I realized when it was over that the reason I took the course got lost after the first couple of days. I'm not even sure I remember why I signed-on to do it. Some buddies were doing it, and I thought it would be fun to learn some things about land navigation as well as do some fun outdoor shooting. But whatever the reason for being there, what I got out of it went way beyond any particular skill or "fun" experience. I don't think I'd ever do anything like it again, but I'm glad I did, and I think it changed me permanently in a couple of good ways. Much more on this below.
The pictures in the post are in no particular order. I didn't want to go through the whole text to find the right spots to insert them. In various places I'll say, "Pictures attached" and then explain them, but this refers to the pics I sent out to the original list serve I had this on. Those pictures as well as many others appear here, but in different places.
A hazy whirlwind of light, sound, and motion enveloped me. All five senses were being overloaded. As the earth trembled and heaved, I could hear shouts and gunfire, could smell the thick, sharp odor of burned powder, could feel the impact of mortar rounds, could see the flashes of light and movement on all sides. Gunfire came from every direction. It seemed there were twice as many places where muzzles were flashing than we had people. The looks I got from my own guys were way more piercing, though, either from their accusatory disappointment in me or that terrifying, "what do we do now?" look that haunts every leader.
The intensity of all this activity was in the background, though, obscured by exhaustion, confusion, and the certain knowledge that I was failing myself and the guys around me. Every man was in his own world, yelling for people to listen, to pay attention to his own dilemma. So, this is what leadership is, hmm? Seeing the big picture. Folding the lives, desires, senses, fears, outrage, courage, stupidity, and abilities of a group of people into one entity. Making that entity perform, and doing it while you have all the same fears and doubts that they do, except that you also feel the crushing weight of your responsibility, leaving little left except your own self-doubt.
I got it. In that moment, amidst the gunfire and shouting, I understood what it was all about. A week's worth of labor, exhaustion, hunger, petty ********, deprivation, and pointless tasks added up in that instant to a very powerful lesson. Rod is a genius.
Many of you know that from time to time I attend various firearms-related schools. In the past, I have taken classes on tactics, marksmanship, situational awareness, tactical stress management, and others. Last week, I took the Ranger Patrolling course, which was offered by Storm Mountain Training Center, in the mountainous terrain of West Virginia. I was expecting a low-intensity exposure to various Ranger skills, such as rappelling, land navigation, patrol techniques, and others, but what I got was so far beyond these things that I have to narrate the entire course in order to really understand its effect myself. The emphasis of the course was actually on leadership, teamwork, personal mental and physical limits, as well as the skills I listed above. Because of this broad emphasis, which really translates to all areas of our lives, I have expanded the list of people I usually send my course narratives to. If this does not interest you, feel free to ignore it. I won't mind.
All the stuff I'd be carrying, laid out in the driveway the night before leaving.
My trip started at 2:00 AM Sunday morning. I wanted to be in Mount Storm, the closest town, by 6:00 PM that evening, as I was meeting John and Travis, the individuals I usually attend these classes with. They are both Doctors; Travis is a neurosurgeon, and John is a radiation oncologist. John spent 14 years as an ER doc though, so he has lots of experience with acute medical situations, and is the perfect choice for a travel companion if you are looking for someone who can take care of you. He's very good at starting a saline drip when you're drunk. Cures your hangover instantly. He's pretty cool, too.
Both John and Travis have spent numerous years in the Army Reserve, and both have at times been Special Forces doctors. Travis in fact recently was promoted to full colonel, which is pretty rare for a reserve doctor. John went to Iraq toward the end of the Gulf War, and was part of the Special Forces group that assisted the Kurds with food, medicine, and shelter in northern Iraq and Turkey. Both of these individuals are extremely high-quality people, and, because I have known him for so long and have shared so many experiences, I count John as one of my best friends.
I met John at Gunsite Training Center, near Paulden, Arizona, in 1997. He was taking the submachine gun course, and I was taking my first pistol course. There wasn't a whole lot of mixing between classes, but we managed to have enough contact to recognize something common in each other, whatever it was (insert obligatory gay jokes here). One of the police officers in John's course managed to shoot the end of his own finger off, and John treated him in the field. He accompanied him to the hospital, even though the injury wasn't that serious. John's experience in the ER gave him the insight to recognize that the medical staff in the small, local hospital might make the wrong decisions regarding the injury, and might decide the finger wasn't worth saving. His purpose in accompanying his classmate was to "suggest" to the doctor that things weren't as bleak as they seemed. He was right, and had to exert a little pressure to get them to try to save the finger rather than take it all the way off. As a result, his classmate still has his finger, is not restricted in work at all, and suffered much less than he would have. They still talk every now and then, and John acts as though it was no big deal. "He would have done the same for me," he drawls, in his funny Mississippi accent. John's just that kind of guy.
John, Jeff Cooper, and I, at Cooper's home in Paulden, Arizona. Jeff Cooper is widely considered to be the "Father of the Modern Technique of the Pistol." He is the founder of Gunsite, one of the first dedicated shooting schools of its type. He's also a widely published author.
My trip took me through eight states, and I arrived more or less on schedule. John and Travis were delayed, so I simply got a room and re-packed all of my gear. Flying out to the course was not an option, as I had to bring so much gear with me. I had no intention of finding out what sort of hoops the airline would make me jump through to bring weapons and cases of ammo with me, so driving seemed the thing to do.
I was a bit embarrassed at the thought of taking this class to begin with. I didn't like that it was called "Ranger School" because I felt that somehow degraded the accomplishment that actual Rangers achieve when they take their 72-day course. This was only going to be five days, so I figured that no matter what they did to us in that time, it couldn't possibly compare with the regular-length course. Two of the things they did which made up for the shorter timeframe included asking us to come to the class having studied the Ranger Handbook and knowing it back-to-front, which would allow us to dispense with much of the classroom time, and also eliminating much of the instruction with various techniques. For example, when it was time to rappel, instead of taking a few days to study the techniques and safety procedures, and then watching many demonstrations, and then practicing on small platforms, we simply went right away to the large tower, clipped-in, and away-we-went. This made rappelling go from a four or five day class to a few hours. Anyone who has done this before knows that there isn't much to it, so if you are willing to take a few shortcuts and risk an injury (something Storm Mountain is not afraid to do), you can get pretty much the same thing out of it. This would come to characterize the approach to many of the training topics we were given.
I woke-up Monday at 4:00 AM, showered, and drove to the Center. While we were getting our stuff together, Rod, the head instructor and Center President, came out to the lot and started yelling at us to get going and be up to the classroom on time. I had been forewarned that this class would be run just like an Army school, and that there would be lots of yelling and punishment for being late and screwing up, so this didn't surprise me. Since we were a couple of minutes late, we had to do PT right off the bat while we were yelled at. We were told that there would be no lateness for the rest of the week, or the whole team would suffer. Knowing that your team members will have to do pushups because of your mistakes is a pretty good incentive to do things right.
The "front leaning rest" position. Pushups are fun! Not. Later, we would have to do these with our packs on.
We had a few hours of classroom instruction on the basics of a few skills, but it was more to see what we already knew than anything else. Anyone who didn't already know the basics would be given his money back and asked to leave. We were told that we would get very little instruction in certain things, so that we should choose people who were especially good at those tasks already to perform them. For example, Travis had lots of land navigation experience, so he was usually our navigator and point man. It quickly became apparent that I was what is called a "mule." That means I can carry a lot of stuff. My load over the first couple of days got heavier and heavier, as the loads of some of the others got a bit lighter. I also am a bit of a night owl, so I was able to stay clear-headed a bit better during our night activities. I usually let my partner (we were always partnered with at least one person) sleep while I stayed awake. In exchange for these things, I did a lot less of the things at which I didn’t have much experience, like pace-counting and compass work.
Our instructors were one Army Ranger officer (a major) and one Ranger NCO (a First Sergeant). These guys were skilled at their trade and excellent instructors. They had dramatically different styles that complemented each other well. I would learn a lot from both of them over the coming week. Rod was not going to be our instructor, but would be involved in the course in various ways. He would play the role of S2 intelligence officer, CID officer, air support coordinator, partisan commander, headquarters *******, and a number of other tasks. Others were in charge of coordinating the Opposition Force's activities (it would prove to be very challenging for them to always keep a step ahead of us. They would not be told exactly what we were doing, but had a general idea of what our missions would be. This would make for a lot of realism, and gave us the sense that we could succeed if we could outsmart them). There were many others involved who remained totally behind the scenes. I didn't actually meet everyone until the last day, and I was amazed at the resources that they put into this course.
Ranger instructors, and Rod, the founder of Storm Mountain.
We were told that anything we left out of our immediate control would be stolen by the OpFor (opposition force). There were about ten or so "enemy" soldiers who would be making our lives miserable for the next five days, and one of their favorite things to do was sneak into your area and steal your rucksack or other items. They especially like to steal your weapon. Our food would be the MREs that we brought with us. An MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) is a package of things that at first glance are anything but ready to be eaten. They consist of euphemistic names like "Salisbury Steak," and "Chicken Kiev." There's a lot more variety in them these days, and you can find literally dozens of choices. Swapping entrees, sides, and desserts is an art form of bartering among soldiers that would quickly teach any experienced horse trader a thing or two about trading. While MREs look pretty processed and nasty, many of them actually taste excellent, especially after you've been crawling in the dirt for a few days. They completely eliminate your ability to take a ****, so you get the added benefit of not having to risk getting ambushed while a turd is hanging out of your ass, which would suck. This is great for a few days, but if your patrol is a week or more, it gets uncomfortable, and then you have to take a good half hour out to somehow empty your swollen bowels.
I quickly learned to carry my MREs in my cargo pockets so that if I had to drop my ruck for any reason, I would always have at least one meal on me. Even in this high-exertion environment, I discovered that more than one MRE per day was excessive, so I found myself typically eating an entree during one of our frequent stops, and then later in the day eating the fruit, crackers, and fig bars that were in the MREs during the other stops. We never actually stopped to eat; we always ate whenever we had an extra 90 seconds or so. I guess that's why most soldiers eat fast even after they leave the military. It was more grazing than actually feeding. I also carried my water and ammo on me at all times, so that I wouldn't lose them either. All the other stuff was less important, and kept in the rucksack.
At some point during the day (I don't remember times for most of our activities, as our days were 24 hours long) we hiked over to the rappel tower to learn how to do that particular activity. We would be rappelling from time to time down cliffs over the week, and they wanted to make sure we could do it. I had only a figure-eight, rather than a descender, so it made it a little more dicey, but most of the serious rappellers in the group didn't like the descenders anyway, as they are one more piece of gear to haul, and they only improve safety marginally. I was a little concerned about ending up upside down on the rope, especially since we would be providing our own belaying (rather than the instructors), but it worked out okay for me. The tower was about 30 feet high, and I backed up to the edge after the rappel master clipped me in. I slowly stepped off, and then there was that little settling that happens when you approach horizontal. I pushed off and went down about ten feet, braking with my right hand, and quickly realized I should have used the wool inserts in my gloves, as my hand started burning. I pushed off another ten feet, then made it all the way to the ground on the third push. So, this is rappelling! It was a lot of fun. The second trip was with our packs (roughly 30 pounds on this first day), and the third trip was with our packs, weapons, and other extra gear. The extra weight made it a lot harder to control, and made my hand burn a bit more, but thirty feet isn't that far, so it was manageable. Three people fell, but were stopped before they hit the ground by the belayer. One person fell almost all the way down on the first step, and Rod was screaming "falling! falling!" at the top of his voice. I don't know what the belayer was doing, but he must have been distracted, because the guy on the rope ended up upside down and nearly touching the ground. Oops.
Front side of the rappelling tower
Back side of the rappelling tower. The open areas make for nice shooting and observation platforms over the valley.
This side of the tower is used for climbing up, more than rappelling down. You can also see the helicopter skid used for practicing rapelling from a helicopter.
After our rappelling fun, we were given a mission to get to a certain place by a certain time. One member was appointed the Patrol Leader, and two others were appointed fire team leaders. The rest all had assigned spots in the formation, such as point, rear security, outside flanks, etc. I was a fire team leader, which meant that I was responsible for the performance of three other people, and for keeping the patrol leader informed as to our team's status. We started out hiking up a very large hill, and when we got half-way up, we were ambushed from the top. Numerous OpFor members were shooting at us from the tree line on top, and it was sheer pandemonium. Our patrol leader was stunned, and had no idea what orders to give. He was overwhelmed with information from all of us, as well as the terrible pressure to act, and he just seized-up. Most of us performed pretty much the same way the first time we got ambushed when it was our turn to lead. Everyone went off and did their own thing, and it was a long time before order was restored and we were able to continue our mission. There were several instances of our patrol leader giving orders that were basically ignored by the rest of the team who felt that another course of action was better. I made a mental note of this, and resolved to set an example by following orders unquestioningly. This way, when it was my time to lead, I would be able to say, "Hey, when you were the leader, I followed your orders to the letter. Why don't you help me out here and do the same thing for me?" There were also certain people who were more inclined to not play along than others, so I made a note to speak to them right away when I was the leader. We were being graded on our ability to accomplish our missions, and in the end, no matter who screwed up, it would be the leader's responsibility. His ability to inspire the others to work together would be key in being successful.
After this major screw-up, we were made to get into the "front leaning rest position," which is the position one assumes when one is about to do push-ups. Rod made us stay in that position until people started falling over, which took several minutes. It was hard to do, but a couple of the guys were really not in great shape, so I was not one of the unlucky ones to fall over and then get yelled at and made to do even more.
A nice view of how foggy it gets in the mountains of West Virgina, especially in the morning. Lots of people could be hiding in there!
The rest of the day centered largely on patrolling techniques and formations. We were ambushed again, and this time we did much better. Everyone started to gel a little bit, so we didn't get our asses handed to us too badly this time.
Just before dark, we hiked over to the shoot house, which they use for other types of close quarters battle classes. We were given an opportunity to get our stuff squared away, and I ended up getting rid of a few things and acquiring a few others. By this time, it seemed like the third day or so, but it was only eighteen hours into the first. We were told we could spend the night in the shoot house, which, for those of you who have accompanied me to other classes, is similar to what you'd expect. It's not a whole lot better than a shack, and hardly resembles an actual house. We set up a watch schedule, and I drew the 2:00 to 3:00 watch. I got to sleep by 12:00 or so, which was difficult because a couple of the guys snored really loudly. I put my earplugs in, which got rid of the snoring, but some others couldn't sleep at all, and were up snapping ammo into magazines and other noisy tasks all night. I knew enough to sleep whenever I got the opportunity, because we might not get another chance for a while. By the time it was my watch, everyone had fallen asleep, and I got up and checked my weapon, then went outside. We were told that the OpFor had Russian Generation 2 night vision, and since I didn't have any, I knew that if they decided to mess with us tonight I'd be the first to get whacked. I moved out a bit from the structure and sat in some tall grass, hoping that I might be able to see them before they saw me, so that I could at least get a few shots off and warn everyone. Every now and then I got up and walked around, which might not have been very smart, but it helped to keep me alert. At 3:00 I wasn't very tired, so I let the next guy have another 15 minutes, then I went inside and sat back down on the ground. I lay there awake for about another hour, and then we had to get up for the next day's activity. Total sleep for this evening: 2 hours.
Travis, all camoed-up. This guy's a Neurosugeon?
Preview of tomorrow's activity: More ambushes, learning how to do a leader's recon, artillery support, I lose my rucksack, psychological operations, more physical exertion, even less sleep.
See attached photo of the rappel tower. You can see some people in the foreground for perspective.
•••
As I mentioned, the second day started for us at 4:00 AM after two hours of sleep. A light rain was falling, and the corrugated tin roof made more noise than the amount of rain justified. Each drop was a distinct pinprick upon my consciousness, yet the aggregate resulted in a collective din. It's weird how sleep deprivation will cause you to see and hear the world in layers.
I had some time to reflect upon my teammates. John and Travis I described earlier. Another teammate was Rich, whom we all called "Goodman" because he looked like John Goodman. He was a big guy, and had lagged behind a lot during the previous day. We allowed him to sleep the entire night without standing watch. He was a professional photographer, and was a pretty good guy. Joe was the oldest teammate, and had a great personality. He was also challenged by the physical exertion, but he never really let it get him down, except for the amount that it slowed the rest of us. He felt pretty badly about that. Rod (a different Rod than the instructor) was a burly guy who was a little closer to my age. He was soft-spoken and even-tempered. I could tell that he would be reliable. Bart was my age, and was a member of the Los Angeles film scene. He had written, directed, and produced a few movies, and was currently dating a girl who was friends with Jenna Jameson. Maybe some of you know who she is. We called him "Hollywood." Scott was perhaps the most interesting of the group, and I never really did figure him out. He had a natural skill at this sort of thing, but seemed to go a little nuts as the time passed. By the third day or so, he started making some weird decisions, and at times seemed even a little delirious. Despite this, I found him to be a great guy, and he certainly took the experience more seriously than anyone else. There were two others in our group, but they dropped out before the first day, and I never got a chance to know them.
Navigational tools used to get from one place to another. **** up this part led to severe and immediate "negative reinforcement," which is a fancy way of saying "lots of yelling and smacks on the head."
My eye was irritated from getting CLP in it during the night. I had cleaned my M4 in the dark, and had gotten the solvent in my eye when I wiped it with my dirty hand. I had also helped a number of the others who were unfamiliar with the M16 series of weapons with theirs, so I was pretty filthy. We had to pack up our gear in the dark, and were not allowed to use any kind of illumination, so that was a bit of a challenge. I had spread out all my stuff and slept wrapped up in a poncho liner, but I'm pretty sure I got it all back in my ruck. Our mission this morning was to recon a farmhouse on the other side of the center. It was pretty close, so at least we didn't have to hike too far with all of our packs and heavier gear. The center was a hundred acres or so, but was surrounded by many square miles of government land, and Rod had no problem using this land for our purposes. It took me a few days to realize this, but I came to really respect the chances Rod takes to give his students the best training experience he can offer. He will risk getting in trouble with the Federales or even injuries to make sure that everything is as real as we can get.
The farmhouse was in the middle of a clearing that was bordered on one side by a large hilltop and on the other by a dense tree line. Joe had been the patrol leader the day before, and Bart was our leader today. We discussed the situation, and decided to send one group of three people off to the right and the tree line, and a group of two, one of whom was I, to the left and get as close as we could in the tall grass. We had to go through some really thick thorny stuff, and it was judged that our mission would take longer. I was the assistant patrol leader for this mission, so I technically outranked Scott, but his familiarity with the center made it obvious that I should get his input on how to proceed, and then most likely accept his recommendation. (Bart and I were the only two who had never been here before.)
Scott, taking a break. These short naps were pretty much the only sleep we got for five days. You learned to drop-off effortlessly after a couple of days.
Scott was on point most of the time, and I put most of my attention to our rear to keep the OpFor from bushwhacking us. Sure enough, after we had gotten as far as we could go toward the farmhouse, I began to sense that someone was following us. I don't know precisely what it was, but I could just tell that someone was back there. I let Scott know what was going on, and then told him to circle back around so that we could lay an ambush for whomever was back there. This way your own trail continues in the same direction and leads whomever is behind you past your new position, and you can surprise them. After a few minutes, we could hear someone creeping up on us. There was a lot of tension, and I found myself lightly rubbing my M4's safety against my thumb. The brush parted and out popped one of our instructors with one of the OpFor team members. I challenged them with the password, and the instructor told us to stand down. He sent the OpFor guy away. He then sat us down and quizzed us on our movement over the last couple of hours. He wanted to know when we noticed we were being followed, and had numerous other questions for us. He then berated us for leaving enough of a trail that he could follow, and told us to continue the mission. So much for praising us that we sensed him coming, but I had learned by now that they practice more negative reinforcement than positive. I guess if you're not doing push ups, you must be doing something right.
We completed our recon, and made drawings of what we saw. We made notes of how many windows the house had, which way the doors and windows opened, the fact that there were holes in the roof, tire tracks leading to the house, and a number of other details we had no idea whether would be important. We compared notes, and created two copies of our map so that if one of us was "killed" on the way back, we would both be able to bring back our intel. Just as we were finishing this, a four-wheeler started coming toward us, and we really got nervous. We hunkered down low, but it was obvious they were looking for us. Over the next several hours, we would crawl a few yards, to another thorny bush, and generally play hide-and-seek with the OpFor. Low crawling is not something that is easy, and when you toss in the thorns and rocks and everything else, plus make it last all day, it really wears you out.
Me, during a side trip somewhere. I've got my smaller "day pack" and a lot less gear, so this must have been taken when a couple of us went to scout something.
When we got back to our recon rally point, we updated Bart on what we saw. He then got a warning order from the cadre that we would be raiding the farmhouse. We created a sand table of the objective while he wrote out an operations order utilizing the SMESC format, which stands for Situation, Mission, Execution, Service support, Command/signals. While he did this, our Ranger officer came by to speak to us. He asked how we were doing, and listened to us bitch a bit about lack of sleep, etc. He then told us that it would not get any easier from here on out, and that in fact it would get increasingly tougher. He said that the five days we would be in the field would be harder than any five days in the regular-length Ranger school, and that at the end we would be exposed to a more intense level of stress than he ever was when he did it. The only difference would be that we would know that our course would only last five days, whereas when he took the course, even though the days were shorter and less stressful, he knew that it would take 72 days. I can't imagine doing this for that long, and I have a lot of respect for those who have done it.
Just as we were about to hit the farmhouse, our mission was changed. We now had to hump across two hills to a new objective rally point, where we would stay the night. We were given map coordinates and the time we were to be in position. The change in the mission was never explained, and this lack of communication and understanding adds to the frustration. It's all part of the plan.
My day pack and weapon. Note the red "blank firing attachment" on the business end of the rifle. This device allows your weapon to function when shooting blanks. Note also the black tape on the stock latch, sling swivels, and power knob for the Aimpoint scope. This keeps your weapon from making a lot of rattling noises, and keeps your scope from getting turned on by accident. Soldiers use more duct and electrical tape than even electricians.
This is Travis's rifle. Some guys like to paint theirs so they blend in a bit better. Looks kind of neat, too.
As soon as we got half-way up the first hill, the OpFor cut loose on us. Everyone dropped their rucks and fell into defensive positions. Half the team wanted to assault up the hill, while the others wanted to go back down, re-group, and try to flank. Bart made the decision to go back down, so most of us started down. I grabbed my ruck and brought it with me, but, after 100 yards or so, I realized that no one else grabbed his. I dropped mine. We then regrouped, and realized that one of our guys, Goodman, was still up there. He began yelling at us to come back up and assault up the hill. I was shocked. I couldn't believe that he would risk the entire team by deliberately staying behind like that. Scott and I flanked a bit to the left and laid down covering fire on the top of the hill while the others flanked around to the right up the side of the hill. It took a while, but we managed to push the OpFor off the hill. Our gear was scattered all over. I realized that Goodman's reason for not going down the hill was only because he didn't want to have to go back up it. He was really not handling the physical exertion very well at this point, and it was affecting his decisions. Scott and I were the only two left at the bottom of the hill, so it fell to us to bring all the rucks up to the top. I can't believe I carried four fifty-pound packs up that hill (several hundred yards seemingly straight up) in two trips, but I did it.
One ruck we were not able to find, however, was mine. I didn't care about the food and clothing that was in it, and I had all my water and ammo with me in my pockets and on my LBE. I knew exactly where I had dropped it, and in fact had marked the spot in my mind, knowing that it was in a different spot than the others, and thus might be tough to find. I told Bart that I thought the OpFor had stolen it, and that looking for it would only waste time. We still had to get to our site by the appointed time, and we were getting tight. At this point, the instructor stepped in and said that the OpFor had not taken the ruck, but that if we left it, they would take it, and I wouldn't get it back. Like, ever. Well, if it had been my ruck, I wouldn't have cared, but I had borrowed it from a close friend for whom it had a lot of sentimental value. Over the years and through several conflicts, including the Gulf War, he had painstakingly modified and improved it so that it really didn't even resemble the standard pack, and in fact a lot of the guys had commented on how awesome it was. There was no way I was going to lose it for good, so I told Bart to go on ahead, and I would catch up with them later. I had a map and a compass, and felt that I could probably find them. I wasn't going to be responsible for the team failing, but I wasn't going to let down my friend, either. I would drop out of the course if I had to.
Bart made the decision to send both me and Scott down to look for it, and for the rest of the team to wait for us. In the end, he decided that we would all fail or succeed together, and I respect him for that. I could have argued my case again that I didn't want the team to fail because of me, but I had already made my case, and he had made his decision. In keeping with my promise to myself to comply with whatever decisions were made by whoever was the team leader at the time, I said, "you got it," and took off down the hill with Scott. Twenty minutes later, we found the ruck in some very tall grass. It wasn't anywhere near where I thought I left it. That proved to me that no matter how certain you are of something, processing information while under stress leads to errors.
We humped like hell to get to our rally point by dark, and we barely made it. Everyone, even the two out-of-shape guys, busted ass to make up for my mistake. It's something that marked a bit of a turning point for the team; we were starting to work together. We set up our lay-up spot for the night. We teamed-up on four points, two men to a spot. We would sleep in shifts. We were told that we had until daylight to sleep. That translated to about eight hours, which seemed like a Caribbean vacation to guys who had exerted as much as we had with no sleep and little food. My partner was Goodman, and we set up so that we were touching. Scott was now the patrol leader, and he came by to tell us not to shoot at anything, no matter what. He didn't care if someone walked right on top of us, we were not to shoot unless he did. He was really quite adamant about it. This would end up making a huge difference, and ultimately would result in us getting a passing grade for this exercise. He also gave us our escape and evasion routes, and the locations of our rally points in case we had to leave in a hurry. If we had to evacuate, he would yell to take either the blue E&E route or the gold E&E route. Blue was zero degrees on the compass, while gold was 180 degrees. We all had tritium inserts in our compasses, so we could see them at night.
One of the "objectives" during the course. "Get to the top of that hill, without being seen, and do it in an hour!"
By this time the cadre had decided we could use our night vision gear, and both Travis and John had really high-tech ITT Generation Three goggles (the doctors had all the high-speed stuff--go figure). This didn't help me though, as I didn't have any. I would have to rely on them to really know what was going on. I took the first watch between Goodman and me, and it wasn't long before I started hearing movement. The forest at night makes an unbelievable amount of noise, and I knew this. When you start hearing lots of branches snapping, and trees shaking, you know that something human is out there. Deer and other animals will make a lot of noise at night, but it was obvious that these were people, and they were trying to get us to shoot at them. Goodman started snoring, so I kept kicking him to get him to wake up. This happened about every ten minutes or so. I can't believe how motionless I was able to stay. I wasn't tired a bit, but the lack of REM sleep had taken its toll on me, and I started hallucinating badly. I knew that the things I was seeing were not really there, but I also knew that there really were people out there, so it made for a really hellish night. Pretty soon, someone started speaking over a bullhorn several hundred yards away. They taunted us, and called us all sorts of names. They played the sound of chickens being strangled. They rustled tree branches and flashed lights and flares all around. This was all an effort to get us to give away our position, and also to keep us up all night. No one gave us away, but no one slept either, except for Goodman, but he only slept for a couple of minutes at a time until I would kick him again. At one point, someone walked right up to my position. I very slowly applied a lot of pressure inward on my safety to keep it from snapping, then I pushed it down noiselessly. I had the weapon already pointed in the right direction, and had spent a lot of time noise-proofing it by taping down the sling swivels, stock latch, and blank firing adapter. I was ready to light this guy up. I waited for Scott to fire, but he never did, and I remembered that he said not to shoot no matter what unless he did. I held my fire, and the OpFor slinked away. I slowly put my safety back on, and took my first breath in what seemed like several minutes.
After another hour or so, the noises stopped completely. I figured I could now get some sleep, but then Scott came up and told us we had a warning order, and now had to get ready to move. We had only been in position for three hours, and it was now 2:00 AM. I had not slept at all. We had made the mistake of pulling out all our stuff, thinking that when we left it would be daylight and we would be able to find everything. I was now forced to find all of my stuff (food, water, ammo, bedroll, poncho liner, bungee cords, pack, etc.) in the dark. I’m certain I left a few things behind.
It was so dark that we could only see the strips of luminous tape (called "cat eyes") we had sewn to the back of our caps. Thanks, Ross, for doing this for me. We had to hold onto the pack of the guy in front of us, and hope that we didn't stumble on anything. We were taken to an especially thick section of thorny stuff, and then, after working our way through that, we went to a hill that was nothing but boulders. It took us at least an hour to work our way down this hill, and I couldn't believe that no one broke an ankle. All of us stumbled several times. It was at this point that I really questioned what I was doing here. I thought I had taken this class to learn land navigation, rappelling, and a few tactical things that would complement some of the other courses I had taken. Instead, I was getting sleep- and food-deprived, and was risking serious injury. My feet by this time were pretty well destroyed, and I had huge blister sacks hanging off of them. Even as I write this, they still look like hell. I was dirty, smelly, and had been hallucinating. I thought about what I had given up to be here; a week's vacation time, time with my son, time away from work, and the chance to spend a week on my new boat. I decided to take stock of my situation in the morning, and to consider leaving. I didn't really consider it quitting, as it wasn't really that difficult, it just wasn't what I came for. I think that must be the rationalization that one uses when one considers quitting, because later the next day, when others started saying the exact same things to me, it sure sounded like quitting to me. More on this later.
We got to a steep cliff. There were three partisan commandos there. The scenario for the whole week was that we were a Ranger team assisting local governments and partisans in their efforts against the drug cartels. Their leader was going to show us the location of a hidden rappelling site. We got out our harnesses and snap links, and prepared to rappel over this cliff in the pitch blackness of the night. At this point I didn't even care that I might get killed, I just wanted to get through this. The partisan leader would only show us the way if we gave him some of our gear. We got a bunch of MREs and other stuff together and gave it to him. Then he wanted a weapon. Scott refused to give him a weapon, but suggested one of our night-vision devices. He agreed, but when he tried to get one from John, John told Scott to tell the guy that the device was a mission-critical piece of equipment, and he wasn't going to give it up. I think John just didn't want to part with his $3,000 NVGs. At any rate, an argument ensued, and the partisan commander pointed his weapon at Scott. Scott tried to calm the situation, but all of us were a bit keyed-up by this point, and were all pointing our weapons at the partisan commander. He pulled his trigger, and killed Scott, and then we all killed him and his two buddies. It was a pretty loud twenty seconds or so. When it was over, there was a heavy cordite smell in the air, and all the wildlife was shocked into silence. Anyone nearby not affiliated with our group must have wondered what the hell was going on, this all being State land and all. The instructors backed up a bit, and told us to continue on as though it hadn't happened. They showed us where the rappelling line was, and we all made it down in one piece. When I shoved off into the blackness, it felt like I was being swallowed whole by some immense creature. Surreal.
Bart writes map coordinates on his wrist. It's a good way of not forgetting them, and having them with you even if you lose your map case, which is likely. Not marking up your map a lot also helps if you get "killed" and your stuff gets examined by the bad guys.
Precisely where days two and three divide each other is a bit problematic at this point since we did not sleep at all, and we never even stopped to rest. The sun came up, and we reconned another farmhouse and barn. I have this distinct memory of sitting back, after the recon, listening to everyone bitch about the previous night, and thinking it was about 4:00 PM. I looked at my watch, and it was just turning 7:00 AM. Crazy.
Our Ranger NCO told us that the OpFor had looked for us all night, but had not gotten us to show ourselves. They had been told where our general location was, but not specifically. They tried to find us, but could not. Their plan was to throw CS (tear gas) grenades into our position if they found us to teach us to never give away our position. I'm really glad we didn't have to go through that. Our instructor told us that the OpFor had never failed to find the team before, so the fact that we remained hidden was a huge compliment.
Travis and John, taking advantage of a break in the action.
Tomorrow: We raid the barn, learn about booby-traps the hard way, construct and cross a rope-bridge while under fire, learn how to interrogate prisoners and search bodies without getting blown-up, and get to use the modern miracle of close-air support, a la AC130 gunship.
Photos Attached: Terrain map of the Operations Area for the day. Bart writing azimuths and coordinates on his wrists.
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