Ten Day War

A broken thumb, an infected spider bite, lots of missions, little sleep, and mud like you wouldn't believe.

That about sums up the Gauntlet. The steak dinner at the end was nice, except that the steak came from mermites (food containers that keep hot food hot ... and date back to Vietnam), but at the dinner we had four less officers than we started with, weeded out for retraining or reassignment based on leadership ability or other traits.

Having never drove a tank, I can give some hearsay advice as to what to avoid: When in the driver's hatch, beware puddles, unless you like being submerged in mud.

Trees you can knock over.

Mounds of mud you can't.

Don't get stuck, especially at a steep cant.

It's easier to crack a sprocket than you think.

It's true: throwing track sucks.

And whatever they say, riding back to the pad in an M88 (a recovery vehicle) is NOT a smooth ride, especially when it's towing your tank behind it.

Memory Lapse

I'm in the hospital with a broken thumb that's too minor to fix and a spider bite that's infected, two souvenirs from our culminating Gauntlet, a 10-day FTX on tanks out in the woods.

And I'm waiting in the lobby with another Lieutenant, who came with me to get what he thought to be a bite checked out (when in fact it's a rash).

He asks me questions as if I've never met him before: What class I'm in, what part of the course I'm completing, where I'm from.

Aside the fact that we're in the same class and came in the same truck from the same location, he spent a few weeks in my Platoon. He seems surprised when I tell him I'm in his class, doing exactly what he's doing.

That cleared up, he begins talking about how he wants to go and be a leader of men in combat, how he wants to go from national guard duty to active duty the first chance he gets, and how he loves what he's doing.

I just hope his memory improves.

Going Urban

"The man who wins in hand to hand combat is the man whose friend shows up first with the gun."

All logic aside, that's what the man on the Army Combatives video tells us.

And we beat the crap out of each other, first learning chokes, then grappling (with and without a tazer-knife), and finally full on battle royale that is so violent we're padded up like epileptic five-year-olds - with pugil sticks.

Next comes the paintball exercises at a MOUT site. Clearing rooms, setting up cordons, and getting the hell out of dodge while throwing in vehicle inspections and IED drills at our FOB.

And the culmination of this part of training is our Field Training Exercise (FTX), where we train at Zussman, a MOUT site frequented by NAVY SEALs and Green Berets. We set up in the "Embassy" and run missions for three days straight, with an Abrams and a Bradley for support.

But I can't stop wondering what winning in hand to hand combat has to do with who shows up first.