Henry's Web Log

In spite of running through a full range at Camp McCrady, we’ve done it again here at Ft. Lewis, only with more pain: a day of M16 preliminary marksmanship training, a day of M16 electronic simulation training (EST), and a very long day at the range.
I will say that the EST (not ElectroShock Therapy, but Electronic Simulation Training), was a very cool experience: a large motorpool had been converted into an electronic battlefield with converted M16 weapons (machine guns and anti-tank weapons, too, but not for us). The entire North wall was a computer-projected rifle range, and 18 of us at a time went through the process of zeroing our weapons, then engaging pop-up targets…just like what we’d do the next day on the live range. I’m sure it saves the Army a lot of ammunition, improves safety, and improves the scores of everyone who runs through it.
Our day on the range was Saturday. We got our weapons out of the vault at 7am, and were zeroing our weapons by 8am. That involves centering the sights and getting 6 shots in a row within a 2” circle at 25 meters. By 10am, we started moving to the qualification range where we had targets from 50 meters to 300 meters…similar to Camp McCrady, but a better range. We also put on our protective masks (the chemical agent breathing filters), and fired 20 rounds at 50 meter targets. Then we waited 3 hours for nightfall, and fired tracer rounds at 50 meter targets. That part was awesome! I wish I could have video taped it, but YouTube provides a good M16 nightfire reference. The bullets start really whizzing around 1:18 seconds in this 7 minute clip.

Seattle is known for rain, and has been true to form this first week here in Fort Lewis. We could easily see Mount Rainier the day we arrived, but I haven’t seen it since!
With an average annual rainfall of 37 inches, this is a far cry from the 4.1 inch average annual rainfall Nasiriya, Iraq. So I’ll be careful what I wish for!
Speaking of rain, Eric recently participated in the Christiansburg High School Marching Band recruitment night. Eric has played baritone for 2.5 years now, and said he had a great time at this wet event.

A FOB is a forward operating base. That's what we'll see in Iraq, and Fort Lewis has set up its own version of a FOB here.
That's me on the left, and Maj Thomas (Mark) Jadrich is helping hold my "We Support You" sign from Cub Pack 145. We're decked out in our new equipment, ready to go to our training. We thought we were headed to a range, but it turned out we took our gear off and sat in a classroom for the afternoon.

IIARIAT: If It Ain't Rainin', It Ain't Trainin'. This old Army saw probably traces its roots to Fort Lewis! We've had 3 days of continuous drizzle, interrupted by periods of rain.
SRP (Soldier Readiness Processing, 3rd time) went well! But there were a couple of things still needed on me, so it's not completely redundant.
Thomas and I have jumped into any training class we can find. Wednesday it was a legal briefing/review, Thursday was both combatives and combat first aid. Today we picked up the DAGR (military GPS), plus worked on fixing up our newly issued personal equipment...
WOW! The gear we're receiving is top-notch, fantastic stuff. We are definitely a well-equiped force with state-of-the-art ballistic vests, load carying equipment, sleeping systems, ECW (extended cold weather) clothing, Gerber utility knife, camel-back hydration, and much improved first-aid kits. Nice.

Wow! Last weekend was great, spending time with Lisa, Eric and Ethan! Too bad I didn’t have any information yet on where I was headed…that came on Monday. Thomas (Mark) and I both received orders for a Sustainment Brigade, mobilized from Kansas National Guard, and currently in Ft. Lewis.
Aberdeen has done all they could do to educate us, so Retired Seargent Major Posadas helped us get a flight to Fort Lewis, which is just south of Seattle. Tuesday we took care of little things to prepare to move out, including yet another Anthrax shot (3 out of 7 are complete!).
Today we left at 5:30am, flew to Detroit, then to Seattle in a little over 8 hours. With the time zones on our side, we arrived by 2pm, which gave us enough time to start the in-processing today. Third time is a charm, right? We’ll see.
The unit is pretty close to flying to Iraq. Right now the question is whether we’ll be trained up enough on THEIR processes to fly with them, or have to join them later in Kuwait. The final destination is varied, since a Sustainment Brigade supports an entire theater. About halfway between Bagdad and Kuwait, lies Tallil. As a brigade-sized support element, we’re a couple of levels higher than most maintenance, supporting a division. Or at least supporting the battalions and companies that are supporting the various brigades in a division. I'm still in touch with the 111th Multifunction Medical Battalion. Their XO is here at Ft Lewis as well, so I may meet him tomorrow morning.
Fort Lewis has barracks that make McCrady look appealing! Doesn’t matter much to us, since this is just a pit stop. We’re glad to finally be meeting and talking with the folks we’ll go to war with. At this level, a sustainment brigade is built from plug-and-play elements, so I would expect less cohesion: but my first impression is that this is not the case! They seem trained, cohesive and intelligent. They just got the bad luck of the draw for billets.

Finished up our second week of Ordnance education at Aberdeen. This week has been all about ammunition (right stuff, right place, right time). I missed one question on the final exam.
Now I'm looking for a ride so that I can meet Lisa down the road, and help her drive the family to Aberdeen late tonight. After the boys have done their trick-or-treating, of course, which means it'll be pretty late.
Still no news on our confirmed assignment, though. UGH! It'll be Monday, at least, before we learn anything.!
But I did get a ride to Union Station, DC. Nice! I had my eye on a train to Staunton, VA, which would intercept Lisa nicely, but I was too late. A close second is a train to Lynchburg, just 30 minutes out of the way. We'll just stay in Lynchburg for the night, or longer!
In the mean time, I had some time to kill while waiting for the train. I took a walk to find a CVS photo printing station and got some nice prints to share with Lisa and the boys. I also snapped a quick photo of our capitol building, and of course found a wifi spot to work email, complete another online training course for medical logistics administration, and tweak the blog!

I have uploaded ALL my October 2008 photos to my Picasa web album account (HenryBassACI).
There's some overlap with the McCrady folder because McCrady is a subset of October 2008, created for my fellow soldiers that were with me at McCrady.

Lisa and the boys are definitely visiting this weekend! This marks 4 weeks apart, and it's a great time to get together. Last weekend was a reconnaisance mission for this weekend!

We were supposed to be joined today by 5 more McCrady graduates...but they didn't show at the last minute. It seems they couldn't get orders in time on Friday so they were held over. Sound familiar? Our boss here just can't understand how that could happen. It only takes 5 to 10 minutes to cut orders. Inexcuseable, in my opinion.

So we drive on. Thomas and I started the ammunition course this week. Newer officers get this as part of the Ordnance Officer Basic Course, so this is refresher for them. It was a separate deal when I went though. No problem- we're already deep into the material on the first day: fire hazard codes, federal supply class, DoDIC, CIIC, etc. It's all manuals, handbooks and regulations. We do that in engineering all the time. Too Easy.