Hump Week

As in, over the hump and as in "humping" which means carrying heavy stuff.

On Tuesday 7/10, we did our night driving using night vision goggles. Each person in each Humvee took a turn driving and a turn in the gunner's turret up top. It was a clear pleasant evening and the NVG's made the scenery spectacular. It was moonless but very-low-intensity headlights and stars gave plenty of light. The goggles also made thousands of stars (and meteors!) easily visible. Didn't hit the rack (aka bunk) until after midnight but a great experience. We had to wear FBR, full battle rattle, so we were pretty tired.

We performed our first convoy practice on Wednesday. We spent time getting the machine guns set up on the first and last Humvees, out of 4 total. We practiced interval spacing, communications through encrypted radios, practiced clearing the guns when we reentered the FOB, etc. Our Army convoy commander forgot that a particular gate on the Fort Riley base was closed and so directed us down other roads, right into 2 mock ambushes. One time, I was in the lead Hummer turret when a BOOM and large puff of black smoke appeared at the side of the vehicle. Then "insurgents" started fired AK47s at us. Fun actually and a prelude to later training. Finally, our convoy commander directed us to take a shortcut straight across a 12 foot deep ditch that no car, maybe not even a jeep, would get through. We got through fine although the gunners (me at that time) got jounced a bit. FBR all day.

Thursday was M9 pistol qualification. We had to shoot green dummies that popped up from 5 to 25 meters away. I earned sharpshooter. FBR and 90+ heat made it a tiring and sweaty day. After the M9 Qual, we went to one of our periodic leader meetings, which means a mock encounter with Afghan leaders. I had to fill in as the commanding officer since the team mate scheduled to do it was still trying to qualify on the M9. So, I had a meeting with an Afghan army brigade commander and had to deal with the issue that their traffic control points were not doing a good job. So, it was a challenge to work on a subpar performance on their part. For the first time, this meeting was video recorded and I had a one-on-one interview with the reporter afterwards to discuss the experience and our mission to A-stan.

On Friday, we spent 4 hours with Army technicians getting our M4 rifles sighted properly, so that it would shoot where we aimed. That included the laser sighting. Which led us to...

Saturday, day and night M4 qualification. We spent more time with instructors fine tuning our sights, this time with live ammo. BANG! My ears still ring (writing this on Sunday) and conversation sounds like its from bad, cheap speakers. Yes, we used Army issue earplugs, but 120 rounds of live fire is noisy. I fortunately had my sight fine-tuned within a half hour. Others took up to 6 hours. Only after that could we actually qualify. We trudged up to other range (94 degrees, FBR) and fired at 40 pop-up targets, some only head-and-shoulders, ranging from 50 to 300 meters, 1/6 of a mile away! The tuning the sight really helped since we would look through the scope, put the laser dot visible only in the scope on the target, and squeeze the trigger. I made marksman and was finished by 10:30. We waited for the rest and did not leave until after 5. Did I mention 94 degrees and full battle rattle? We did have a couple of people have to literally chill out in an airconditioned van for a while (out of about 70 people). Otherwise, those finished tried their best to cool off and hydrate in an unairconditioned building where we could at least shed the body armor.

We returned to the barracks at 6:30 PM and rested and ate MRE's. At 8 we FBR'd and caught a bus back to the same range for night qual. This was REALLY COOL. Our M4s also have laser pointers (set up on the previous day) that can only be seen by NVG's. So now we had our targets pop up, we held the rifles chest high and looked via our NVG's for the laser dot on the target and fire. Easy and like a very neat video game, only with live rounds. Everyone qualified this time in 3 and 1/2 hours while the day qual took about 10. We returned at 2 AM this morning, everyone all excited by the experience and finally had lights out about 3. The night was clear and pleasant so as we finished, we would shed our gear and goggle at the night sky. We had the Milky Way right over head.

A most memorable week.