Three days of Ft Lewis

The past few days have been somewhat boring. First Army is not having us repeat some of our training but we are having to go through the validation process, which is kind of like taking the test at the end of the class but not having to take the class. The past three days were spent on reacting to IED’s dismounted, mounted, and base defense. As usual, the Commander made me the Platoon Leader, which basically means that I was in charge of our detachment for these validation tasks. I guess it’s kind of rewarding but there’s a lot of stress involved. The hardest part is getting some of the officers to act like soldiers. Some of the officers do not know anything about soldier tasks but they know they don’t know anything and don’t get in the way. Worse, are the one’s that don’t know anything but think they do. So far we have done very well on our tasks and I’m starting to see how valuable our training in California was. The evaluator yesterday asked SSG Kolar our detachment Sergeant if our Commander, meaning me went to West Point. SSG Kolar told him that I’m not our commander and that I got a direct commission after finishing Social Work school. He also told the evaluator that I was prior enlisted Filed Artillery, to which the evaluator said “that explains a lot.” It’s always good to get that kind of compliment from an active duty senior NCO who is a three-time Iraq veteran himself. Tomorrow it’s back to the machine guns for us.