Farewell Fort Lewis!

Ft Lewis, WA

After 32 days, thousands of rounds of ammunition, literally days upon days of white space, we finally leave Ft Lewis for Kuwait and points beyond.  Our training is finally through.

This week we spent two days in the field conducting a live fire exercise defending our convoy of 16 HUMVEEs.  This was the exercise in which we put much of what we have learned to this point to the test, from radio communications, land navigation, IED identification, shooting downrange with a machine gun, and towing our HUMVEE to safety.  The training was conducted on a make-believe terrorist camp, complete with plywood mosque and plywood minarettes (nice touch!) and Yankee Go Home signage.  The  road on the range was muddy, with huge puddles and large moguls -- in other words, perfect for driving a HUMVEE through.  One of our gunners - all were in turrets manning their M-240 machine guns - got soaked with mud by 8:30.  Long day for him.

We conducted the Live Fire Exercise on Monday and Tuesday - long days - and then back to the classroom today for some final words from the chaplain and other less motivational speakers.  The last lecture was on how to spot a terrorist or spy in our midst.  He was funny, obviously honing his Comedy Club skills, but it would've been better to have the chaplain speak last, as his words were at least inspiring.  Spy in our midst - not really what I am looking for at this moment.  I'll be looking for that IED on the road!  Point taken, though.

We got word yesterday that one of our corpsmen won't be going downrange with us.  Apparently he was what we call an "embedded alternate," though no-one knew, including the corpsman himself.  If one of the other corpsmen got sick or hurt during training, he would have filled in.  No one got hurt so he goes home.  Unfortunately for him he'll have to do this whole 30+ days of training again if (when) he gets picked up to deploy.  Stinks for him, big time.

I have to wrap things up pronto.  The internet goes down in a few minutes, and there is no way of knowing when we can get back online.  Our flight was at least changed from 7:20 am tomorrow to 5:20 pm.  No one was really happy about staying up all night to scrub the barracks or bathroom floors.  Now we can do all the buffing of the WWII era barracks floors tomorrow morning, and we get one last meal at the DFAC.  I will miss the DFAC Diva's though, they were very kind to us albeit too heavy on the starchy scoops.

One last thing before I check in again downrange:  However frustrated some of us were by the training, we all were able to stay in touch with our loved ones - huge for morale.  When I was last deployed on a ship in the mid-90s, the only means in which to communicate was by letter, or occasionally by Red Cross message - sort of like Twitter via teletype.  We planned our wedding that way.  Sometimes we'd go 3 or more weeks without mail, especially in the Indian Ocean.  Today we can jump on skype and I can see and talk to the kids, or scare the dog.  That is something to be very pleased about, and with luck I'll have this available to me when I get to Kandahar.  Stay tuned.



My skype buddy (my wife!), hidden behind an ugly doll.  I am in the bottom left.  Gotta love Skype!