Combat Life Saver

American medicine is the greatest in the world, and nowhere is that more evident than the combat casualty numbers from Iraq. At the current rate, America would have to stay in Iraq for 80 YEARS to catch up to the deaths from Vietnam. Of course, comparing the wars is ludicrous, because the level of combat in Iraq is nothing like what we saw in Vietnam.

Even so, part of the explanation for the low number of deaths is the amazing care our soldiers get – in the hospitals, and on the battlefield.

Consider this – of all of the wounded who are evacuated to a hospital, 90 percent survive their wounds. That is an incredible record.

Over there, there are only so many medics to go around, and often they can’t get to the patients in time. If a column of Humvees is hit by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), you can’t always just stop and call for a medic. Often, the insurgent (or “Serge” as he is personified by the Army) will set up snipers and other IEDs to create a “kill zone.”

One of the best ways to get quick medical coverage – sometimes on the fly – is the presence of Combat Life Savers.

CLS’s – as they’re called – are not quite medics, but can do a lot of the basic lifesaving tasks quickly, which buys the patient crucial time. Time that often means the difference between life and death.

Among the tasks CLS’s perform is diagnosis of wounds, as well as initial treatment. Wounds treated by CLS’s include amputations, serious arterial bleeding, facial wounds and tension pneumothorax (a buildup of pressure inside the chest cavity often created by a chest wound. This last wound is dramatized in the movie “Three Kings” and is treated by shoving a very large needle and catheter into the person’s chest. It takes nerve to do, I’m sure, but the patient will die 100 percent of the time if it isn’t done.

I know all of this because I am now a fully-certified Combat Life Saver, a task I accomplished this week. To get this certification, I had several long days of classroom work, plus an amazingly intense day in the field.

We started out with a gory video of various wounds, including those inflicted on innocent Iraqis by insurgents as punishment for helping Americans. I will spare you the details.
We then went through the full gamut of battlefield health issues, from heat and cold weather injuries to amputations and sucking chest wounds. And then came the kicker – learning to give IVs…to live patients no less.

Our class – 50 people, mostly Air Force and Army, but five Navy – was broken into pairs. For this exercise, I chose Chief Huzy, one of my Navy buddies. After practicing numerous times on the dummies, we got to do the real thing – on each other.
To insert an IV into a patient, the following procedure must be followed:

1. Prepare your supplies. As a combat life saver, you will have a bag of goodies that you carry around. This bag should include two or three smaller packages of IV supplies pre-organized so that you’re ready to “stick” someone on short notice. Items you need, include:
a. 18 gauge IV catheter/needle set
b. Saline lock adapter plug
c. Constricting band
d. Tegaderm dressing
e. Alcohol pads
f. Sterile gloves
g. 21 gauge 1 1/4 inch needle (For flushing your saline lock, if needed)
h. IV bag
2. Prepare the IV bag with the appropriate fluid (usually a saline solution, but also a blood expander called Hextend can be used). Attach the IV tube to the IV bag, and then run out the fluid until it fills the whole tube.
3. If needed, fill up a syringe with fluid from the IV bag. This is used to flush your saline lock if the IV is to be delayed.
4. Select a vein. The best area for a CLS is in the inner area of the elbow, where the veins are large, exposed, accessible and best suited for treating in a difficult environment. Usually, you stick someone a couple of inches from the crease in your arm towards your hand. You want to avoid actual joints, or areas where a pulse is easily felt. Obviously, you do not put in your IV below or near an injury. Typically, if the right arm is injured, you stick the left arm.
5. Apply a constricting band. Everyone who’s had an IV done on them knows this trick. A big rubber band is tied tight around the arm about 2 inches above the IV site. This is like a mini-tourniquet. It slows down the blood flow to the arm, which exposes the veins a little more.
6. Put on your sterile gloves, and locate the vein again. Clean the site with a sterile pad.
7. Insert the catheter/needle. Go in about 30 degrees, pulling back on the skin as you do. At some point, you will get a “flash” of blood in a small chamber in the needle. That means you’ve hit the vein. Go in a bit more, then push the catheter (a small plastic sleeve that goes in around the needle itself) forward. Once the Catheter itself is in the vein, the needle is not necessary.
8. Remove the constricting band (unless you want this guy’s arm to go entirely numb).
9. Remove the needle, holding pressure above the vein, which presents…let’s just say it prevents a big mess from happening.
10. Screw the saline lock onto the catheter. Once you’ve done this, you can release pressure. The saline lock is like an airlock on a space ship. It prevents blood from flowing out of the vein, but gives you an entry point to add in your fluid. In a hospital setting, this step is sometimes skipped, because you’re going directly to an IV and don’t need it. In a combat situation, you may need to stop treating your patient and start shooting. Or, you may not need to give them fluids now (for a minor wound), but may want to put in an IV portal so that you’re ready to go when you do need to do that.
11. If you go directly to an IV, you can simply plug in the IV bag. Otherwise, you should flush the saline lock, which basically fills it with a small amount of saline fluid. The other thing this does is verify that your catheter is in the vein and not past it. If the latter is the case (which it was one time for me) the fluid will create a little bulge above the site of the needle and you have to star over. This is called “infiltration.” It can be a little uncomfortable for the patient, as it was for me.
12. If there is no infiltration, let the juice flow.

So, after only two days of classes – and maybe only three hours on the IV itself – two amateurs were about to stick needles in each other. Neither Chief Huzy nor myself were too afraid of getting stuck, but I think it’s safe to say we both had a little trepidation about sticking the other person.

Our CLS class was in an old movie theater on base. Almost all the buildings on Fort McCoy were temporary wooden buildings built for World War II, from the barracks buildings we live in to the church where I went to mass the one Sunday I had off. (As a side note, there are about a dozen chapel buildings, easily distinguished, across the base. All but two (one Catholic, one Protestant) are closed.)

Most of these buildings were built hastily – intended to last five years and no more. For the most part, they’re built identical to one of two or three patterns. In fact, I suspect that the army had them all built in Henry Ford/mass-production style at one single location, then had them assembled in place on the post.

The movie theater, therefore, looks like any other two-story barracks, with the exception of having no windows and no second floor. Inside, it’s all been changed around, but several of the wall panels have homemade cartoon-like artwork painted on them. They appear to illustrate scenes from a movie – or perhaps a play that the soldiers on base in WWII presented. I’m sure it dates from the war because of the style of the artwork and the clothing that the people wear.
One panel has a very ugly woman in a crown descending stairs inside what looks like a castle. Another has a similarly ugly woman dressed like a mermaid. They have names stenciled above them (the mermaid was “Rose” and I can’t remember the other). Their features look somewhat masculine, which leads me to believe it had to do with a play performed on Fort McCoy during the war, because (much like Shakespeare’s plays in the 1620s) almost all actors in military plays were men, and it was very common for the female parts to be played by men in drag.

So, getting back to my story, Chief Huzy and I followed one instructor – a combat medic with a couple of tours in Iraq behind him – into a back room and sat down at a completely un-sterile table. Of course, the battlefield isn’t sterile either, so this was a good simulation. And the equipment actually used is very sterile.

I volunteered to go first.

Starting with my right arm, the chief began his stick. Of course, he had to choose a vein next to a nerve. It was unpleasant, but I said nothing.

He never got the “flash” in the chamber, and had to pull the needle out. He tried two more times on my other arm. The first failed as well. The second was in the vein, and a lot of blood came out (he missed the step where you pinch off the arm above it (which I later missed on him). Nonetheless, that stick didn’t work either because of infiltration.

We then gave up on me (the chief would later stick the instructor, successfully), and I had my turn to stick the chief. With the exception of letting out some blood – I let him rib me about that so he didn’t feel bad about my own thirty-minute personal torture session that he put me through.

But this wasn’t the end of CLS. Neither was it the end the next day after we took our test. In fact, the real work only began after the test was done. The first thing to do was to learn more about treating a casualty in the field – from litter carries to Humvee extractions. After a half a day of those practical exercises, we moved back to FOB Freedom for Day Four of the class.
We broke up the class into teams of about 12 people. Ours had four Navy, four Army and the rest Air Force. We then went out on short combat “patrols” within the FOB.

The day we did this (Was it a Wednesday? They all seem to run together), the temperature had dropped from the 90s down to the 60s, and it began raining. But, as we had learned a few days before, the Army doesn’t stop work until there is lightening (that handy-dandy M-16 you carry around apparently makes a wonderful lightening rod). As they say, “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training.”

So we organize in a wedge formation and start our patrol, heading to a point only about 200 meters away. Before we get there, of course, our instructor, who is behind us, pulls the pin on a flash-bang grenade and throws it to our side. A loud boom comes and he runs up to one of our guys and slaps him on his right arm.

“You’ve just been hit. Fall down and start screaming.”

The first thing we do, of course, is the right thing. We get cover, and aim our weapons in the direction of a supposed sniper. In wartime, you can’t sit there exposed to enemy fire and treat a patient. That will only create two dead people. If you’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan” and saw the scene where one of their soldiers goes down to a sniper in a French Village, you can see what I mean. The others couldn’t get to him until the sniper was dead – or distracted.

So we gave covering fire (not really fire, as we had no blanks for this exercise), and some of our team pulled the wounded man to cover using the handle (made for just this reason) on the back of his body armor.

Then, as the rain poured down, we proceeded to give him an IV right there in the rain, muck and mud. I didn’t see how it went, as I was protecting the right side (after grabbing the wounded man’s weapon, which we also don’t leave behind). But apparently it went well.

We returned to the center of the FOB and crouched inside a concrete bunker for another 30 minutes before our next scenario. In this one, I got to do a tension pneumothorax stick. Since you can’t do this on a live patient, we used a dummy, who just happened to be lying in the foxhole we pulled our next casualty into. So, as this next member of our team was being stuck with an IV needle, I was jamming a bigger needle into a standard issue Army dummy. (They all look the same – a white guy with brown hair – though for our IV practice, they had some arm-only dummies and one of the arms was black. Viva diversity!)

We did two more patrols and three more sticks. We ended the day by gathering all but a couple of us into a tent. The instructors then simulated a mass-casualty event. They gave us all little cards with grotesque clinical pictures of wounds. We were then told to scream “like you wanted an Oscar” and the other class members were then brought into this chaotic hell to triage and treat patients.

I didn’t have to get stuck with an IV (they weren’t doing this here), but I did get a tourniquet placed on. I wasn’t much into screaming, and since my wound was severe enough, I just lay there in the mud and took a little nap.

When I woke up, they handed out our certificates. I was now a certified Combat Life Saver, though I had to use my last water from my canteen to wash my hand clean of mud before I took the piece of paper.

It had been an exhausting day. I was completely soaked, my back ached from my body armor, and my M-16 was covered in mud. Arriving back at the barracks, I walked into the shower with my weapon and all my gear and turned on the hot water. Later on, I’d have to strip my weapon down and spend an hour cleaning it thoroughly, but for a few minutes, standing there in the welcome rain of steam, I felt at peace with the world.

Adventures of a Fobbit - Part II

It’s hard to keep track of time out here, as one day runs into another. We’ve been training long hours, seven days a week. If I didn’t have meetings to attend as the senior Navy officer, I’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint the day of the week.

Today is Saturday. I know that because I was hoping to finish up my training in time to catch the Steve Miller Band concert that was scheduled to be held on base. I made it off in time, but I was too exhausted. It looks like it will be rained out anyway.

But let’s back up to where I left y’all off last time. Even though my last email was a few days ago, I was a little behind then, so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

After qualifying on our M-16s last week, we had one day of classroom instruction prior to going out into the field for three days. The class was a crew-served weapons familiarization class. The idea is to teach the basics of very heavy weapons to people who don’t normally use them. Then, if the worst happens, we can jump on them and fire away – like U.S. Navy cook Dorie Miller did at Pearl Harbor.

I brought him up to our guys during a unit meeting, just to remind guys that you never know when this training will come in handy. And being a Navy example, it hit home well with them.

As I said, I’m the only officer in our unit, and am therefore in charge. A friend on the phone the other day asked what it meant to be an officer. I’ve been giving thought to that a lot. It means leading, of course, but it also means developing leaders below you. It means going to boring meetings with higher-ranking officers and staying up late at night to fill in paperwork. But it also means going through every last crap-filled bit of training as your subordinates. If they crawl through the mud, you crawl through the mud. If they sweat out a quart of water through their body armor, you do too.

Being an officer – being a good officer – means never pulling your rank to get special privileges. But it also means pulling your rank to make sure some Army Sergeant stops training when one of your sailors is showing signs of heat stroke. It means taking the advice when an Army instructor below your rank is telling you what your team did wrong, and it means standing up and telling an officer above you that the equipment you were issued is unacceptable – because your life and those of your sailors may depend on that equipment one day. It means doing all the grunt work to make those below you respect you, and then doing all the other crap as well.

The other day, an Army Corporal (enlisted) was chatting with myself and some of my enlisted sailors, and laid out exactly what he thought made a good officer. The first thing, he said, was to be in shape. He pointed to me, and said, “Like you, sir. Soldiers will follow folks who are in shape, and look like they can do everything they can.” A simple thing, but as a metaphor or symbol of leadership, it’s big. An officer who is not in shape conveys the impression of someone who is enjoying luxury, getting out of duties, and getting away with things – while ordering others to live up to the standards they themselves cannot match.

All these things and more make a good officer. Certainly, I’m not an expert. Frankly, it scares me to half to death sometimes, knowing that I could conceivably be in a position of deciding which one of these kids lives or dies. Making that decision with yourself is relatively simple, when the stakes are high enough. But when “dying” means sending out a 21-year-old kid who’s shown you photos of his wife of seven months? That’s another story entirely.

Anyway, back to my story. After qualifying on our rifles, we went out to another FOB here at Fort McCoy. There, we had our IED (Improvised Explosive Device) recognition class, complete with insurgent videos. It was the most sobering thing imaginable. Here we are watching American troops get blown up in Iraq. Troops dressed identical to ourselves, wearing the same body armor and carrying the same equipment. But it was very practical. We could break them down like some macabre version of John Madden and find out what those soldiers did wrong, and how to avoid doing the same mistakes. We then spent some time outside at the IED “petting zoo.”

Later that day, we went through some basic infantry training, including fire and maneuver exercises, live fire (with blanks) and throwing practice grenades. In the latter portion, we had to crawl on our bellies, dragging our M-16s, and throw some grenades in a bunker. We waited and they went off. (Practice grenades don’t explode, they just shoot flames out of the bottom and make a very loud boom. You could only injure yourself if you were actually holding it when it goes off.)

We then moved to an area at the top of a hill and began a series of maneuver exercises. We went in teams, and as one team cleared the area, and moved down the hill, the next would take its place. It reminded me very much of field day in 1st Grade. Back then, myself and Jimmy Rodriguez won the three-legged race because we made up a plan, and kept our legs in sync, whereas everybody else just started off with no idea what they were doing and fell on their faces.

In much the same way, we made a plan here too. Part of this was dictated by the Army tactics – one group fires while another moves closer. The details, we worked out in our group of about six people.

As we rushed from one sandbag barrier to another, we were covered. When we jumped down behind cover, we raised our rifles and began to fire (with our blanks) at a series of dummies propped up at another position. In one spot, there was a box of grenades, and I threw a few of these. In all, I threw five grenades that day. All went boom, which was pretty exhilarating.

Returning to our home on the FOB, we then geared up for the most demanding part of our month-long training – the STX lanes. Pronounced “Stix”, these are essentially some land navigation routes with various scenarios thrown in.

On Day Two (the obstacle course being technically the first day), we started out mid morning, and it was already in the lower 90s, and very humid. Even though I’m the officer in command of our unit, I turn command over to some of our petty officers for various tasks as a leadership training exercise. I gave the reins here to Petty Officer McGuire, and took my spot as a mere soldier – though as a forward rifleman, I was to see a lot of action. We formed up in a wedge formation and moved out.

The first scenario was incoming mortar fire. This was simulated very accurately by loud explosive noisemakers that created a whine like an incoming shell, then a very loud “boom.” We had to hit the deck (as we Navy folks say) and then get up and run for cover.

The next obstacle was an IED – in this case, a rocket tied to the side of a tree. We cleared the area, evacuating our squad to 100 meters – in the real world, you’d seal off up to 300 meters, depending on the size of the IED. Once our instructor came out and “detonated” the device with a flash-bang grenade, we were free to move on.

We then did so, and before long, a machine gun opened up on our column. We ducked down for cover. After crawling for about 20 feet on the ground, I spied the spot from which the fire was coming (The “gun” is in fact a dummy hooked up to an acetylene-based noisemaking device, with an Army instructor behind it).

I provided covering fire for IS2 Rogers, who was on my right, and he swung around and “killed” the position. As we moved out, I spied a dummy propped up in the trees, and I shot it. The instructor said, “Darn, you got my buddy, who was going to sneak up behind you.”

After lunch, we went through the same course again, with some additional lanes and scenarios. At one point, we came across a guy in Arab dress carrying an AK-47 rifle (rubber). We took up positions and began calling out to him “Ogaf tara armee!” (Stop or I’ll shoot) and “Thib SlaHak!” (Put down your weapon). He more or less ignored us. Finally, he lowered his weapon in a sudden manner and IS2 Merck took a shot. The Insurgent (An Army Sergeant wearing the garb) crumpled to the ground.

Turns out, according to the instructors, the Insurgent was putting his weapon down, but Merck (hence forth called “Trigger Happy Merck”) thought he was going to shoot.

What this episode points out is the almost impossible-to-perfect concept of “Escalation of Force.” In a country in which everybody is armed, and only some of whom are hostile, you can’t just shoot anybody who’s carrying a weapon. You have to make snap decisions of life and death. The very next day, we had an almost identical scenario. This time, however, the Insurgent was going to shoot at us. We shot him down then too.

Moving on, we then had our first real event of the day. As we stopped to check our position on the map and prepare our next move, I noticed one of my sailors was turning very red. This is the same person who became overheated the previous week. I immediately called a halt (even though I’m not commanding the actual exercise, I am still in command of the unit) and myself, our instructor, and our combat life saver (CLS – like a medic) evaluated him.

My briefing before the exercise was that if there was any doubt about heat exhaustion, heat cramps, or such, it was better safe than sorry. So I called over our radio man and had him call in an ambulance Humvee. We kept our sailor cool until it arrived, and they took him off. He was fine later on that day when we returned to the starting point.

The next scenario was an attack from the side. A sniper waited until half of our column passed, then opened fire. This effectively split our column in two. However, we reacted well, as both the front (the sniper’s right) and the back (the sniper’s left) flanked the position. Working with two other riflemen, I moved from the front position in short runs, taking cover, then firing to cover the others. Finally, I ran in my short burst and came up directly behind an army sergeant concealed in brush with a few fake guns and an RPG. I shot him down, and then called out to him to tell him he was dead, in case he didn’t hear my gun over his.

We proceed through numerous more obstacles throughout the rest of the day, and the next day. I took out a group of three insurgents with a grenade at one point, and then did the same with a group of five. Being up at the front, I was involved in all of the ambush scenarios, and provided cover during the insurgent/detainee encounters.

In the end, it turned out to be three of the most physically exhausting days of my life. Underneath my 40-lbs body armor, I was completely soaked in my own sweat. But I had not a single scratch on my body, despite all the abuse I gave it. Running in body armor is not like normal running. It’s like driving a truck after driving a car – and then expecting it to have the same breaking distance. Once you start to fall in body armor, you’re going to fall. It’s very difficult to keep your balance because of all the weight and consequent momentum. At one point, I came down a hill and landed on my shoulder. I thought for sure I would injure something, but that was four days ago, and I’m perfectly fine. Another time, sprinting over what was once a tank training ground (while under fire), I dove for cover and landed on my head. However, my Kevlar helmet meant that there was almost no sensation. My first thought, as I pulled my face out of the dirt was, “That was fun, let’s do that again!”

It was just like being a kid again, to a point. Running around with real guns instead of wooden ones, with body armor and 35-year-old bones instead of a t-shirt and 13-year-old bones. But on top of that, the reality that these skills could make a difference in whether I – or the 17 sailors under me – return home alive or not, makes it incredibly more real, intense, and sobering. So does realizing that being able to pick out a small red wire sticking out of a pile of trash – indicating a hidden IED – can mean the difference between living and dying. That wakes you up like nothing else.

A few day after coming back from STX training and moving off of the FOB back to our barracks, we got another surprise to bring home the reality of where we are. A young army soldier – who both lived with us at the FOB and was in one of our language classes alongside us – died of Meningitis.

I won’t go into the details here, as I really don’t know all that much. They told us he was in our class, but all the Army guys looked the same – literally, in their uniforms – and nobody in my unit remembers him. But since a large number of my sailors have come down with flu-like symptoms (Chief Keefover calls it “The FOB Crud”), I don’t take any chances. Fortunately, at this point, it appears the event was isolated, and most of my sailors are fine. Still, all the more reason to be vigilant.

We’ve all learned a lot more about health. In fact, I just finished a four-day CLS (Combat Life Saver) class that really made me look at health, the body, and how to treat it, in a whole new way. But I’ll save that for the next email.

James

P.S. Nobody here calls me James, Jim or anything like that. I am “LT” or “Lieutenant”, or “Sir.” That’s it. I usually address my sailors by their ranks, or more commonly, since several have the same rank and rating, by their last names.

Adventures of a Fobbit, Part I

Late Tuesday, we got all our gear, left our barracks, and taking the bare necessities, moved into a Forward Operating Base, FOB Freedom.

A FOB, as its name implies, is a forward base, often in hostile or questionable territory. Ours, of course, is just for training purposes. FOBs are well-secured compounds enclosed in razor wire and protective berms, with guard towers and other security measures. Inside a FOB, it’s a MASH-like setup, with portable tent buildings, some trailers, and few luxuries (there’s a small store, but I never had the time to use it). The restrooms are Port-A-Johns and the showers are in tents.

The inhabitants of a FOB call themselves Fobbits, and have grown accustomed to doing everything from going to the showers to going to dinner, wearing their full body armor and weapons. Depending on the security posture at the moment, body armor may not be required, but in the training environment, it is required for most daylight hours. It’s certainly a different existence, standing in the shower tent, brushing your teeth, trying not to get toothpaste on your assault rifle, which is hanging across your body. I never seemed to have that problem at home, but then, I’m from South Texas, not East Texas.

The Camp Freedom Fobbits are an interesting group, constantly rotating through training, as opposed to the in-theater Fobbits, who stay there as long as their unit is at the location. Most are Army, a few Air Force. Again, we were the only Navy people there. Some of my enlisted guys got saluted by a few confused members of the Louisiana National Guard, who had never seen Navy rank insignias before. Of course, wearing my body armor, no one salutes me because it covers up my rank insignia and I don’t have any ACU cammo markings yet.

I guess I just assumed that everybody knew that we had all services on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. A lot of my navy friends – particularly in the field of Intelligence – have already gone over. However, even some of the army guys were surprised to see Navy personnel on base and training alongside them. Of course, we, like the Air Force folks who share most of our classes, are primarily there in support roles. We’re not trained as infantry, and though we’re getting some infantry-like training here, it’s only the bare minimum we need, not extensive classes.

Nonetheless, the training is fairly comprehensive. Wednesday and Thursday were very long days of training on our M-16 rifles. Wednesday was mostly classroom instruction, with a few practical exercises, including time in an indoor simulator. However, the majority of the day was spent in classrooms set up in old garages, with no A/C, plywood on the broken windows and small gopher-like rodents zipping through the room in the middle of class.

The heat was fairly intense, particularly once you put your body armor on, which you had to do when doing practice exercises on your weapon. It was over 90 degrees, with about 70 percent humidity – and they say that the body armor raises your core body temperature by five degrees. At one point, one of my sailors got up from a shooting position, his face almost purple. I pulled him out of the exercise and started going into our heat injury prevention routine, which we had learned the previous week. We had him remove his body armor and his uniform blouse. We then placed him in front of the one fan and started cooling him down with cold water, and asked him questions:
“Where are you?”
“Fort McCoy, Sir.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is ---”
The medic in our class then asked him the square root of some very large number, to which he said, “The hell if I know.” But it startled him out of his rote memory stage of answering and brought a little humor to the situation. I was about to send him to the sick bay for observation, but the Medic said he was responding well and we had gotten him cooled down before any serious symptoms showed up.

Instead, we sent him back to the barracks for the evening, instead of the hot tent out at the FOB. Not just him, of course, but also his battle buddy.

What’s a battle buddy? A battle buddy is an army idea, and it’s a good thing. Each soldier has a partner who does virtually everything with him, eats with him, goes virtually everywhere with him, and in stressful situations, has his back. This is an excellent way of making sure no one is left out, left alone, or left behind.

Myself and the Chiefs were very judicious about who we assigned as battle buddies. Mine is Chief Keefover, the next-highest ranking member of the unit. Because he and I frequently have to attend meetings apart from the rest of the team, we’re always together anyway. Chief Keefover, who’s a few years older than me, is a good ol’ boy from Alabama, and we get along real well.

The other two Chiefs in our unit, the third-and-fourth (respectively) ranking members, are also battle buddies. They have a lot of responsibilities which I have delegated, plus they oversee efforts to get our Petty Officers to take leadership roles in special tasks, from medical issues, to supply, to administration and physical fitness.

We have two loners in the group who always hung out with each other from day one. One, a very large African-American guy, and an Italian guy from New York. They were a slam dunk as buddies. The two females in the unit, who by necessity, live in separate quarters, were also obvious. We have two heavy smokers, so we put them together.

Battle buddies are there for their buddies, but they’re also there for us. When our heat casualty was asked how he was doing, he was reluctant to admit he was hurting. His buddy, however, could tell us a very good deal on how much he was drinking, how he had been doing throughout the day, and other things. And when we gave his buddy instructions on what to watch for, he became a valuable resource. Which was good, because the next day was even hotter, and even harder. And despite that, we didn’t have a repeat of that circumstance.

Thursday
Thursday, we got up at 4:15 a.m. and headed out to the shooting range. First task on top was to zero in our rifles. That meant shooting at a set of targets until we got at least five out of a six-round group inside a circle about 2 inches in diameter.

I shot six rounds and was done: My rifle was already set up well for me. This was pure luck, as every shooter is different. But some of our other sailors couldn’t get good enough groupings to even know how their rifle was set up. Many took four, five, even six tries to get zeroed in. This was hard for the Army folks to understand, but unlike them, most of our guys have never fired an M-16, and a few have never fired a rifle at all before.

We then moved on to another range, where we spent the rest of the day. We weren’t alone, as there was a crowd of Army soldiers and a covey of Air Force folks. Generally, we get along well with both services, but the Air Force people are a bit pampered and stuck up, so we have jokes at their expense about how they start building a new base by building the golf course, then complaining to Congress that they don’t have enough money for an airfield.
“Of course,” one of them said. “That’s the smart way to do it.”

I stopped calling them the Air Force and now simply call them the Air Fore!

So our group, mixed in with these folks, went up to shoot our qualification rounds. The area we were shooting into was about the size of three football fields, side by side. Small earthen mounds were raised up throughout the field, and large retaining berms surrounded it on four sides. On one side, a small gravel path was laid out, with square shooting stations – 13 in all.

As the round of shooting began, small green dummies would pop up behind the earthen mounds. Your job as shooter, is to shoot as many dummies in your lane as possible. Forty dummies popped up, and you had forty rounds to shoot at them. A passing score is 23. You shoot 20 rounds from the prone (lying down), supported (rifle resting on sandbags) position, 10 rounds from the prone, unsupported position and 10 rounds from the kneeling position.

The M-16 rifle is difficult for me, as it uses a peep site, as opposed to the open sites of all the other rifles I’ve shot. It’s easy enough for shooting at stationary targets, but for moving and pop-up targets, it’s tricky at first.

And here’s the other catch. You’re not just shooting like you do back home – you’re shooting in full body armor. It’s like dressing up in a turtle outfit to go deer hunting. Not exactly easy.
The first time I shot, I got a 22 – one short of what I needed. I soon made up for it, shooting a disappointing 24, but that was enough. Most of our guys took much longer to qualify. A couple of our people never got it, and we’re going to work with them to try to get them over the hump.
It was a long day, exhausting, standing in the sun out at the range, where one had to wear full body armor almost the entire time.

When the sunlight faded, we lined up for the next portion – our night firing qualification.
This was fairly similar, only the pop-ups were closer, and they were lit with a dim light. It was easy – I shot a 13 out of 15.

It was nearly 11 p.m. when we got home – a 19 hour day. I was exhausted. I’d worked hours like that before – on the Hutchison campaign, for example. But that wasn’t in 40 lbs of body armor. Nonetheless, as the next few days would soon prove, 19 hours at the range was a cakewalk. Because the next thing on tap was the real no sh-- Army Training. But I’ll save that for the next email.

Your tax dollars at work

Still here at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, doing my Army training, even though I’m in the Navy. Early last week, we went and got all our equipment. If you remember from my previous email, I already got a bunch of stuff in Gulfport. That was mostly Uniforms, because that was stuff the Navy gave me.
This week, we got all our “Army” stuff. Here’s a rundown:

Items issued:

Weapons
M-16 Rifle (I will also get a 9 mm pistol, but that’s been delayed because of bureaucratic issues.)

Uniform
4 sets, Desert camouflage uniform - Gulfport
3 camouflage uniform caps - Gulfport
2 camouflage boonie caps – Gulfport

Additional uniform items from the Army
3 pair T-shirts (expensive sweat-removing synthetic kind)
1 black belt with buckle
1 desert tan belt with buckle
2 pair boot blousing straps
3 pair hot weather desert tan boots
1 pair cold weather desert tan boots
3 pairs Army green socks

Other Clothing
1 Wet weather poncho
1 Wet weather poncho liner
1 Desert camouflage cold/wet weather parka
1 Desert camouflage cold/wet weather trousers
1 ACU camouflage cold/wet weather parka
1 ACU camouflage cold/wet weather trousers
1 cold weather fleece sweatshirt
1 cold weather fleece bottom
1 pair thermal underwear
1 pair working gloves
1 pair cold weather gloves

Bags
1 Large backpack
1 Medium backpack
3 large duffel bags
2 large regular bags
1 laundry bag
1 Waist pack
2 Waterproof clothing bags

Body Armor/vests
1 body armor vest (This is the Army ACU color, which doesn’t match my uniform, but is still camouflaged.)
2 side armor plates
2 under arm plates
2 shoulder plates
1 Kevlar Helmet (Also ACU camouflage)
1 tactical vest
1 pair sand goggles

Other
1 pair sunglasses
1 Entrenching tool (collapsible shovel) with case
1 Camelback water container
2 One-quart canteens with cases
1 Two-quart canteen with case
1 sleeping mat
1 Modular Sleep System (sleeping bag)
1 Mosquito Tent
1 Gerber Multi-Tool
1 strap cutter
First Aid Kit

Liberating "Davy"

I got this quarter back in change from the coke machine at the LaCrosse, Wisconsin Airport. It is a Texas quarter. I felt it my patriotic duty as a proud Texan to liberate it from the clutches of the nefarious Yankees heretofore holding it in bondage. I will keep it with me for the entire trip, until we’re both back in Texas where it will be free to roam free in the pure air, bluebonnets and endless expanses of the Lone Star State. Just like all Texas quarters should do. I will name it “Davy.”

Command and Training

I arrived at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin on Saturday at sundown. The bus dropped me off at one of literally hundreds of identical old WWII barracks. I introduced myself to a chief, who was sitting on the porch. He said, “Oh, you’re an officer. I didn’t know we were going to have any officers. That means you’re in charge.” As we are the only Navy unit going through training, I find myself the commander of the entire navy detachment. In fact, whereas the ratio of officers to enlisted in the reserves makes me about the exact mean of people in our unit, it’s a lot different here. Here I outrank about 75 percent of the people on base.

So in addition to training, I’ve got 16 sailors I need to watch over, and prevent from getting themselves arrested, run over by a Humvee or whatever. I’ve got to coordinate our training routine, fix administrative problems and go to meetings with the base commanding officer and other bigwigs. I somehow need to fit this all in with all the training. Fortunately, I’ve got three chiefs (senior enlisted sailors), who are pretty squared away, as well as an LPO (lead petty officer) who knows his stuff. To the degree that I can, I will delegate.

As for my position, I have some pull, but it’s not infinite. The army refused my request for a microwave, but they did give us an industrial size ice chest. I bought some soft drinks for my people and stocked it.

To get an idea of the training we’re doing, forget entirely that I’m in the Navy. To borrow a line from “Stripes” we’re doing “aaarrmy training” here. We are all going to Iraq and will be on the ground in country. No navy training we could get at this point would be relevant. And we are on base permanently now. Can’t even run down to the local Wal Mart. Of course, they’ve got a store on base, so we don’t need anything there.

The training is really in flux, but we’ve got a bunch of classes to get through in the next few weeks. We start each morning with a 5:45 PT run in formation. I ordered our guys to do this, even though I don’t really want to do it myself. But we’ve got to get in good shape, as we’re soon going to be hiking around with 40-60 lbs. of gear, including body armor and weapons. Although we are not necessarily going to do all of this stuff we’re training on over there on a day-to-day basis, we have to know how to do it, in case we have to.

Yesterday morning, we started out with our initial hand-to-hand combat training, plus a five-hour Arabic language class, which we continued today. Most days we’ll be returning to the barracks in the late afternoon. However, next week, we go into the field for a week at a “forward operating base” which is like a campout inside a razor-wire enclosure with fun exercises like hiking, weapons training and convoy exercises. We’ll live in tents there, but it’s really not so bad.

Chatting with the Army types today, it began to hit me a little more the reality of what we’re going to face. All of which brings home the point of how important the training is. When we face the enemy, we win and they lose, and the reason is training. That’s not new. At the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, the average Russian soldier could only march 5-10 miles a day. The Germans, on the other hand, were highly trained and in excellent physical shape, and they could march 20 miles a day with full gear. They were able to envelop an entire Russian Army and inflict a staggering defeat. History is full of such examples. Of course, I almost outweigh the average Iraqi, so there you go…

I’m getting a better idea of the work I’m going to be doing, but I can’t talk about that now. Most of the training we’re getting, however, is training that everybody who goes on the ground in Iraq gets. There will be Navy guys doing a lot of this stuff, riding in humvees and going on convoys. Whether I will be with them, or whether I’ll be sending my enlisted guys out while I have to stay behind, I’m not sure. I’d rather be where my guys are, but we’ll do what the mission requires.

I’m staying in an open bay barracks, just like in the movies (no A/C either), so I don’t have a ton of space here anyway. I can shove stuff under my bed to my heart’s content, because I’m the officer in command of our unit, but I don’t want to abuse my privileges and make all these enlisted folks jealous. So for the most part, I’m living out of a foot locker like everyone else. We all sleep in one room, with the exception of our two females, who get an entire floor to themselves.

Gulfport, Mississippi

Howdy!

Been enjoying the fun and sun of Gulfport, Mississippi for the last week, and learning all the joys of active duty Naval administration. Unlike Navy Reserve administration, which is amateur chaos, active duty admin is professional chaos. Anyone who joins the military to get structure to their lives is in for a great surprise!

Of course, this is an organization, like all military organizations, designed to kill people and break stuff, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, so anything that does not directly aid in that result is not the first priority.

Still, there are lots of fun things to report. Got to go into supply and that was great. Like Christmas, except all the ugly sweaters your aunt gives you all look alike, have your name stitched on them, and are camoflauged. And they’re not sweaters. That would be too hot for the desert. I now have six pairs of identical uniforms, although the four I got here are from a different manufacturer than the two I had, so they fit slightly different.

I also got a new pair of boots. This is the best part. I’ve had the one pair of blister blasters for a year, and they’re your standard run-of-the mill combat boots. But now, I’ve got this awesome new pair of Converse desert tan combat boots that wear like tennis shoes. They are incredible. I actually LIKE walking around in them. I’m thinking of writing an ode to my boots. Or maybe a sonnet. Don’t know if they’re as durable as the old ones, so I’ll take those along as a spare pair.


I now have six hats. This, I think is ludicrous, as I only have one head to wear them on, last time I checked. I already had two of the eight-point marine-style caps, one that was issued and one which I bought myself because the first one looked so terrible. They gave me the same issue as many folks who didn’t already have desert uniforms, which means I have too much. I didn’t need a new cap, and they gave me two. I asked for just one of the cool boonie hats, but they gave me two.

I’ve also been in Medical hell, mostly because I got a staph infection back in Texas three days before I was to leave. That’s mostly cleared up thanks to the Air Force docs at Wilford Hall in San Antonio, so I’m feeling better. Just in time to end my good feeling, however, they stuck me with Smallpox yesterday. For the next month, I will deal with that and can’t be around pregnant women and babies. Not that I was planning that anyway.

I’ve enjoyed my time, despite the admin hell, here in Gulfport. Got to go down to the water and look at what’s left of the Hurricane Katrina devastation. Seeing Jeff Davis’ house in ruins was tough, because so much of that history was lost. The rest of the town is rebuilding well, and a couple of brand new hotels have sprung up right on the ocean next to shattered businesses that have spray paint on the walls saying, “We shoot looters.”

And the base is cool. I get to hang out with a bunch of Seabees, who are really cool guys. The stuff they can do is pretty amazing. In WWII, they could build brand new runways on swampy Pacific islands under fire in a couple of weeks. I really need to find that John Wayne movie about them and watch it again.

I leave tomorrow for the next leg of my trip, and more actual training. This next stop includes a combat training course, which sounds like tons of fun.