First, I'll discuss phasing up to Phase 3, and what’s happening next week. Next week, on July 9th, the lower class shows up. This means that, per the OTSMAN (the OTS manual that essentially governs our lives) we (the OT wing; that is all of class 13-07) can request Phase 3 status no earlier than 7 days prior to the lower class arrival. The trainee wing staff submitted that memo last week, and it was approved effective today. This means that we are now Phase 3. This gets us off-base privileges. We are all looking forward to getting off base this weekend for a few meals, and some beers (in accordance with the guidance published in the OTSMAN, of course) at some point over the 4th of July weekend. Unfortunately, we were denied temporary Phase 4 status for the holiday weekend, which would have let us leave the local area, and would also let us wear civilian clothes while off base.
Phase 3 also gets us one other nice privilege. No more tight meals. Ever. This means we can eat in significantly more comfort in the dining facility. We still have to follow dining facility protocol for lining up, getting food, sitting down, and getting up, but at least the actual act of eating can be relaxed and we can converse quietly among our table.
I mentioned that the lower class shows up next week. This means that we will be where class 13-06 was when we showed up. I know that sounds obvious, but it really isn't because our transformation has been gradual over the last 5 weeks, so I guess I didn't really notice it. Stated differently, we are almost equivalent to the point where our upper class was when we met them....and they seemed pretty sharp. We had a dry run for their TD-0 (the day they show up). It went pretty smoothly. My job is to move them quickly through the dorms, to their rooms, and get them to drop their stuff off and get back on the wall as quickly as possible. This will involve things like yelling at the group (we are not supposed to yell at individuals, however we are expected to correct them) Once they finish putting things in their dorms, they get turned over to the MTI's (military training instructors; or drill sergeants). That’s when things will get real for them. They will be yelled at by people who are extremely good at making themselves scary. The astute trainees will realize that this is all part of the game, and the yelling isn't personal and to go along with it, act professionally, and make corrections. The trainees that don't realize that this is a game might have a tough time adjusting at first. Again, the upper class doesn't really do any yelling (don't confuse talking loudly with yelling). It's our job to be mentors and set the lower class up for success for when they face certain stressful evaluations that will come their way in the first part of their training.
Anyway, this week we have started the combatives program. We drill and fight for 2 hours each morning, from 5 to 7. This means that I am sore and bruised today. So far all of the sparring has been from the ground (no standing), no striking, no small joint manipulations (fingers, etc), no slamming, etc. We do submissions, however, and those can hurt. Being a former wrestler definately helps when we go live. My go to move in high school, the roll, works real well here because opponents often put their weight high my body (i.e. make their CG high) when I'm in the down position, making them easy to roll.
Last week we did BELPS and M9 qualifications. BELPS stands for Baseline Expeditionary Leadership Problems. In this exercise, which is a graded measure, we go to a field and are given a mission to accomplish that requires us to use land navigation skills and leadership skills. Each flight member has to be a leader once, and is graded on their performance. It was exciting because not all the rules were told to the participants, so something might get you killed that you didn't know about. When I was leader, I instructed the team to move with a low profile. One kid stood up, and he was incapacitated. I then had to drag him to the next waypoint. At this wayoint, our mission was to repair a radio receiver (i.e. reconnect some wires on an old DVD player). Also unbeknownst to us was that if anyone touched the red wire, they would be incapacitated. The two guys I assigned to repair the equipment both did this and were incapacitated. Now we had three people out of our original 8 that had to be carried. Anyway, I wont go into too much more detail, but the exercise put emphasis on leadership, and not really mission completion (which is only worth 1 point out of 28), so I still did pretty well.
We also did M9 qualifications. For those not familiar, the M9 is the standard military sidearm. I qualified, but missed expert by 4 shots to the body. I got the requisite number of head shots for expert, and should have stopped aiming for the head when I knew I had met that requirement. I'll go for expert when I requalify.
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