The Shower. A poem by Stonesand.

I am protected by a thin plastic curtain
Where I may hide from things uncertain
Warm running hope washes Night’s fears
And I may scrub behind my ear.

I linked all of the equipment Nathan talks about - plenty of good readin’ there.

6 May 2007

OK, OK, I know I’m late but, man, the farther you get into basic training the faster and more furious it gets. This letter is also going to be fast and furious because I still have to write a letter to Amy.

So here’s what we’ve done in the past two weeks – all of our basic rifle marksmanship training. Yep, I’ve been trained for two weeks on the M4 carbine and I qualified as a sharpshooter on it. BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) is all about engaging targets with iron sights at ranges form 50m out to 300m. We shot at a lot of different ranges for about a week and all of them were ranges with pop-up silhouette targets. They pop up at random and we’re supposed to lay them down with well placed, precisely executed (but quickly performed) semi-auto shots.

I’m getting really comfortable with my rifle now. I can clear it, reload, perform a clean, zero, and shoot it all very quickly and very comfortably. We do all of our firing wearing full battle rattle just like they do in Iraq and Afghanistan (flak vest with ballistic plate inserts, knee pads, elbow pads, and helmet). If you haven’t figured it out by now BCT [Basic Combat Training] is now almost exclusively tailored to training soldiers in skills they’ll need for Iraq or Afghanistan.

In BRM we fire from the prone position (supported and unsupported) and the kneeling position. We don’t fire from fox holes any more (for you ex-military guys out there who know what I’m talking about). You wouldn’t think it but firing a rifle from those positions in full battle rattle is very uncomfortable. It’s something your muscles have to get used to over time (like mine are now). It was also surprising to learn that the trajectory of a 5.56 mm round out of a M16/M4 rifle is not straight. It actually arcs up and then down slightly (a height of about a foot and a half or so). Which means it shoots like how a quarterback throws a football – spiraling and at an arc to get more range. This means that when you aim at targets over 50 meters away but less then 300m you have to aim slightly above or below the center of mass of the target depending how far away it is. And you do all of this in your head on the fly as targets are popping up at random all over a range 3x the length of a football field. It’s not an easy task let me tell you, but with practice it starts to come naturally.

One of our drill sergeants said that when we hit a target at 300 meters with an M4 we’ve done something 99% of the U.S. population can’t do (or hasn’t done, one of the two). Sounds pretty HOO-HA to me.

So anyway, that was BRM. There are a ton of stories I could tell about everything we did. Everything from firing at a million-dollar range with sensors and computer displays at each station to show you exactly where you shot, to shooting in pouring rain and six inch puddles, But I don’t have room or time… sorry.

We did some ARM (Advanced Rifle Marksmanship) this week (week after BRM). ARM is where we train to move and shoot like the soldiers do in the movies or you see on the news. We got to practice with the army’s M68 CCO (close combat optic). It’s essentially a red dot sight that attaches to the picatinny rail of an M4 when you remove the carrying handle.

In ARM we engage targets that are significantly closer then BRM. There aren’t any targets at the ARM ranges that are farther then 30- meters. We learn to hold our weapons at the low or high ready and engage targets with a double tap of the trigger and both eyes open, looking through the M68 CCO on top of the rifle.

Unfortunately, we only get two days of ARM but I wish we had more. It’s the bomb. I really feel like a lethal killing machine walking forward at the low ready and then quickly stopping and bringing up my rifle to double tap to pop-up targets in front of me. It looks totally Hollywood – it’s freakin’ awesome.

But wait! It gets even more awesome! Yesterday we did a night fire exercises with night vision sights! You know those flip down NV sights that you see soldiers have attached to the front of their helmets? Yeah, we got to shoot at night with those. We also had this IR laser emitter attached to your M4 that we used to aim with. It shot out a laser you could only see through the NV scope. Everything was tinted green through the scope and the lasers were a very bright green. We had to fire our weapons form under our arm pit because we couldn’t put them up to your eye or the recoil would hurt the NV sight and our eye socket. Final verdict? Love NV, Love the M68, Love the M4, love being a soldier, and the army has some pretty awesome toys.

One more thing, one big reason I haven’t had a chance to write very much in the past two weeks is because I’m the new platoon bookman. I was relieved of my squad leader position because I inherited the bookman job after the last bookman got fired for screwing up. Since being bookman and squad leader is impossibly time consuming the D.S.’s decided to just make me bookman. The bookman is essentially like a cross between a scribe, a record keeper, and a quartermaster, and keep all the paperwork for the platoon updated and accurate. I keep track and secure a lot of the office type equipment that the platoon is issued. I’m in charge of keeping track of how many sick calls there are out of the platoon, any specific accountability of gear out of the platoon, I coordinate info and paperwork with other platoon bookmen, and I’m asked to keep a lot of things secret because I see a lot of sensitive stuff (having access to all the personal files for privates in my platoon).

So there you have it. That’s pretty much it. I’m improving a lot in my PT and getting pretty toned and shaped. I’ve lost at least one pant size (probably two) out of my gut. I wouldn’t say I’m “ripped� yet (my stomach needs work) but I’m getting darn close. I can knock out 40 push-ups now without stopping our breaking a sweat. And I run 2 miles in 15 minutes flat.

My knees are starting to bother me though and I think I need some prayers in that regard. I have to pass my final PT test on the 17th of May or I don’t graduate and I stay here. If my knees give out I obviously won’t be able to run. So pray for my knees please! Take care and please write!

PFC Christensen, Nathan

P.S. Almost forgot… pie last week was peach. Pie this Sunday was apple. Mmm… only 3 more slices of pie to go! 3! Wow.