Training Day, or Month, or Year...

I never guessed that I’d come to Iraq to train. Seriously, I thought I could do these things from Fort Hood.

Tomorrow is a “room clearing” range. Which is just a huge burden, because it means that besides not being able to do our own training on equipment we’re not experts with, we also have to go learn something that we’ll only do in an emergency. One such as this…

SGT Someone – “Oh shit! Everyone is dead! But we still need to run into this house and see is there is someone worth killing!”
MFT Leader – “Hold up! This sounds like a job for an MFT! MFT, stack up!”
SGT Someone – “What’s an MFT?”
MFT Leader – “Let’s go! Roar!”
MFT Drones – “Hurray…Another room to clear…”
Then of course the MFT scurries into the room, finding it laden with vicious scorpions that of course shoot AK-47s at our faces. Thank god we had that training!

Fuck these morons who plan our futile ‘training’. We sit in trucks and act like a pointless burden on the infantry we roll out with. [I just polled Thin Mints; he believes (as do I) that our intent for training is to figure out how to impress the infantry. Mr. Pringles, who might be one of the dumbest individuals I’ve ever met, wants them to think that he hasn’t lost his infantry edge (?) so he tries not to look retarded to them. To do this he volunteers us for pointless shit. Sadly, this makes him look only more challenged and aggravates all of us.]

Team Awesome had another mission today, it went like this:

Mission starts in a group of MRAPs, at last. We’ve shed the burden of the Stryker’s and moved into vehicles more suited for my leg size (large). The infantry (mortar, if we must be specific) allows us to sit in the back of our vehicle, while they drive, command, gun, and fill the empty slots. Kind of like showing up to a NASCAR event as a driver, and finding out that you’ll only be allowed to hold the pneumatic wrench used to take off the tires when the guy borrowing your car decides to stop. Anyway.

So we go out with them, and the bitching begins. First they claim our radios didn’t work. True, they didn’t, but why should they? If you’re going to borrow my car I’m not going to set the stations for you.
Second, we didn’t have enough headsets in the back. True, we didn’t. Where they went I’ll never know, but you only need 3 to be efficient, and we had 4. Take that, money math!
Third, we didn’t provide ammunition to the gunner. We did however, provide him a gun. That part I didn’t understand, Mr. Pringles insisted on bringing our own machine gun so that in case the turret gunner forgot his, we would be okay. But why bring the kitchen and not the food?
Fourth, our map didn’t have their routes overlaid onto it. Boohoo. So what. I can read a map, so I don’t care if the path is chalked out for me, I’ll figure it out.

We get to our mission destination, another ambush, and guess what we did? We sat and waited for a few hours. Then we left. No captures, no hits, nothing. Another failed ambush if you will. Business, as, usual. We sat in a truck and acted like pointless burdens.

But it’s all good, because tomorrow we get to go learn how to be more infantry. Mr. Pringles might believe they’ll suddenly say, “Golly! Those MFT cats are super swell, lets just allow them to run off on their own, they clearly don’t need us,” but I’m sure they’ll say, just as we will, “Why are they out here?”

Fuck being better at ambushes, let’s learn how to clear rooms again.