Sunday, February 6, 2011
The weather
Well, since my last post was about the rain...why not follow it up with snow? Last night began the onslaught of snow here. By the time we woke up in the morning, the front of our tent had collapsed from the weight of the snow on the roof. One of the guys that sleeps on the top bunk said he woke up and felt like he was suffocating from the ceiling in his face! The camo net hanging in front of the tent had collected a bunch of snow too, and made the extra weight too much to bear. Hopefully the poles aren't completely broken and we'll be able to get it fixed here soon. Part of the problem is that those of us who live in the tent all work about the same hours and when we're not at work (or in the MWR) we go back to the tent just to sleep. So, that doesn't leave much time to fix the tent. Part of the problem is that I'm so dang short that I can't reach the ceiling to try to fix it without help. Maybe tomorrow night I'll get one of the guys to help me with it. We've been working to update all the old unit's stuff to transition over to our ways of doing things. In part of the transition from my perspective, we've been fixing some of the errors with pre-planned target packets (very time consuming). Each time we shoot, there's a packet that goes along with it, and the locations, imagery, etc. all have to line up. While I was reviewing one of the target packets that the old unit had done, I noticed that there were a couple of discrepancies, so we went back and looked through all of them. Well, time's up on the computer, more next time!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Rainy Days in combat
Rainy days in a combat zone can be many things. Just like back home, they have their place in the world. Rainy days at the right time can help you get some peaceful sleep at night, the rain drops on the tent, lulling you into a stupor. Rainy days can also complicate things, make everything muddy, harder to see, and slower to get the job done. One thing rainy days do in combat though is prove how hard our Soldiers are and what they can accomlish despite adversity. Soldiers still pull guard, man their weapons, and remain vigilant. Our ability to fight in any condition is what keeps us ahead of the enemy. With the weather the other night, one of the Soldiers asked if we would still shoot one of our fire missions...
"Hell yeah!" was my reply.
"But, Sir, isn't that dangerous? Couldn't the round drift somewhere it's not supposed to?"
"Artillery is an all-weather weapon system...we're not the Air Force. We're going to shoot, and we're going to do it to make sure they know we can."
It's times like that when I love being an Artilleryman. Guys out there, manning the guns, putting rounds out no matter what.
"Hell yeah!" was my reply.
"But, Sir, isn't that dangerous? Couldn't the round drift somewhere it's not supposed to?"
"Artillery is an all-weather weapon system...we're not the Air Force. We're going to shoot, and we're going to do it to make sure they know we can."
It's times like that when I love being an Artilleryman. Guys out there, manning the guns, putting rounds out no matter what.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Targeting 101
As the BN FSO, part of my job is to coordinate all the different assets that we have in the BN and make sure that everything is synchronized in coordination with the BN Operations Officer, and following what the BN Commander's intent is. So, the way that I accomplish that is through what we call the targeting cycle. This cycle uses the intel that we collect to align our operations and then places all the different operations on a calendar together with the assets we're trying to use for each to see how they lay out. With several companies in the BN to coordinate, each one planning multiple operations over the cycle with multiple assets for each, it can be a bit daunting to try to make sure they're coordinated.
Tonight was the first meeting in the cycle that we call Mission Analysis. We go through the intel and talk about what we think the bad guys are doing in our area, then we go through our lines of effort along our campaign plan and evaluate where we stand along Governance, Development, Security, and Information Operations. After some discussion on that, we go through all the operations that the companies want to do for the upcoming cycle based off the intel that was briefed (which was sent out to the companies a few days prior to allow them to plan). Once we get through the CONOP (concept of the operation) slides, we'll go through how they will lay out on the calendar as planned with the assets that each requested for their operations. I brief the calendar and the conflicts associated with operations overlapping with different assets requested, etc. and then recommend possible fixes. After that, the BN CDR gives his planning guidance for the cycle, and the meeting is done. Tonight's meeting lasted roughly an hour and a half and we went through 102 slides!
What's difficult is that we conduct the meeting online with the companies who are located on different COPs/FOBs from us, so sometimes the connection is not reliable when they are trying to brief their slides and vice versa. Anyways, I got a few compliments on how well our first MA brief went, so it felt good. I have to give a lot of credit to my counterpart, CPT Tanquary for doing such a good job setting up the process and showing me how they went about it here to make it a seamless transition.
The next meeting we have in a couple days, we will go through the recommended changes with the operations officer, and he will give further guidance for deconfliction prior to the next meeting. At the final meeting of the cycle, we will present the BN CDR with a course of action decision brief which basically lays out the proposed targeting calendar with the operations for the cycle with deconflicted assets for him to approve or make modifications to. Generally, he will only make minor modifications and following his approval of a course of action, I will capture the changes and publish the targeting frago (fragmentary order) to the companies and staff to be executed. We'll see how the rest of the process goes and how effective we are as a BN at it. Hopefully, I can help make sure we are synchronized and making the most out of the enablers that we bring to the fight!
Tonight was the first meeting in the cycle that we call Mission Analysis. We go through the intel and talk about what we think the bad guys are doing in our area, then we go through our lines of effort along our campaign plan and evaluate where we stand along Governance, Development, Security, and Information Operations. After some discussion on that, we go through all the operations that the companies want to do for the upcoming cycle based off the intel that was briefed (which was sent out to the companies a few days prior to allow them to plan). Once we get through the CONOP (concept of the operation) slides, we'll go through how they will lay out on the calendar as planned with the assets that each requested for their operations. I brief the calendar and the conflicts associated with operations overlapping with different assets requested, etc. and then recommend possible fixes. After that, the BN CDR gives his planning guidance for the cycle, and the meeting is done. Tonight's meeting lasted roughly an hour and a half and we went through 102 slides!
What's difficult is that we conduct the meeting online with the companies who are located on different COPs/FOBs from us, so sometimes the connection is not reliable when they are trying to brief their slides and vice versa. Anyways, I got a few compliments on how well our first MA brief went, so it felt good. I have to give a lot of credit to my counterpart, CPT Tanquary for doing such a good job setting up the process and showing me how they went about it here to make it a seamless transition.
The next meeting we have in a couple days, we will go through the recommended changes with the operations officer, and he will give further guidance for deconfliction prior to the next meeting. At the final meeting of the cycle, we will present the BN CDR with a course of action decision brief which basically lays out the proposed targeting calendar with the operations for the cycle with deconflicted assets for him to approve or make modifications to. Generally, he will only make minor modifications and following his approval of a course of action, I will capture the changes and publish the targeting frago (fragmentary order) to the companies and staff to be executed. We'll see how the rest of the process goes and how effective we are as a BN at it. Hopefully, I can help make sure we are synchronized and making the most out of the enablers that we bring to the fight!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Wag Bag
Apparently there have been some questions about how we go to the bathroom with no toilet facilities or running water. Well, I will explain it to you...and in the future hopefully not to distant, I will post pictures.
We have little plastic toilet seats and pre-packaged bags with all the ingredients you need to use the plastic toilet seat. The toilet seat is really no more than a chair the height of a toddler chair with a hole in it the size of a toilet bowl. There is a fold up seat similar to that on a regular toilet.
In the plastic package, there are two different bags. One is the bag you go in, that you put through the hole in the chair and fold the seat down onto. The other is a ziplock bag that everything goes into when you're done. Both are opaque, black, plastic bags.
Inside the package there is a powder to help absorbe stuff, a small role of toilet paper, and a wet wipe....I am out of time at the computer, but will post pictures to make it simple later...of course, they will be clean pictures:)
We have little plastic toilet seats and pre-packaged bags with all the ingredients you need to use the plastic toilet seat. The toilet seat is really no more than a chair the height of a toddler chair with a hole in it the size of a toilet bowl. There is a fold up seat similar to that on a regular toilet.
In the plastic package, there are two different bags. One is the bag you go in, that you put through the hole in the chair and fold the seat down onto. The other is a ziplock bag that everything goes into when you're done. Both are opaque, black, plastic bags.
Inside the package there is a powder to help absorbe stuff, a small role of toilet paper, and a wet wipe....I am out of time at the computer, but will post pictures to make it simple later...of course, they will be clean pictures:)
Monday, January 24, 2011
All quiet...
Well, things have been fairly quiet around here, which is a good thing!
Folks are settling in and learning their roles and the lay of the land.
You can see quite an interesting dynamic between the incoming and
outgoing guys. The outgoing guys seem to have pretty good spirits for
the most part, but are incredibly bitter. Many of them will say it's
due to their Battalion Commander's leadership style of demoralizing and
degrading his staff. Thankfully, I do not have that problem. Another
reason they seem bitter of course, is due to the year that they've been
over here fighting. When I say fighting, I mean just that...this
battalion has seen it's fair share of contact with the enemy. It's been
interesting listening to the various stories.
With the new guys, you can sense the excitement and nervousness of those
who haven't deployed before. While we were on our way here, before we
got to this FOB, I sat next to a random Soldier in the DFAC. He was
telling his team leader that he was really nervous, and you could tell
what he really meant was that he was scared. He sat there picking at
his food with a lost look on his face. I tried to talk to him about it.
I asked him what he was nervous about. He said he was nervous about
getting to the FOB. I knew what he was really nervous about, but
believe that it's important that people admit to themselves what they're
afraid of in order to face it, so I asked what about going there made
him nervous. His simple response, "Getting shot at, Sir." I told him
that it was healthy to be nervous about it because there's not much fun
about getting shot at. I added to that by asking him if he had gone
through the platoon live fire exercises and training we did at Ft. Knox
before we left. He said that he had. I asked him if he qualified with
his weapon (which happens to be a SAW) and he said he had. I said,
"Okay, then you know you can hit what you're aiming at, and you know how
to maneuver and close with the enemy with your unit. The only thing you
have to do, is follow your training and if you get shot at, remember to
breathe for a second and then aim. They don't call that machine gun
you're carrying a casualty producing weapon because it sounds cool!"
That got him laughing a little bit and he finished eating his food and
chatting with his team leader.
It is good to see Soldiers like him. Soldiers who have a healthy fear
of the enemy, but still go forward and do their duty. There are
occasionally Soldiers and leaders who may be a little too overzealous,
and it is a challenge to keep them focused on the mission, but for most
of the Soldiers, they are scared of getting hurt or killed and just want
to do the best they can and get through a yearlong deployment over here.
There are other Soldiers who's overzealousness is a result of ignorance,
or unwillingness to face the reality that the enemy has a vote and they
are not invincible. Those Soldiers will go on missions to places they
aren't required and take unnecessary risks with themselves and
potentially those around them. Only when something tragic happens and
it affects them directly will those types of Soldiers learn their
fragility.
This is what you get when I write a blog at 0030 in the morning after
working all day. I'll try to be more chipper and add pictures another
time. For now, know that I appreciate all your support and I'm glad to
be doing what I am with the great folks I'm doing it with. Hopefully,
in a year I'll be able to say that our unit has made this place better
and we are closer to allowing the GIRoA to take over their own country
so we no longer have to have such a presence.
Goodnight,
Joe
Folks are settling in and learning their roles and the lay of the land.
You can see quite an interesting dynamic between the incoming and
outgoing guys. The outgoing guys seem to have pretty good spirits for
the most part, but are incredibly bitter. Many of them will say it's
due to their Battalion Commander's leadership style of demoralizing and
degrading his staff. Thankfully, I do not have that problem. Another
reason they seem bitter of course, is due to the year that they've been
over here fighting. When I say fighting, I mean just that...this
battalion has seen it's fair share of contact with the enemy. It's been
interesting listening to the various stories.
With the new guys, you can sense the excitement and nervousness of those
who haven't deployed before. While we were on our way here, before we
got to this FOB, I sat next to a random Soldier in the DFAC. He was
telling his team leader that he was really nervous, and you could tell
what he really meant was that he was scared. He sat there picking at
his food with a lost look on his face. I tried to talk to him about it.
I asked him what he was nervous about. He said he was nervous about
getting to the FOB. I knew what he was really nervous about, but
believe that it's important that people admit to themselves what they're
afraid of in order to face it, so I asked what about going there made
him nervous. His simple response, "Getting shot at, Sir." I told him
that it was healthy to be nervous about it because there's not much fun
about getting shot at. I added to that by asking him if he had gone
through the platoon live fire exercises and training we did at Ft. Knox
before we left. He said that he had. I asked him if he qualified with
his weapon (which happens to be a SAW) and he said he had. I said,
"Okay, then you know you can hit what you're aiming at, and you know how
to maneuver and close with the enemy with your unit. The only thing you
have to do, is follow your training and if you get shot at, remember to
breathe for a second and then aim. They don't call that machine gun
you're carrying a casualty producing weapon because it sounds cool!"
That got him laughing a little bit and he finished eating his food and
chatting with his team leader.
It is good to see Soldiers like him. Soldiers who have a healthy fear
of the enemy, but still go forward and do their duty. There are
occasionally Soldiers and leaders who may be a little too overzealous,
and it is a challenge to keep them focused on the mission, but for most
of the Soldiers, they are scared of getting hurt or killed and just want
to do the best they can and get through a yearlong deployment over here.
There are other Soldiers who's overzealousness is a result of ignorance,
or unwillingness to face the reality that the enemy has a vote and they
are not invincible. Those Soldiers will go on missions to places they
aren't required and take unnecessary risks with themselves and
potentially those around them. Only when something tragic happens and
it affects them directly will those types of Soldiers learn their
fragility.
This is what you get when I write a blog at 0030 in the morning after
working all day. I'll try to be more chipper and add pictures another
time. For now, know that I appreciate all your support and I'm glad to
be doing what I am with the great folks I'm doing it with. Hopefully,
in a year I'll be able to say that our unit has made this place better
and we are closer to allowing the GIRoA to take over their own country
so we no longer have to have such a presence.
Goodnight,
Joe
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Trading out with a giant
Most people, when they replace a unit (referred to as RIPing or Relief In Place) have to replace someone that's been doing their job for a year and they have never met. I have the outstanding good fortune to be replacing one of my good friends. 'Tank' as everyone calls him sat next to me every day at the Field Artillery Captain's Career Course at Ft. Sill, OK for roughly 5.5 months. We competed on a regular basis for grades on exams, etc in good spirit. Admittedly, his overall average was a couple points higher than mine. He did better on one section of the course than everyone, earning a 100 percent. That made him hard to catch. He has admitted that I did better on the Fire Support block of instruction (which is what pertains to our jobs now). So, we keep it in good fun.
While I am not a fan of starting a year away from my family here, changing out with him is bittersweet. Knowing that he has already endured his year away from his wife and 3 kids makes doing my job and wanting to make sure that I pick up where he left off even easier. Not only that, but being able to be completely and brutally honest with the person you are learning your combat job from and vice versa, is refreshing. There's nothing like the awkward moments of trying not to offend the person you are learning from by asking questions about why they do things a certain way, or from feeling dumb for not understanding something that they do. With a friend like Tank, I don't have to worry about that. He knows I'm not dumb, and that I know he's not. We're just past the self-consciousness that goes with it.
I should say, although we are similar in ability and many of our ways of thinking, we are complete physical opposites. Tank is huge. He's 6'4" and 270 lbs. I am slightly shorter and lighter...5'7" 180 lbs. It's just kind of funny walking around with him while he's ducking under low passes in the tents and I just walk right through.
Well, that's all I have time for right now, gotta go eat and get to work. I got up a little early to get online. At least there's a nice internet cafe for us here! Still no plumbing for the bathrooms, so it's outside we go! I'll post more about the FOB later.
While I am not a fan of starting a year away from my family here, changing out with him is bittersweet. Knowing that he has already endured his year away from his wife and 3 kids makes doing my job and wanting to make sure that I pick up where he left off even easier. Not only that, but being able to be completely and brutally honest with the person you are learning your combat job from and vice versa, is refreshing. There's nothing like the awkward moments of trying not to offend the person you are learning from by asking questions about why they do things a certain way, or from feeling dumb for not understanding something that they do. With a friend like Tank, I don't have to worry about that. He knows I'm not dumb, and that I know he's not. We're just past the self-consciousness that goes with it.
I should say, although we are similar in ability and many of our ways of thinking, we are complete physical opposites. Tank is huge. He's 6'4" and 270 lbs. I am slightly shorter and lighter...5'7" 180 lbs. It's just kind of funny walking around with him while he's ducking under low passes in the tents and I just walk right through.
Well, that's all I have time for right now, gotta go eat and get to work. I got up a little early to get online. At least there's a nice internet cafe for us here! Still no plumbing for the bathrooms, so it's outside we go! I'll post more about the FOB later.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Working out at elevation
Not much going on since the last post, but thought I would share the struggles of working out (or rather trying to breathe) at elevation. You see, I have had experience with this in the past...while stationed at Colorado Springs we were roughly at the same elevation as here. Unfortunately, my body does not remember that experience well enough to be able to breathe properly here. I did have a pretty good run though: started out running the first quarter mile warm up around 8 mph and then kicked it up to 8.6 (less than 7 min mile pace) for the next two miles. After that I kicked it up again to 9.0 for a half mile, and then slowly increased the pace over the next half mile up to 10.0. After I had run 3.5 miles I brought it back down to 8.0 for a quarter mile and then finished out the last quarter mile going from 9.0 again back up to 10.0 to finish off. I tried to go a little faster than 10, but the machine couldn't go any faster than 10.1 or 10.2 because the motor is worn out. By the time I was finished, my head felt like exploding and my lungs burned like I just got out of the CS gas chamber. I had to walk for another quarter mile to get my breathing right before going to finish up the workout with some curls and abs.
Something frustrating that has happened the last few times I've been exercising my abs is like a severe cramp that completely causes my ab muscle to seize up for a minute or two. It feels like someone shocked the heck out of it and it hurts like crazy and makes it so I can't get a really good ab workout. I've tried stretching it out and drinking lots of water...I'm hoping with a little more rest it will start to get better soon. I just don't know if I might have torn something. Anyways, that's pretty much what I've done today.
I have been playing a LOT of PSP, specifically the game "Burnout Legends". It's a racing game that Megan got me for Christmas. I have an insatiable need to beat the game...and it is taking forever. Anyways, something cool about the PSP that I found out with another Soldier is that you can create an Ad Hoc peer to peer network and play the same game in multiplayer. So, I found a guy with the same game and we were able to race each other...just helps pass the time and add some competition.
I know this is an incredibly boring and not though provoking post. I apologize. Hopefully once I'm at my FOB there will be more interesting things to ramble about.
Something frustrating that has happened the last few times I've been exercising my abs is like a severe cramp that completely causes my ab muscle to seize up for a minute or two. It feels like someone shocked the heck out of it and it hurts like crazy and makes it so I can't get a really good ab workout. I've tried stretching it out and drinking lots of water...I'm hoping with a little more rest it will start to get better soon. I just don't know if I might have torn something. Anyways, that's pretty much what I've done today.
I have been playing a LOT of PSP, specifically the game "Burnout Legends". It's a racing game that Megan got me for Christmas. I have an insatiable need to beat the game...and it is taking forever. Anyways, something cool about the PSP that I found out with another Soldier is that you can create an Ad Hoc peer to peer network and play the same game in multiplayer. So, I found a guy with the same game and we were able to race each other...just helps pass the time and add some competition.
I know this is an incredibly boring and not though provoking post. I apologize. Hopefully once I'm at my FOB there will be more interesting things to ramble about.
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