Lets just take a breath

So for the past month or so I have been constantly on the move. To start out, I just joined a new company. In the Army this just happens, and it happens fast. One day I have one boss and I have this group of soldiers that I'm responsible for, and the next its all new. I just pack up my shit and then show up in a new place. What adds to it is the fact that your only told a short time before the transition happens. I was told about 2 weeks ahead of time that I was leaving and where I was going, but I've seen some soldiers get told and have to be somewhere else the next day. Its a trip.

I went from an infantry platoon where I had 34 soldiers and 4 vehicles, to an anti-tank platoon where I only had 10 soldiers, including myself, and 3 vehicles. The only cool part about my new vehicles is the fact that I have TOW missles under my control now. I can reach out 3,750 meters with a wire quided missle and touch someone. Haha. But there is a problem with that. There aren't too many tanks used by insurgents. As a matter of fact I'm pretty sure there aren't any. So what does an anti-tank platoon do in the current fight? Heres the answer. The entire company is manned by infantry soldiers, so we turn into an regular infantry fighting unit. Just with a lot less manpower than normal. A regular infantry platoon usually has give or take 40 soldiers if its manned properly. At most I will only have 12 soldiers, which includes myself. So before when I got off my trucks I would have 20+ dismounted soldiers to maneuver and fight with, I now have 6 max. This is good and bad. Its bad just becuase you have less people with less weapons to fight the fight, but its a smaller and tighter unit and I have more control over everything. So while its definately different, I'm liking it.

So a week after getting here we were heading out of a big field exercise. I was excited to get out there with my new boys and new equipment to see what all they could do. For the most part it was boring becuase the training event wasn't planned properly for my unit. We are small and we are whats called an attached unit, so we are often forgot about. But I'll tell you about one mission that we did. Out in the middle of nowhere Washington in a place called Yakima is where we do a lot of our training events. They has set up a little mock village with role players to simulate a town in Iraq. A company was planning to do a raid on this village and we got tasked with setting up security on the outside of town to make sure that people dont come in our out of the town. I was the lead vehicle and lead element for this entire mission becuase I had to push past and set up security on the far side of this town. As we were coming up on this town a snow storm hit. It was litterally out of a movie, the snow was just coming down to the point it was hard to see. As I was moving my vehicle kind of up the side of this little hill so that we could see better I noticed footprints in the snow that looked pretty fresh. These tracks were out of place becuase they were headed up the hillside away from the village. I also noticed a little berm about 50 meters up the hillside and had the thought that there might be someone up there. So I called it up that I was gonna go check it out. I got off with 3 other soldiers and headed up the hill. As we were coming around this hill I heard one of my soldiers start yelling, "Gets your hands up, don't move." At almost the exact same time I was coming around the other side of this berm and saw a sniper laying in the snow. We moved in fast enough that he didn't have a chance to get to his weapon and we captured him. We searched him and I did a little tactical questioning to figure out who he was and what he was doing up on this hill top. When all was said and done for the mission it turned out that the only thing that was on this objective was this one sniper and we captured him. It was pretty awesome becuase we were just supposed to be there for support and ended up taking the mission. I was happy during the whole exercise with my boys and my unit. You never know what to expect when you go to a new place with new people but it turned out alright.

Twitter Experiment

So here is something that I've come to accept about myself, for the most part I really don't like having conversations on the phone. Most of my conversations fall into two categories, either really short, or really long. The short conversations are usually with those people that I see on a regular basis and its short and to the point and I know its going to be like that. But then there are people that I havn't talked to in a while and I know a short conversation just isn't going to do, too much time has passed for a quick, "Hey whats up, gotta go." I just hate going into a conversation like that knowing that I'm going to leave it soon. But here is my dilemma, if I don't have a long time to talk to those people I'm not going to talk to them. And becuase I don't have much free time I want to spend that alone time just not talking to anyone. So either I dont have the time to talk or when I do I don't want to spend it talking to people. And heres why this bothers me. Becuase the people who are actually imporant in my life are the ones that I usually don't talk to for very often. So I feel worse and worse the longer I go without catching up but my dilemma still remains. So what to do about this? I need to find a way to keep in touch that isn't the phone. So here comes Twitter, and this blog.

One of the first things I learned about in college was AIM and Facebook. It was so extremely popular it was unreal, it was how we all communicated with each other. One of my favorite things of all times was the away messages on AIM. For one thing I had a tendency to post every little god damn event that was going on life day. People, especially my parents, really loved it. It let people know what I was up to and it was a way to tell my stories. But, those programs don't really work for my anymore. I don't know, it feels like I'm a little too old for them and I'm not in the same type of community who uses those anymore. But I still think that I can use these as a way to keep the people who I never talk to, but care about, up to date with my life.

My first blog

So I've never really been interseted in blogging or doing anything like it, but heres why I'm doing it. I have just come to accept the fact, that I don't like talking on the phone very much. And anyone who has known me for a long time knows this, especially my family. So what I hope to do is have a place to keep the ones I care about informed about whats going on in my life. I don't know who all is going to read this, but hopefully you enjoy.