Finished airborne school. Learning to jump out a plane deep in enemy territory and cause lots of mischief in the enemy's rear is pretty freaking cool, even if it's unlikely we will do it again. We stood around a lot and did some pretty stupid stuff but I had a great time in the end. Jumping was of course the coolest thing. I was the chalk leader for the first chalk to jump the new T-11 parachute. I also got to jump first one time which was awesome....read more

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After Ranger school I did mechanized leader's course. I was assigned to a mech unit but found out last week I am being diverted to a stryker unit, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck Germany. Mechanized means it sports the M2 Bradley armored personnel carrier. At Mech Leader's we gained some basic familiarization with it. We learned basic maintenance, how to assemble and disassemble the 25 mm main gun, some basic tactics and gunnery. The coolest thing we did was...read more

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I went to the Ranger memorial today and I could really feel it. It was my first time going there. When I walked up to it my mind went still. I looked at the ranger creed engraved in the solid granite and the names of the men who died and distinguished themselves as Rangers. Energy washed over my body and I could feel a deeper part of myself. I could feel the energy, the strength of all Rangers past present and future, supporting me, giving me the confidence and energy I need to bear the...read more

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I've had a lot of time to reflect on ranger school lately. I certainly didn't appreciate the full value of the experience while I was in it which is very understandable--while you are there all you want to do is get out of there. Getting the tab is important for career reasons because it's considered very important in the infantry. People judge you for it. That's not the important part though. There are some great people that don't have the tab and some terrible...read more

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Graduated Ranger school last week! It sucked, but it taught me more about being a soldier than any army school could have. It's definitely the hardest thing I have done yet, and it helped prepare me for the even harder things that lie ahead in Afghanistan. I learned a lot about how I react in stressful circumstances and how to lead in those environments. Mountain phase was definitely the hardest. We only got 1-2 hours of sleep a night in mountains. In the...read more

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Ranger school starts tomorrow! I am giddy with anticipation. Definitely nervous, but it gives me so much energy and excitement. It's going to suck more than anything ever has for me but you learn a lot about yourself, accomplish something great, and you just get an experience that is so different than anything we are used to in our normal lives. Plus, some civilians will think you are a ninja who can jump 40 feet in the air and kill a man every way possible, which is only...read more

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I have now graduated Infantry BOLC. We got out of the field and snapped this picture: Then we spend the next few days cleaning weapons: Overall IBOLC ended up being a good course. The physical fitness we did was not great but I learned a lot of technical things and got a better understanding of leadership from it. My peers were for the most part solid. There were some people that got weeded out, mostly for not having the basic toughness you need. Pretty...read more

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The last few weeks we have mostly been in the field so I have not had a whole lot of time to make posts unfortunately. I've enjoyed a lot of the training we have done. We did one week of Situation Training Exersizes (STX, pronounce sticks, the army is the best organization ever at coming up with acronyms) lanes. Those were some great training, especially if you were in leadership positions. You are given a mission and then you run it using blanks. You get evaluated...read more

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So far we have been training mostly on individual soldier skills and it's been a nice life. We did a Land Navigation course a few weeks ago which was one of the hardest I've done. You had to cover a long distances in a short time and if I didn't run the course I would have been a no go. There was also a lot of thick brush which also made it difficult. Since we have done a lot of shooting. We started off just shooting M4s. I got good training shooting moving targets...read more

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I have started IBOLC and like it so far. The first week was inprocessing. That means going to some place, waiting a while in line, and then getting a shot or filling out a piece of paper. It's easy to get frustrated with those kinds of things, but I have started always carrying a book on me so I don't mind it at all. We took a PT test too and got back up to my usual standards from before I was injured despite my run time not being back where it used to be. We have...read more

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