Friday, July 10, 2009

Hello friends,

Well, the hard part is over! Today (Friday) was our last official training day. Tomorrow we reconstitute – clean up and turn in equipment we borrowed, get stuff we need to take with us, clean up the barracks, etc. Everybody was motivated today because the light at the end of the tunnel was very bright.

Yesterday we did dry runs through various convoy situations: driving through a friendly village, driving through a hostile village, returning fire, identifying IEDs, quick recovery of a damaged vehicle, combat life saver on injured personnel, establishing a Medivac landing zone, and other tasks. It was the crawl/walk phase. Today was the walk/run phase. We ran the convoy on a live range, so we used real ammunition and fired at pop-up targets. Now don’t get worried; all the targets were down-range. We were not firing across one another. It was a very controlled training environment and overall good training. It’s almost too bad I’ll never use it, since I will never be on a convoy. But, I can live with that.

Now for some full disclosure. I have a beautiful wife and son that I love dearly and who love me. I have great family support and wonderful friends who I appreciate very much. But today, my favorite person on the planet is the man/woman who decided to put air conditioning in an up-armored HUMVEE. Those vehicles are beasts. They have inches thick armor and bulletproof glass. I’m glad they are available for our troops and I’m sure that if you are being shot at, they are worth every penny. But they are an oven inside. A “black box” for all you engineers. And that air conditioner made it tolerable. It was in the mid-eighties and sunny again. When we did have to get out of the vehicle, we would sweat just standing in place. If you had a task to perform, it was even worse. At one point I could feel the sweat running down the back of my knees (I was on the landing zone marking team). Just miserable for us Air Force folks. But that HUMVEE became a haven (even heaven?) and we couldn't wait to get back inside.

So, as I mentioned, the hard part of Ft McCoy is over. We leave on Monday for Baltimore. Craig and Karen are stopping in for the short time I am there. Then its the long haul; six months in Afghanistan. This may be my last post from state-side and I will try to update it periodically from over there. Thanks again for all the warm wishes. Please keep in touch and I'll be talking to you soon!

Later,

-Dave

P.S. Somebody gave me the pictures below. One of the barracks (that's me in the Eagles cut-off shorts), and one of me firing the crew serve .50 caliber machine gun.


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