Training the Best

So April 25th was our final physical fitness test. Everybody was dreading it because we really haven't had a chance to train for the PFT here. Our time is very limited, we have a lot of work to do outside of the regular work hours, so once that is done all you want to do is sleep. Add on the abuse your body takes during FEXes and you are one broken down lieutenant. I would lose between 5 and 10 pounds on each FEX. You are on the move all the time, wearing a heavy load, attacking and patroling. There is little time to eat.

I was not going to light the world on fire with my PFT score, but I was not really worried about it. I felt like I could score a 235 to 240, the goal for lieutenants being a 225. That is the threshold for a first class score, which all officers are expected to attain. The max is 300, but I've never been able to max a PFT. Nonetheless, I felt pretty good. And then things got bad.

It started with some nausea, back pain, and sweating during our family day on Friday. Then it developed into full blown vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and all over aches and pains. This continued for two solid days, without relief. I was really sweating the PFT, but I thought I could recover in time. I was wrong.

I woke up on Monday morning still feeling bad, but I did not want to go to sick call again. There is a stigma with going to sick call, a perception of weakness. I realize this is retarded, but in military service perception is reality. I knew that if I went to sick call I would be seen as weak, a "sick bay commando" as we call those who hang out in sick bay everytime there is a physical event. I also thought I could tough out the PFT, bring something up from deep down and push through the pain.

What I failed to account for was how dehydrated I was. I had not managed to take on any fluids all weekend and was very dehydrated. I did ok on the pull-ups, but the problems started with the situps. I never have trouble getting the maximum of 100, but I barely made it this time. I wasn't feeling good for the run.

I started the run in good shape and I thought I would make it. I made it to the halfway point in 10 min and 30 sec. That's not bad, that is on pace for a 21 min. three miles which would have been pretty damn good. About 2 miles into the 3 mile run, I just ran out of gas. My legs felt weak and my head really started to hurt. The pack started to pull away from me and I could feel myself slowing down. I could hear my platoon commander behind me yelling at the last place girl and I was dreading him catching me. I wanted the finish to be closer, I could see it, but it just didn't seem to be coming any closer. I tried to pull something out, but I just didn't have any more. When I crossed the finish line at 23:53, I almost threw up. I only wound up beating one guy and one girl to the finish line in my platoon, which was very disheartening.

My score wound up being a 224, one point away from a first class. Out of a company of 245 I was one of only 4 to not get a first class. The honest truth is that my pull-ups hurt me the most, they are worth 5 points a peice, a max of 100pts, and I only got 12. My lack of preparation in the previous six months put me in danger of failing and the sickness pulled me down to that level.

I had to stand in front of my platoon commander with the two other guys in our platoon who also didn't get a first class score and take a tounge lashing. I wanted to say that I was sick, but I hate to give excuses, they don't change anything. Besides, like I said above, if I was in better shape I would have still gotten a firts class score despite the sickness.

After WFEX II, the next thing we did was our machine gun FEX. We hopped on a bus out to range 6 and fired a couple of machine guns. Good fun, but they never give us enough ammo. They did fire several AT-4s (shoulder fired anti-armor rockets) and a TOW (anti-tank missile). The AT-4s were quite impressive, big booms with a six foot flame when they launch and big booms when they hit. It is a short range weapon, so the tank hulks they were shooting at were only 200m in front of us. The TOW is a long range guided missile which never misses, but the enlisted guy shooting it for us missed. It took off across the range and was streakign towards the target 3,000m away, but about 500m from the target it unexplicably turned left and up. I'm sure he is going to get some crap for that from his buddies.

We went on to fire the Mk 19 40mm grenade launcer, the M2 .50cal machine gun and the M240G light machine gun. Of course, they didn't give us enough ammo and there was only enough to fire off a few bursts. Everybody liked the Mk 19, it lobs these fist sized grenades out about 1,000m which explode on impact. It makes a good show. The .50 cal makes a hell of a lot of noise and the M240G is a fast, powerful machine gun. Good times.

After that was the endurance course final test. The e-course is 4-5 miles of running on trails and obstacles. On top of this, we are running it in full uniform (boots and utes) with a 15-20lb pack, rifle and helmet. By the end of the course, you really hate that pack. Unfortunately I was not feeling well at all and had to watch my peers run the course from the sideline. There is no worse feeling than standing there and watching your platoon go through this thing and not being with them. I had to make a decision, it was either go to medical and get some help or risk beign sick for WFEX III. Considering that WFEX III is a five day op in the field, I felt like I should be healthy for it so I went to medical and they told me I could not run the e-course.

The platoon needed someone to time them, so I was the one. I stood there at the start with a clipboard and my stopwatch as they took off and met them at the end and recorded their times. I have always avoided medical, so this was a new thing for me, being on light duty. I didn't even want to look them in the eyes. Even though they knew that I was very sick, I felt like a shitbag for sitting out of training. Pretty effective thing, that feeling of responsibility to your unit that they instill in you. Despite the fact that I had been coughing for about three weeks, had developed a fever in the past week, and likely would have been a casualty had I attempted the e-course, I regretted having gone to sick call. That would burn me a few weeks later.

I did make up the e-course this week and posted a pretty respectable time: 66 minutes and 48 seconds. It was about middle of the pack for the platoon.

WFEX III was so much nicer than WFEXII. The weather was gorgeous. Lows in the high 30s and low 40s at night and highs reaching the low 70s with sun during the day. We almost didn't know what to do, Alpha company is not used to nice weather.

It did become frustrating, however, being Joe the rifleman for another FEX. I got my chance to be a tactical commander on FEX I and won't get another chance, so I just play one of the PFCs or Lance Corporals in the platoon for the guy who is in command. It becomes frustrating because you see things he/she is screwing up that you want to change but you are not in command. It's also just frustrating to be in that role as a lieutenant. I was a corporal before I got here, so I am not accustomed to being treated as a private; taking orders without questioning why. I did it once, I don't want to do it again. I fully realize the benefits for myself as an officer and for these officers who are new to the military, so don't bombard me with comments, I'm just setting the stage, describing the background friction that comes into play on a FEX.

I honestly don't remember much about FEX III. I remember we had two days in the defense and two days in the offense, but I can't remember any details. This stuff tends to blend together, becomes a blur.

So now that we were in our TAOR (Tactical Area of Responsibility), the fun ended. The rain continued to drizzle on us, like chinese water torture, it works at your mind. You do your best to stay dry, your Gore-Tex jacket and pants will keep you dry for a while, but they are not impermeable. Drops of rain run off your helmet and down your neck, sending a chill through your body. We moved through the woods in a column, reminiscent of so many Vietnam movies. The part that they don’t show in the movies, except for Platoon, is that it’s pretty damn hard to be tactical and smooth when the ground is muddy and covered in leaves. Lieutenants in front of you slip and fall, crashing to the ground and sliding. We claw our way up hills, our gear doing it’s best to drive us back down. I don’t want to give you the impression that we were a bumbling comedy show, everyone is very serious about what they are doing, it is just frustratingly difficult to move through the woods with all that gear on.

We got rained on for a solid day. The worst thing was that we were in the defense first, which meant digging in. You have to dig a hole deep enough so that you can stand in it and the only thing above ground is your shoulders and head. This hole must be wide enough for you and your fighting hole buddy. It takes about four hours under ideal conditions; the rain makes it worse. Everything gets coated in mud quickly and everything you scoop out sticks to your shovel. On top of this, we don't have real shovels, we have E-tools (entrenching tools). This pathetic little thing is fondly described as an overgrown soup spoon. It is designed to take up little space, not be an effective digging tool.

As you dig deeper, the rain falling on you becomes water in the hole. Every strike at the dirt sends a shower of water and mud into your face and onto your body. It wouldn't seem to matter at this point; you are already soaked, right? You would think so, but when life sucks that bad every new insult makes it worse. My fighting hole buddy and I just started laughing, it was all we could do.

While in the defense that night, we just shivered constantly. We never did get the hole deeper than stomach level so when I and my 6'2" 200lb fighting hole buddy tried to slouch into the bottom of the hole and sleep at the same time, it got pretty cramped. I've said many times that I can sleep anywhere, but this was the exception. I was crushed into a little ball and the sides of the hole were pushing in on my sides and hips with the entire weight of my body. I just couldn't take it. It was better to freeze than to suffer through that pain for an hour. The temp dropped to the low 40s and we were all suffering. We had to treat one marine who succumbed to hypothermia. He was babbling incoherent nonsense and didn't know where he was. He was fine though, he rejoined us the next day.

We got up the next morning, strapped on our packs and humped out of there. Or maybe I should say we clawed our way out of our muddy pits, shoved our gritty nasty gear into our now brown, mud caked packs and slogged a couple hundred meters to a new assembly area. We started this process before the sun was even up, so visually determining what was your gear and what was a clump of mud was pretty difficult. I wound up burying my soft cover while filling in the hole because of this. One day, a lieutenant is going to be digging his fighting position and find a cover with the name Greer stenciled inside it! Maybe I'll be comandant by then and it'll make the papers. Wish I had written down the grid coordinates of that position so I could verify it later.

The second day of WFEX II was spent doing platoon sized attacks. The instructors would call someone's name out, brief them on the plan, and they would take over. This involves a lot of down time for the rest of us not directly involved in the planning and reconnaisance process. It takes between two and three hours to develop a plan, do a recon patrol, then write and deliver an order before you get everybody together to issue the order and step off. This down time can be real torture to someone who is action oriented, who wants to be doing, not waiting.

I was involved in one recon patrol as the navigator, which seemed to be a recurring theme. Once your platoon knows you are good at land navigation, you are asked to be navigator all the time. Thankfully, I was not asked to be navigator for the night attack. Our recon patrol on that one got some bum intel and got pretty lost. That's the biggest fear as a navigator; getting lost.

After completing the night attack, we joined the rest of the company in the LZ and formed up for the eight mile march back to the barracks. Because we started our attack late, we were the last ones to get to the LZ and we had very little time to strip off our warming layers, fill canteens, dump our ammo, and for me to get briefed and brief the platoon on the march.

I was the garrison platoon commander for that week, so once the tactical commander was done with the night attack, it was my job to get the platoon ready to step off on the march. Keep in mind, these are some tired lieutenants, they would rather just lay back on their packs and pass out for a few days and I can't say I blame them. Captain Sullinvan once told me that when you are in command you don't feel all of the pain and you don't feel as tired as joe rifleman. He is right. I didn't feel pain, didn't feel tired, it was almost superhuman. You really don't have time to be tired so your body kicks in the extra bit of reserve energy you need. I was able to get all my gear ready, get a brief from the company commander and brief my platoon staff on the scheme of maneuver before some in the platoon had halfway finished getting their own gear ready.

This became an issue halfway through the hike when my SPC saw several people stipping off warming layers and heard that most didn't have full canteens. It was my responsibility to ensure that these things had been done, but because I couldn't inspect every single person I had to rely on my fire team leaders and squad leaders to ensure things got done. Yet another lesson in how officers are responsible for everything their unit does, but are not necessarily able to directly affect every single issue. I took my ass ripping and relayed it directly down the line to my platoon sergeant and squad leaders.

A little later I got a good ass chewing from the student company commander because my platoon was the one in the lead and in that position it is our job to provide road guards. Road guards run ahead of the march formation to road intersections wearing orange reflective vests and at night carrying white lens flashlighs in order to stop motorists as we pass through. We are wearing camoflauge after all. We were equipped to provide eight road guards, which is what I was briefed we would need but we ran through those eight very quickly. Half of them didn't have the right flashlights anyway because we hadn't packed them before we left. You never use white lens flashlights in the field so we didn't bother to pack them. It's amazing the small things you have to deal with as a commander.

I realized that I had run out of road guards and was yelling for my squad leaders to bring up more because we were quickly approaching an entrance to the FBI academy. The worst possible thing happened. I finally got someone to run up to the head of the column just as a car came screaming out of the academy at high speed. Our company commander, Major Foley, was at the head of the column and he ordered us to stay clear of the speeding car. It turned on flashing blue lights and sped out in front of the column. Shortly after the car passed, the student company commander got in my face and yelled something to the effect of "Don't ever let that happen again." Lt. Taylor and I are friends from OCS so I didn't take it personally, I was more emberrassed at myself and angry at my squad leaders for disobeying my orders. I wonder though, if we had gotten a road guard out there in time to stop the cop car, would he have stopped? It would have likely taken 4 to 5 minutes for the column to pass, he can't really afford that kind of time when heading to an emergency.

The hike was actually the most brutal one we had during the 6 months here. Because we had no down time before stepping off on the hike, we were already tired, and our wet, mud caked packs weighed several pounds more than normal. Throw in some waterlogged feet which are more prone to blisters, and you have a tough hike. Once again though, being in command allowed me to push through the pain and fatigue. We didn't finish the hike until 2 o'clock in the morning and I was exhausted, but I kept moving because the platoon was depending on me. My company commander (student) commented during my evaluation later that he was really impressed with how I was able to keep doing my job while many of the other platoon commanders collapsed on their butts and did nothing. Felt good to be recognized, but I honestly didn't see any other alternative. Things had to get done and I was the only guy who was going to get them done.