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 :)
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