Another Day In The Life Of...

            Ever have one of those days when you wish you could switch places with someone? Yeah, I know you have, I personally had 4 of those days this past weekend. I was voluntold ( when someone eliminates the choice out of an option) that I would be doing a 4 day training weekend at god ol’ Ft. Irwin, CA. although this new blows, I have no one to blame but myself. After active duty in the Army I got out and a few short months later I reenlisted for the Army reserves (weekend warriors). Every 6 months we have to be up to date with our weapon qualification so we buss out to Ft. Irwin to spend 4 days in hell.

            Friday morning started off with a 3:30am wake up followed by a 45minute drive just to meet up with my unit before we left for Irwin. When I arrived we stood around for about 3 hours before drawing out personal and squad weapons. After another 2 hours of standing around we finally loaded up on the busses to begin our journey to hell. Now, I don’t know why it took this buss 4 hours to drive us 65 miles but it happened. We arrived at our destination at about1:30ish, dropped our personal belongings, geared up and headed out to our first range.

            First on the list was the M9 (9mm pistol) range. Not a bad range, easily able to knock it out in about 2 hours. No big deal right? Wrong! This group of incompetent individuals I was being forced to shoot with seems as if they had never seen a pistol in their lives! I was furious. After standing out at this range for a few hours in 110 degree weather I became very irritable. I finished what I had to do and walked off the range just to be put on a buss and shipped to another range! This time it was for the m249 SAW (if you don’t know what it is, google it.) this range however has always been one of my favorites. Since we didn’t need to qualify with this weapon system our main goal was just to blast off some rounds. There is no better feeling in life than unloading an unnecessary amount of bullets into a target. 900 rounds, 1800 links and a red-hot barrel later I was finished .

            The following 3 days were a bunch of bullshit! All we did was qualify with out M4’s. but even this simple task took a lot of people the rest of the weekend! Grrrr, steaming mad, I decided to let off some steam by consuming a few beers and a bottle of whiskey. Ahh, so refreshing. The following day was departure day, back to Moval, bright and early. But I felt like poo poo at 5am after only attempting to sleep off my drunkenness for 2 ½ hours. But all signs were a go once I got on that bus and had a long quiet buss ride.