MOUT & My Situation......

Thursday, Sept. 9th

Hey Everybody!
Well, it's good to be back at the bay! We had a couple of NASTY smoke sessions yesterday and today which makes me feel like it's Red Phase again.... I'll go into details some other time, but it's questionable what happened.

Anyway, yesterday we didn't start training until after our 10 minute lunch for said smoke session. Once we finally started it was a lot of fun and it was good training. Everything starts off pretty simple with the concept of clearing a room. Everything gets complicated when you start throwing in booby-traps and people. It gets even more complicated when it's at night and you are being shot at (with blanks) and you have to react. I'm going to be spending a lot of nights practicing MOUT in the near future...... The scenario is complicated a million times the moment gunfire breaks out. It's not an easy task to complete when you're trying to keep yourself alive, kill the bad guy and not shoot the civilian.

Today we worked more with actually tacking and fighting with someone resisting when we enter. It was hilarious at some points and down right stupid in other instances. The building we were using doesn't have a back wall, so you just imagine it's there. Everyone waiting to go is watching each group go from the back side. The stupid moments occur when people freeze and don't fight/move/say anything. The hilarious times occur when people yell or hip flip a DS or slam a DS's head into a wall. These were the fun ones. What also made today more interesting was that there was a camera crew filming us today. They were there to make a video for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The videos are being used to show what the MOUT training at Ft. Benning consists of. That's pretty much all the First Sgt. told us about them, but they had a lot of equipment and was pretty cool to be around.

In other news, I was finally told by on of my DS that I would be restarted. Now, when I was trying to figure out when/where/why questions, the answers weren't exactly what I needed to hear. Basically, I'm being restarted, but the reason and timing don't fit. They say it's for training I missed, but it may be next week before I leave my company. The new company would be in either week 9 or 10 and I didn't miss any of that other than a PT test which I crushed on Monday. So Mom & Dad, ignore the graduation letter you will receive until you here more from me about this gaggle-$*!@ of a situation.

That's about all for now. I will still be training w/my company until further notice. The 12 mile is tomorrow and FTX starts Sunday. I hope this gets figured out soon. I don't get why I would have to repeat both events....but I guess.........

Embrace the Suck!!
Spc Martin