If you don't think walking 10 miles is bad, you should try doing it with
- IBA (Individual Body Armor) +30lbs
- Weapon (in my case M249 aka SAW) +25 lbs
- Ruck Sack with numerous items +35 lbs
- Molle Gear and ACH +8lbs
Now walk ten miles in the dark through fields with uneven terrain and lots and lots of dew on the ground. And it is 40 degrees out. Okay, so five miles through fields and the last five on or next to roads. Your feet get soaked, and then they get cold. When you are done, drop your ruck and go on a mission to the top of a mountainside that has you walking well over 2000 meters. I have pictures to document the mountain and the distance.
So we started at midnight with this march and it carried through until 0800. We actually started the ruck march around 0100. That is about seven hours of walking. I fell a couple three times because the ground was uneven and there were lots of drop offs from where people drove vehicles over wet earth. We had one guy fall down to his midsection when he stepped into a hole. It was kind of funny, but I was worried about not getting hurt because I have a PT test to pass on Tuesday. I think I rolled my ankle twice while I was walking, but not bad enough that it would cause a sprain. We kept stopping for breaks, which sucked at first, but it was very nice the further we went because that weight on my body was getting heavier.
So I am not one to normally complain, but this was horrible. I had to keep placing my mind other places to get past the cold. I kept thinking that I was at home in front of a nice fireplace with the fire going and getting cozy with my wife. When we finally arrived where we were going to be, I put on my Polypropylene because I was starting to get cold.
At this point we had been up for 10 hours and now we were going to go do a mission which like I said was to take a mountainside. Our mountainside was two mountainsides away. We got to the first one, and I thought that one was ours, but it wasn't. The one we were going to was way off in the distance. So we moved tactically back down the hill to the bottom and used the ravine to cross over to a strategic position. There was a section of the ravine that didn't have much tree cover and thus we needed to low crawl. Now most of the people out there had M4s, which are 7lbs, and easy to low crawl with. If you have ever tried to low crawl with the SAW (again around 25lbs with ammo), then you know what I was going through. Plus, I forgot to put on knee pads before we left, and I was paying for it during this part. It is two days later and my knees still hurt from this. Then we bounded up to the strategic position which was still nearly 1000 meters away from the target. We could see the OpFor at the top of the mountain standing there looking out for people to be coming up. At this point we are two squads and my squad decides that they want to bound up the side of this mountain, which I may add requires us to go back down the side of the hill we are on and into the ravine, then all of the way up the other side, which moving out in the open took people nearly 40 minutes to come down from the top (and we were going to do it tactically). I switched spots with someone from the other squad because I was already loving life and didn't want to take a chance at injuring myself with something that was not a graduation requirement (the ruck march was a requirement, the exercise was not). So I stayed here to provide support for them as they went up the hill. They bounded up and down the side of two hills trying to stay out of sight. I think they were out there for an hour and a half before they finally got up to the top where they took out 6 people before getting annihilated by the rest of the OpFor. This to me was a suicide mission in the first place because the OpFor had the high ground and was in a much better position than we were.
When the exercise was complete we ate out there and checked sensitive items, then loaded up and headed back. At this time I was hoping that we were done and go into our rooms.
When we unloaded we knew differently. We were to stay outdoors and turn in our IBA and then clean weapons for a couple of hours before we would be allowed back into the barracks. When we turned in weapons, we had been up for approximately 18 hours. Then we finally were released at 1830. At this point we changed and went to dinner at Hong Kong Buffet, which is an awesome place to eat! I highly suggest it. They have sushi on their buffet and it is great! It was pretty much all I ate while I was there.
I decided against heading to Tulsa on this night because I had been up for 22 hours by the time I was ready to leave.
Total Training Time: 20 hours
Total Time awake: 23 hours