebody’s un-protected wireless service that I have been able to get on. We have nearly all the detachment here with the exception of a few of out mental health providers. As for now, there is me, Bryan Shea, Lt Coldren, and Major Goodwin, the psychiatrist for providers. We have been very busy doing soldier training on all the tasks that we will need to survive in combat. So far that has been mostly small arms training and will soon include machine guns (light and heavy), grenade launchers, and the Mark 19. After that we will do urban operations, convoy ops and others. We are also doing a lot of night firing. The training this go around has so far been much superior than what I had back in 2004. I have been able to go to the gym but I basically have to skip diner to do so. I miss everyone a lot and can't wait for my two weeks off in March.

It's now the 12th of February and I only today received my orders for AT (Annual Training). I leave on Friday the 15th and will be gone for three weeks. One week longer than the old traditional commitment of one weekend per month and two weeks per year. I remember thinking about that during my last tour to Iraq; boy that was one long weekend. These AT's can always be a drag as they seem way too long for the amount of training. One year ago I had never heard of Ft Hunter Liggettt and this weekend will be my third trip there within 7 months or so. It’s not a bad place, about 2 hours drive from San Jose CA right in the middle of the wine country of that region but the Army base is a small little place really all by itself. I'm anticipating three weeks as being a very long time there. Earlier this week I also got my "big orders", the ones to Iraq. It's never fun to see: Purpose: Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) on your orders. They also state the duration as 400 days. In addition to gathering things together, I have also been doing my credentialing packet for the deployment, which is something all medical providers have to do in order to do their job... I had to stop there for a minute as Jacob's binky fell out and he was crying very loudly in his swing. I was thinking of all the things that are different from civilian life to an active duty deployment in the combat zone and am thinking that my next post will be a description of trading this for that so to speak.