Another week finished (albeit it a short one), and time has seemingly slowed to such a crawl that I feel a month older. Mornings are much earlier here, days seem to last much longer, and similar to C'Ville we continue to be inundated with information. Add to the mix, the responsibility of being the Class Leader, a position I was excited to have, and a stepped up PT regime, and sitting here Saturday morning, I feel spent. Looking back on the last four days, I feel as though I should have considered it an easy week, and compared to the coming week, it very well may end up being the easiest week, but I'll save that final judgment for the next blog entry.

So, we returned to our barracks Monday evening (the rule was before midnight, otherwise you were in violation of your pass privileges, and as Class Leader I was the "enforcer" of that rule) and prepared for our early morning 0530 PT workout. It was going to be the first test of the classes understanding of my "rules" enumerated at the end of Thursday's classes. I showed up early, to find that the vast majority of the class already out in formation, and those who weren't, were certainly there by the soft deadline. A GREAT START. We stretched out, and before our run (projected 4-miles, in formation) we had to doing the morning revelry, which requires the entire company to "about face" and salute while a cannon ignites and music plays (though you can't hear either, you just know its happening at 0600). I put the company at attention, had them "about face" and "present arms" (salute). After the prescribed 15-20 second salute, it came time for me to command "order arms," but at that moment I could not, for the life of me, remember the preparatory command "order." I sat there for a moment wondering WTF I was going to do, looking back and forth for a close cadre member, and seeing none in whispering distance yelled with as much conviction as I could "replace arms." Not such a good start to the morning. I'm probably diming myself out right now, because only one Cadre member called me on it, and the class "ordered" their arms, but I was slightly embarrassed.

Monday mornings run was pretty slow for most of us, but we did lose about 15 people out of formation over the course of the 3.7 miles, and once we had full accountability the class had two minutes of push-ups and two minutes of sit-ups before being released for chow. After breakfast we were released until 1300 because most of the class had all kinds of issues to finalize from Eye Protection to Finance, and the Cadre just wanted it over with, and this was going to be our last chance.

After doing what I needed, I returned to the barracks to find a few classmates a little perturbed, as they had spent a good 30 minutes cleaning the barracks, while a group of other classmates simply watched. I was then notified that the state of the latrines were "unacceptable" by our newly promoted 1SG, and that we would have some special "NCO Time" after out 1300 formation. And that's exactly what happened, we (all the men, because the women had taken care of their latrines) got smoked for a good 20 minutes (reminiscent of Zero Day, but not nearly as bad). After that little extra PT session, we went to the adjoining field for combatives training, which was AWESOME... I got teamed up with Mr. America that Iowa super star wrestling coach, and we went at it, and by the end we were smoked.

After combatives, the entire class went to the Arms room, and finally withdrew out weapons (M16s) that we would start training with later in the week, which is a total tease because we wont get to fire them until the week after this one coming up. Once that was finished, and we got back to the barracks, I was done and asleep by 2000, totally exhausted.

Tuesday morning was a relatively late start at 0600, and after an emergency move of most of the women from their first floor suites to the third floor seventh circle of hell, we were off to the Ranger Obstacle Course for a good 4 hour smoke session of awesome obstacles. We arrived, and immediately set out on 14 of the the easier obstacles, with a few difficult ones mixed in, like the "Weaver," the "Reverse Ladder" and the "Belly Buster." As the Class Leader I got to roam around and join any group I wanted to, so I was having an awesome time repeating many of the obstacles. At the end, some of the higher harder obstacles were opened up to us, like the "Tough One," and "Stairway to Heaven," but by the time I finished the Tough One, I was done and just watched as everyone else went through some of the others.

Tuesday afternoon, we had a "Commo Class" where we learned how to construct a radio and transmit a message. Once we were finished with that, it was time for us to hit the DFAC for dinner, before heading to a Social put on by the Ft. Benning SJAs office. It was fun, the JAG office and its officers were great to talk to, but I was so beat up from the mornings events and the combatives the day before that I was home and in bed by 1930.

Thursday morning PT was a leg smoke session straight from the Special Forces modified Cross-Fit schedule. I can't share the name of the actual workout because its name is too vulgar, but suffice to say, it left most of us hobbling the rest of the day. After breakfast, we returned to the weapons depot and withdrew our M16s again and returned to our classroom for a full day of power point and demonstration on how to maintain our M16s, and in the afternoon we learned how to, and actually did zero a "bore light" with our M16. It was a pretty relaxed day to be honest, but most of our legs were so stiff from the mornings workout, you would have thought we were on our feet all day.

Yesterday (Friday) morning was our first ruck march. Only 4-miles, with 20% of your bodyweight in the Mollie Pack. For me, that comes to 44 lbs, which isn't so bad. However, these Mollie Packs are different from the ALICE packs we had in Charlottesville, and I spent quite a bit of time reconfiguring the weight displacement, to try and minimize the strain on my shoulders and place most of it on my hips. Well, I failed, and the 4-miles felts like an eternity as almost ALL of the weight was on my shoulders, and this morning I am really feeling it in my neck and upper back. All-in-all, the class did very well on the march, I was definitely impressed, as I don't think we had anyone fall out, and we maintained a pace almost 2 minutes faster (per mile) then was originally intended.

Once finished with the march, we again withdrew our weapons and headed back tot he classroom for more instruction on firing positions and zeroing. After the lectures were finished, half of the class continued to zero their weapons and the CCO (Close Combat Optics) while the other half of the class moved outside and practiced their firing positions and how to clear firing malfunctions ("the stove pipe" and "double fire," etc...)

Once we were finished with that, we had my last formation as Class Leader, at which point I handed the reigns over to Lady Lucht, who took charge and will do an awesome job. At that point, I gathered my stuff and headed to my uncles for a much need weekend of nothingness.

Until next weekend, hope you enjoyed. We have LAND NAVIGATION starting Monday, so there should be some interesting stories coming out of that... Keep reading, and if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask...