Range Time!

This week entailed my favorite Soldier skill:  Marksmenship!

We started my grouping, which is where you practice your breath control and trigger squeeze to "group" three shots within three centimeters.

Then we moved onto zeroing, which is where you shoot at a target to see where your groups fall.  For instance, if your groups are in the upper left, you adjust your sights down and right so your weapon "zeros" in on the target when you look through the sights.

Finally, we qualified!  For Basic Rifle Marksmenship, 40 pop up targets that you rotate through prone supported (place your weapon on a sandbag), prone unsupported (prop your M4 by your elbows), and kneeling (on your knees): 

Then, we did Advanced Rifle Marksmenship.  This was different because you shot multiple different shots and stationary targets while moving.  Very cool, and I kicked some of the boys butts!

Info Briefs

Most Adjutant General Officers serve as S-1 section leaders, who provide human resources support for a battalion (400ish soldiers).  Because of their staff position, AG officers must be exemplary speakers.  To test this skill, BOLC requires each person to deliever an Informational Brief about an assigned topic relating to the things that a S-1 should know.

I was assigned "Retirement Eligability and Processing Unit Requirements" so I visited the Retirement Office on post and made some new friends and gathered great information.

I delivered my brief and got some great responses from my class.  The number one thing that I need to work on is my military bearing.  I tend to teach like a teacher, not a soldier.

The Nitty Gritty Officer Rub

After two grueling days of Land Nav, we headed inside for Property Accountability lessons. 

Basically, the take away is:  YOU ARE THE OFFICER.  YOU SIGN FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR PLATOON.  YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR PLATOON.

So, it is important to create hand reciepts.  A hand reciept is something that you have your subordinates sign when you designate a piece of equiptment into their control.  For instance, when I am a platoon leader, I will sign for all 3 computers and a whole lot of mail supplies.  As the OIC (Officer in Charge) I will rarely touch most of it, so I hand reciept it down to the enlisted soldiers who use it everyday.  Thus, if something goes missing or breaks, I know almost definitively who did it.

Land Nav

During the beginning of week three, we headed out to the field with the CAD (Combined Arms Department) to do some map reading and Land Navigation.  The course was set up like a grid, with a major North/South road, and East/West fire breaks (sandy paths between trees to stop wildfires).

This is one of the more major roads that I found my points on!

Operation Crimson Tide

Captain Noyes taught our Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) and made it fun!  She created a scenario where we were the USC Gamecock's football team and we were getting ready to tackle Alabama's Crimson Tide. 

We used the MDMP process and divided up into different sections (I was in charge of PAO), and created a commanders brief that we turned back around to CPT Noyes:

Convoy Ops

Talk about a full day!  We headed out to the Soldier Support Institute's Warrior Training Area where we briefed convoy operations from a sand table:

Then did a walk through:

And finally, we hopped on the computers and went through the mission:

Wanna Wrestle?

Wednesday started with some high speed PT:

Then I showered and headed to the padded Combatives Room.  We started with different drills where you had to "spiderman" across the floor, or "batman" across the floor.  The worst one was the EO (I dont remember what this was) but it is ridiculously hard and looks just as ridiculous:

But I did learn quite a bit about self defense and what to do when I hit the floor: