Fall FTX

Got back last night from our ROTC fall FTX (Field Training Exercise). We did about 16 hours of land navigation which my team and I did pretty well on. The Leadership Reaction Course is basically a problem solving, team building exercise that puts you in various situations with certain allowances and limitations and requires you to accomplish a specific mission. There is usually only one or two methods which will actually succeed and it requires a lot of communication and teamwork. Fun stuff. We also did Squad Tactical Exercises (STX Lanes) on recon, knocking out a bunker, and movement to contact. The battle drills are always fun to do. Saturday night it got pretty cold and we had to do our patrol base ops which meant sleeping in the woods rather than the billets. Actually, I was rather warm enveloped in my polypro and sleeping bag. I had the first guard duty slot from 2300-2330 (11 to 11:30pm) so theoretically I should have still had a nice snooze, however, as my luck would have it, somebody woke me up around 3am cuz he thought I was someone else. Grrrrrr! Anywayz, I stayed warm until they woke us up around 4:30 and we had to pull 100% security for about 45 minutes... outside of my warm sleeping bag It was all good though. Lots of fun. The last Land Nav course was a 4 hour course with 7 points. My team got all 7 points perfectly in an hour and finished before anyone else. *Pats himself on back It was good training and lots of fun.

Record PT test is one week from today and the open book ROTC final is next Wednesday.