9 Days in the field complete.

Alright well the last nine days I've been in the field and boy what a trip its been. I'll try to tell you all that happened, its pretty crazy. So we went out on thursday, during the day we got out introduction to trenchs, were we would spend alot of time at first. We had a meeting later that night and reheasals with the major for a Company attack. This was pretty cool seeing how 50 feet above us there was live fire being shot. You could see the tracers. Really gave an impression that you were involved in a battle. The attack took place early friday morning. We woke up at 3 am and started to prepare, the attack was initiated at 7. All went well I didn't get killed but after the attack hell began. It started to rain... HEAVY RAIN. And it didn't stop for about 8 hours. So now my cloths are soaked, luckly the 250$ rain gear I bought held up to the task(its more then just rain gear). So after sitting in the rain all day, we got the privaledge to man the trenches all day. At 8pm we were told that we could now go down to 50%, which means half of us can sleep at a time. So 4 hour shifts in the trench, and the best part is that we have wet cloths on, and it dropped to about -10.

That night was not fun. I'll not lie, me and bradshaw were huddled up close, trying to stay warm. We took turns on the C9 so that one of us could duck down out of the wind. Finally we had a great idea to start a fire in an ammo can that we had. Great idea except the only dry stuff we has was garbage.. So we burnt it and the smoke that it created destroyed us. We were coughing and having trouble to breath. That night I thought what the hell am i doing here more then once. It was a low point thats for sure. One point I had trouble breathing and stopping from shaking, but luckly bradshaw took care of me. I'll tell you thats not something I wand to experience again.

Sat and Sunday we stayed in the trenches at day then at night we were allowed to sleep in the tents. But all day we just stood around doing nothing just looking out into the open, then out of the blue enemy forces would come attack us. Such a boring time that was.. It felt like the excersice would last forever.

Sunday night we finally started doing out recce patrols. That went really well, we went on a 8 hour patrol then returned and some of us got some rest. The other 4 guys in my group were lazy so I ended up only taking 1 hour sleep every 16 hours. I was able to keep my spirits high knowing that I was taking care of the other guys by allowing them to sleep. Troops come first thats what we are always taught. So I was able to keep my energy level at an all time high which confused alot of people knowing how lil rest I took. I went out of my way to help as many people with there patrols, and stuff, not only to keep warm, and busy, but it gave me a purpose. A reason to run my ass off, and not let sleep take the best of me. Finally it came for me to go on my patrol and sure enought my group (troops), took care of me now.. They made me my dinner and told me I HAD to go for a nap. 1.5 hours rest which I wished i didn't take, because it messed with my system. Too much sleep. So this all lasted until wed night.

Wed night we moved to the urban ops base, where we set up our tents and got some sleep. Me again I got only 2 hours cause I went out on a patrol for someones retest. But I had lots of fun on the patrol. Thursday it rained all day, and it was freezing cold. We did urban ops stuff all day then at 4 we had the night off. We were all cold, tired, and upset that our tent was all muddy and had alot of water. So what did I do. I recruited Bradshaw to join me and we collected pine bows for over and hour. We lined the tent bottom with them which kept the warmth in and helped keeping the water from getting us wet.

So all in all, I had a great time. It was hard mentally and physically, but I've learned that when things get tough I'm able to forget about my needs and look out for whats best for the group. Which is more then others can say lol. Some people really shut-er-down.

OH yeah finally one last story. One night for dinner we were told that two flares would be shot up in the air and then 50% of us must RUN hard and fast to get out dinner. So we get there and we get a plastic bag with three meat skewers(the sticks kept making holes in the bag and didn't help), rice, corn and gravy if we wanted... I chose no to have the gravy. Some people even put there cheese cake in there. So one you have your bag of food, you put it in your pocked and RUN your ass off back to the trenchs so that the next guy can go get his food.

So thats it for now... :D