This was Josh's first full week of AIT...or as us civilians call it, MP School. A goodly portion of each day is spent in the classroom learning Military law through presentations or as it's dubbed, "Death by PowerPoint".In addition to the classroom the platoon did many hands on exercises including defensive tactics, handcuffing and search techniques to use on compliant suspects. They are working their way up to combatant suspects in the weeks to come. Plus there was some advanced communications training and advanced interpersonal communications.
But the real fun stuff for the week was the 9mm handgun qualifications and the Humvee training. He did very well qualifying on the 9mm handgun, but he really had a blast driving Humvees. They did on road, off road, obstacle courses and all the platoons got together and did convoy training. They switched drivers during the convoy training so it was like one big Chinese fire drill!
Physical Training (PT) still happens every day to keep soldiers in good shape, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday they run, sometimes around a track, sometimes around the base and occasionally they toss in a five mile run. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday is endurance training. He has Sunday off, on this particular day he treated himself to Burger King, I guess if you are working out six days a week, a trip to Burger King isn't really the worst thing...
Army life seems to agree with Josh, he sounds really good each week when I talk to him, his graduation has been confirmed as September 16th, a letter from the commander is on the way to my mailbox so we will be making flight arrangements really soon.
Training has been great but of course there is a reality with an Army enlistment. Deployment. Josh will be assigned to a permanent duty station and will await deployment. Drill instructors have spoken with them and have told them to expect a deployment within 180 days of graduation. Even with troop draw down in Iraq, MP's are deployed in both war zones to train local Police and other security functions.
I will keep everybody up to date on how this plays out for Josh...
Prayers are always gratefully accepted :)
Josh was on a five hour pass today, he had his buddy Joel take this really great photo...he is smiling and looking very fit. I am so proud!
This past week he officially finished BCT when he successfully competed the PT requirement test. He treated himself to a generous breakfast with biscuits, gravy and a healthy portion of bacon. He definitely earned it!
On Friday they started the black phase of AIT with some training exercises and Saturday they hit the firing range for qualifications on their M9 pistols. A good majority of MP School is classroom activities, it has been dubbed "Death by Powerpoint" AIT will be a total of nine weeks.I'm keeping this post short today, but stay tuned in the weeks to come and I'll post the highlights of MP School and any other Army facts that he provides...In the meantime, have you ever wondered why the American flag is "backwards" on service uniforms? 
The flag is worn with the "appearance" of being backwards on soldiers right arm to symbolize early American armies which had a flag carrier holding our flag high The "backwards" flag signifies this and gives the perception that every soldier is carrying a flag. It is worn backwards to make it look like a soldier is marching into the wind carrying a flag and the wind is blowing into the flag.
Josh called today while he was on a seven hour pass, the platoon was out and about waiting for the 4th of July festival to start at the Fort.
Last week they were out in the field for their four day FTX (field training exercise) they slept in tents and had numerous training exercises. He said it was a little tiring and a little boring at times. The did several training exercises including going through old buildings hunting "terrorists", at one point they were crawling on the ground while there were live rounds going off over their heads...The trip was capped off with a 15K ruck march where they had all their gear and fully loaded ruck sacks that contained an extra 70 pounds of gear, he said this took about four hours to complete. After the march, they did some night ops.
They were all dead tired and pretty dirty when they returned to the Fort. Josh said he didn't realize how dirty he was until he took off his uniforms and sand came out of his pocket and boots! Even though he took all four of his uniforms, he kept one aside to change into when he returned to the Fort. It was a real pleasure to put on dirty, grimy, wet stuff out in the field when the day began at 4:00am.The Value Tag ceremony was held at the very end when they returned back to the Fort. This is a true ceremony with the platoons superiors in attendance and each member of the platoon receives a special dog tag with the Army values on one side and the Warrior Ethos on the other. 220 volunteers started BCT and 198 received their Value Tags and were welcomed into the Army family. I have probably downplayed the significance of the ceremony, it marks the official transformation from volunteer to soldier. Josh was very honored to have received this distinction, I could hear it in his voice. He received his tags on July 2nd, his grandfather Evans' birthday, that made it significant too.
On Thursday he will take his final BCT physical test and will start AIT on Friday.
As I look back, the time has gone by pretty quickly, his September graduation will be just around the corner. Sometime in the next few weeks, Josh will receive his orders and will know where he will be for the next couple of years. There are rumors that they will be sending MP's to Korea and Africa. Several of his friends in AIT just got orders to Colorado. Truth is, he could end up literally anywhere in the world...
Josh and Trent have been friends since kindergarten. I think they may have even met the first day. They have been as close as brothers for most of their lives...Now, they are brothers in arms. Trent joined the Army in August of 2009 and is on his first deployment in Afghanistan. He posts on Facebook pretty regularly, I always breath a sigh of relief when I see his name on my Facebook page...it makes things seem almost normal. Foot patrols and land mines are far from normal for many of us that live comfortably in this country...Trent posted this video link a few days ago as the NY Times is following his unit for their year of deployment. I hope that you choose to watch and remember the brave American's that are serving our country...God Bless them all...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/battalion.html#/NYT/0
