Army Training, Sir!
Training, training, training. That's what we do in the Army. We train for war, while in the back of our mind we hope we will never go there. But it's what we do. We train to prepare for the worst hoping that our reactions will be so engrained in our heads we'll do the right thing without even thinking about it. The ultimate goal is to minimize casualties and increase our chances of success in our missions. We train constantly.
I have been training in the Army for ten plus years. Training in my specialized job as well as training in the basic soldier skills we should all possess. Things like weapons training, NBC training, troop movements, reacting to direct and indirect fire, and so on and so forth. We all train for the worst and hope for the best. The majority of us never thought we would use our skills, we just thought we would take all the pay and benefits of military service and never actually have go to war, even though we train for it.
It's all different now.
You see, now we train for a war that we all know we are going to be an active part of in just a few short months. We train for mission success and to minimize casualties. But now, those "casualties" are my friends, my family for the next year and a half. Now the game is real and the training takes on a whole new life when we go through it. It is surreal, it really is because it's real now, the game is real, the war is real, and everything counts now.
I'm not saying that I never took Army training seriously before or that other soldiers didn't either, but I am saying that the consequences of failing a task are a lot higher now than they ever were before. The cost could be a life, not just a retest and try again. It's real this time.
We have done this training many times before. The MOUT training, the combat patrols, the CQC, the convoy training, all of it we have done before. But to do it last week, it was surreal. To be in a convoy and get "ambushed" and to race to the rally point, knowing that some of your fellow soldiers, your family, your friends, aren't going to be there when you get there, it's surreal. To have the evaluator tell you to call in a 9-line Medivac request for casualties who have sucking chest wounds and are missing limbs, it's surreal.
I know it's not for real today, but one day it probably will be and it just changes everything. Which friend will it be? What will the injuries be? Will they make it? What is going to happen?
The hard part is sitting with these soldiers everyday, my family of soldiers and seeing their faces knowing that we might not all come home. I pray that we all will, but the fact is there are no guarantees. The other day, we stopped at the Shoppette, and outside there was a new black truck parked in the handicap space with a purple heart sticker in the window. None of us really thought anything about it until we came out of the shoppette and saw a very humbling site. A handsome, young soldier, muscular and hopeful, in a wheechair with both of his legs amputated at the knee. I didn't know what to do. I looked at him and he looked back and smiled. It was like he was saying it was ok, he was proud of his service and what he did and of what he sacrificed.
I know that in the end, none of us will come home the same person we were when we left. I know I'm already different and I haven't been gone that long. What I don't know is how we will change or what will happen in the end. That's the frightening part. I guess you don't always get to know the ending to things in life. If we did, things would be pretty boring. I do know that each and every one of us is scared and no matter what we show on the outside, there's always a bit of fear on the inside. We can only hope that our training will pay off in the end, that we will do the right thing when we need to and that we will all come home safely.
I have been training in the Army for ten plus years. Training in my specialized job as well as training in the basic soldier skills we should all possess. Things like weapons training, NBC training, troop movements, reacting to direct and indirect fire, and so on and so forth. We all train for the worst and hope for the best. The majority of us never thought we would use our skills, we just thought we would take all the pay and benefits of military service and never actually have go to war, even though we train for it.
It's all different now.
You see, now we train for a war that we all know we are going to be an active part of in just a few short months. We train for mission success and to minimize casualties. But now, those "casualties" are my friends, my family for the next year and a half. Now the game is real and the training takes on a whole new life when we go through it. It is surreal, it really is because it's real now, the game is real, the war is real, and everything counts now.
I'm not saying that I never took Army training seriously before or that other soldiers didn't either, but I am saying that the consequences of failing a task are a lot higher now than they ever were before. The cost could be a life, not just a retest and try again. It's real this time.
We have done this training many times before. The MOUT training, the combat patrols, the CQC, the convoy training, all of it we have done before. But to do it last week, it was surreal. To be in a convoy and get "ambushed" and to race to the rally point, knowing that some of your fellow soldiers, your family, your friends, aren't going to be there when you get there, it's surreal. To have the evaluator tell you to call in a 9-line Medivac request for casualties who have sucking chest wounds and are missing limbs, it's surreal.
I know it's not for real today, but one day it probably will be and it just changes everything. Which friend will it be? What will the injuries be? Will they make it? What is going to happen?
The hard part is sitting with these soldiers everyday, my family of soldiers and seeing their faces knowing that we might not all come home. I pray that we all will, but the fact is there are no guarantees. The other day, we stopped at the Shoppette, and outside there was a new black truck parked in the handicap space with a purple heart sticker in the window. None of us really thought anything about it until we came out of the shoppette and saw a very humbling site. A handsome, young soldier, muscular and hopeful, in a wheechair with both of his legs amputated at the knee. I didn't know what to do. I looked at him and he looked back and smiled. It was like he was saying it was ok, he was proud of his service and what he did and of what he sacrificed.
I know that in the end, none of us will come home the same person we were when we left. I know I'm already different and I haven't been gone that long. What I don't know is how we will change or what will happen in the end. That's the frightening part. I guess you don't always get to know the ending to things in life. If we did, things would be pretty boring. I do know that each and every one of us is scared and no matter what we show on the outside, there's always a bit of fear on the inside. We can only hope that our training will pay off in the end, that we will do the right thing when we need to and that we will all come home safely.
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