Outside the Wire

My company wasted no time in getting me in training. My first day, Saturday, was a little slow; I did a lot of reading, talked to the platoon, and tried to get myself oriented to the training environment. I felt a little useless, as my fellow platoon commanders and my platoon sergeant were spending all of their time planning for our next exercise. I'm not familiar with the training environment, the platoon, or the exercise, so my ability to contribute to the planning is fairly limited. I received a little friendly harassment from our company staff--typical practical joke on a new Lt--so I'll have to do a little thinking over the next couple days and figure out an appropriate way to return fire.

Fortunately, yesterday was not slow. I was tasked with writing my own plan for the exercise, I went over the training I'd gotten at TBS with our ops chief to see what training I still need, and my platoon sergeant spun me up on the vehicles we have and their characteristics and capabilities. Our ops chief interrupted us to give me a brief on the training areas so that I could head out with the mission my platoon ran last night.

Our mission last night was not complicated: we provided a security escort for a road improvement mission. I shadowed my fellow platoon commander, trying to learn the details of the coordination required to successfully run a mission and get an idea of the difficulties that could come up and how to handle them. We did not expect to receive (simulated) enemy contact, so it was a good preparation for the next mission we'll do.

During the mission I spent time manning the radio for our vehicle. I somehow managed to make it through both TBS and engineer school without ever talking over a radio, so yesterday was the first time I'd ever made a radio transmission. The procedures take a little getting used to--I think there were several times when I spoke to soon after hitting the mike button, and my transmissions got cut off--but overall I didn't mess anything up too badly.

We're heading out again tonight for a two-night/two-day mission, which will be a combined patrol and resupply mission. We do expect to receive (simulated) enemy contact on this mission, and the second day of the mission will be a live-fire exercise. I will be going as an observer again, which is good because I'm certainly not ready to run a mission yet. Yesterday's mission gave me a good dose of confidence in the training I've already had, and I'm sure this next mission will do the same.