“Army Training, Sir!”

Anybody remember Bill Murray in Stripes?

Every day, every week we add new skills to our repertoire, or refresh skills not recently practiced.  The upcoming week is “range week,” which means by the time I write next Sunday I’ll have qualified on the following weapons:  M9 pistol, M4 rifle, M249 (light machine gun), M240 (medium machine gun), and M2 .50 caliber heavy machine gun, (affectionately known as “the Ma-Deuce”). 

We qualify on the M9 in daylight only; all the others we shoot both day and night.  To aim accurately at night, we use all sorts of fancy sites and what we call “night vision devices” (or “NVDs”).  Every soldier carries both an M9 and an M4.  The machine guns we mount on our vehicles.

Ranges are fun as long as the weather holds.  There’s a lot of waiting around for your turn, mixed with anxiety about whether you will qualify on the first go or not.  But the end of a good day leaves you slightly giddy with pleasure, like you had just won a big game or something.

We put on a lot of gear when we go to the range.  Most of it goes by names, shortened to acronyms, that are new to non-Army ears.  Here are some examples:

ACH:  Advanced Combat Helmet

NVDs:  Night Vision Devices

ACUs:  Army Combat Uniform

Eye-Pro:  Eye Protection, or safety glasses

IBA:  Interceptor Body Armor

ESAPI (pronounced “ee-sappy”):  Enhanced Small Arms Protective Inserts (ceramic bulletproof plates)

MOLLE (pronounced “molly”):  Modular Lightweight Load-bearing Equipment

IFAK (pronounced “I-fack”):  Improved First Aid Kit

I’ll stop there, because I’m sure you get the idea.  When I can I’ll post a picture.  The weight of this gear adds up, and each has various components and all sorts of little ins-and-outs that have to be mastered.  But gradually we become used to the load and comfortable with the nomenclature.

Junction City, Ogden, Manhattan

The nearest towns to Fort Riley are Junction City, Ogden, and Manhattan.

“Junction City” is an ugly name for a town, and the actual place is not much prettier than its name.  Devoid of charms or claims, only its lack of pretension is endearing.  Many residents work on Fort Riley.  Others work on a strip just outside post that caters to soldiers.  This street is lined with bars, check cashing joints, barber shops, used car lots, and rental furniture outlets that cater to soldiers.  The only new buildings in downtown Junction City–a few blocks farther on–are a few government offices.  The houses in town all appear to be at least fifty-years old.  Most of them are small and nondescript.  A couple of new subdivisions lie on Junction City’s southwest edge.  On a stretch of road out there, lined up in a row, sit a number of newly-built churches.  Near the Interstate 70 exits, you can find the standard array of gas, food, and lodging establishments.  A large number of city residents appear to be African-Americans.  The percentage of Korean residents also seems greater than you might expect to find in Kansas.  Many shops, churches, and restaurants feature Hangul signs or other traces of Korean ownership.

Ogden, just outside the gate on the east side of Fort Riley, is a one-horse town even less imposing than Junction City.  On weekends, the fire department parks its truck in the middle of the road, stops all traffic in both directions, and solicits donations for charities.  To bring back a word from the 80s, that’s “bogus”!! 

 Much more attractive is Manhattan, which sits about five miles down the road from Ogden. It’s hard to imagine a city more economically–and pleasantly–laid out.  Three sides of town are bordered bycommercial strips with all the usual stores and restaurants.  Connecting two sides of town is a road called first Anderson and then Bluemont.  In good traffic it takes ten minutes to get from one side to the other, but a lot of nice stuff is packed in-between.  In the center of town is K-State, or Kansas State University.  Next to K-State is “Aggieville,” the college shopping district.  Aggieville must feature as many bars per block as any college town in America.  Bookstores?  Not so many, but enough to suffice.  Surrounding K-State and Aggieville are tree-filled parks and neighborhoods.  

Watched a football game here

Outside Manhattan is Konza Wildlife Preserve, a large expanse of native tall-grass prairie.  This morning two friends and I walked a six-mile loop up and around the prairie bluffs and bottoms.

 

Sunflowers are still in bloom in the Konza

Combat Snatch and Grab

Every day we learn new skills we might need in Afghanistan.  The raison for it all is grim, but the actual training is pretty interesting.  This week we’ve focused on first-aid, vehicle maintenance, and driver training.  The equipment and gear we use are far better than what we had in my last stint in a line unit in 2002.  It didn’t get this way overnight, unfortunately, but as a result of five long years confronting battlefield realities in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

This weekend the sunflowers on Fort Riley withered, so I had to snatch-and-grab this picture off the Internet.

 

What the Army calls “tactics, techniques, and procedures” are also greatly evolved, or at least newly rediscovered and publicized.  Some “TTPs” are ingenious as hell.  Take for example a technique called the “combat snatch and grab.”  Imagine two Army Humvees driving down a road in a dangerous area.  One gets hit and is partially disabled.  How might the second vehicle hook up a tow-line to the first and drag it out of the danger zone in less than a minute and without the soldiers in either vehicle having to get out of their Humvee?  The answer is clever, clever, clever.  Let me know if you think you’ve figured out how we do it.

Camp Life

The week flies by.  We have class or skills training eight-hours-a-day/six-days-a-week, physical training in the morning, and lots of little tasks to accomplish before, after, and in-between everything else.

We have been studying counterinsurgency principles and tactics.  We listen to lectures, hold discussions, read articles, do homework assignments, and work together to complete practical exercises.  The individual components are interesting, but the day is long.  Fortunately, our two primary instructors are experienced, articulate, and energetic.  One is a former Rhodes Scholar, with the kind of ultra-quick mind you might expect.

We also study Dari–the language of the Afgan National Army officer corps–for an hour-a-day.  Not too much yet to show for that effort.  Chetor hasti?  Ma khob hastem  (How are you?  I am fine). 

I live with three National Guard officers, all from the same state.  They are a sociable bunch with a wide array of experiences and perspectives.  I enjoy talking with them, and eavesdropping on their conversation and banter.

Thursday evening I watched the Redskins-Giants game with about twenty other soldiers in the barracks day room.  Another DC native and I were sporting our Skins’ gear, for which we received a torrent of good-natured abuse as our team went down to defeat.

On Saturday evenings I get my hair cut and eat dinner in nearby Junction City.  I eat at a Korean restaurant with a couple of other kimchi-loving officers.  There are a lot of Korean-run shops in Junction City.  The last three weeks I’ve had my hair cut by a Korean lady whose daughter is in her fourth year at West Point.  Yesterday, she (the barber, not the daughter) talked me into an eyebrow-waxing.  Sure, why not?  This deployment is full of firsts.

The Army makes some things very clear: No porn on government computers!