Dancing in the Dark

We're out in the field now. In BCT, "the field" meant sleeping in a tiny two-man tent, both ends exposed to the elements, sleeping on a thin bedroll. In AIT (or at least in Psyop AIT) they take a different approach. They told us we'll never do that in real life. Today we are in FOB Freedom (FOB means forward operating base). There, we sleep in "tents" that sleep about 16, have wooden floors, and a high-quality heater. We sleep on cots. A far cry from BCT! We're spending 3 days in the field, rotating in groups through varous training iterations.

Once the sun went down, we moved into our field classroom (a large tent that doubles as the mess hall). There, we received instruction in the use of Night Vision Goggles (NVG). It was great! Having watched so many action movies, I knew about what to expect. Still, it is fun to sit there in total darkness, put on a device, and be able to see. We had to take turns, so we got to mess with our friends who were not wearing NVG's at the time :-)

Every Saturday we have been learning LINES, a variant of Ju-Jitsu.

After NVG class we got to put that to practice in the dark. We got together in 2 man groups, and tried to take each other down. You much more feel than see what you are doing. It was great fun! Some of us (including me) got bumped up a bit, but you can't learn to fight if you don't fight. Is this really the Army? Somehow we had way too much fun.