Bobby Luyties - Army Strong Stories

Fort Leonard Wood Fury!

Bobby Luyties — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:41:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Hey everyone, Over the last few months things have gone awesome at Fort Lost in the Woods. First and foremost I got promoted to Captain after the seemingly forever wait (not really that long though). I was also informed that I have been appointed the Officer in Charge of Fort Leonard Woods Tax Center. This involves being in charge of around 15 soldiers and 7 civilians. By in charge I mean, selecting the soldiers that are provided to me, interviewing and hiring civilians, making sure it is...read more

JAG Birthday Week

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:18:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This last week at FLW was a little more exciting in terms of client numbers and experiences. Two of our four attorneys were out on Monday and Tuesday because of the commanders cup gof tournament so my co-worker and I split the clients which was A LOT more fun. Having one after the other in clients makes the day fly by. Another thing that happened on Monday was when I got to work our new SJA (Staff Judge Advocate) asked to see me and let me know that I was going to give a...read more

DCC-final week

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:57:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This week (week 5 DCC) was patrolling. It started off with us going into the classrooms to learn the basics of patrolling via power point presentation. We learned were certain people stand in movement formations and why those weapons go in those locations. How large fire teams are. 3 different movement formations and how to cross roads and what not. The next 2 days we went out in the woods and practiced this over and over using blanks and a blank adapter. Blanks...read more

DCC-range week

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:49:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Sorry for the hiatus in writing, but things sped up around here and now I’m writing from Fort Leonard Wood and my new duty station. Last time I left off I foreshadowed range week which on the surface sounds like a ton of fun. After checking out our weapons we went out to a 25 meter range to zero in our weapons. Zeroing consists of getting a tight shot group (5 shots in a 4 inch diameter) at 25 meters in the prone position. Once you do that, we adjust the...read more

DCC working for the weekend

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:46:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Everybody is working for the weekend literally this week as we have land navigation and if we can’t get 5 out of 8 points, we don’t get our Memorial Day passes for a 4 day weekend. The way land navigation works for those who are unfamiliar with it is that we get a map of the area (large maps) that have grid lines which make squares of 1000 meters by 1000 meters. The map has contour lines, terrain, roads, and dirt roads on it. You get an 8 digit coordinate which...read more

DCC-Week 2

Bobby Luyties — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:30:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This time I get to write from CQ duty on Monday morning at 0005 hours (shift ends at 0200). That’s just one of the many perks we have in open bay barracks. Over the last week we had a lot of fun events happen. Monday we had our normal lights on at 0455 in the morning for PT. We did a mixture of circuits with things like kettle ball lifts, push-ups, sit-ups, flutter kicks, and then ended with a 1stsquad vs. 2ndsquad relay race and tug of war which gets the...read more

DCC-Lets get it started

Bobby Luyties — Wed, 19 May 2010 04:14:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
So it’s so long Charlottesville and hello Fort Benning GA and DCC. The last few days in C-ville were a lot of fun with graduation (and with that comes graduation rehearsal repeatedly) and the Gauntlet. The Gauntlet was the last major event for us which started off at 0600 with an o-hill relay race (each leg doing approximately 1 mile there and then joining up with the rest of the group on their way back). At each leg you have to answer a law of war question before the...read more

JAOBC winding up

Bobby Luyties — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:50:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Sorry for the delay in getting another post up over the past few weeks, we have been doing a lot of running around and enjoying the city a little more. Over the past 2.5 weeks, Air Assault did an 8 mile timed ruck, had the 6 mile elimination ruck, went on a Saturday to Fort Pickett and did a confidence course, and most recently did a zero day number 2 as it was described to me. Airborne had the luxury of joining in with us for the zero day 2 (aka “getting smoked”) just one day after...read more

trial week

Bobby Luyties — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:04:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This week was another change of pace with much less power point and more trial work. We did our contested trials this week. We were given co-counsels and assigned roles and witnesses for 3 different trials (only counsel for one). Since we had gone first for the guilty pleas last week, we got to go last for the trials this week. Some of the 181st went overboard with preparation and were meeting the week before with witnesses and worked all weekend. As some of the CPT’s I saw suggested,...read more

The Big Game

Bobby Luyties — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:39:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Last week was a huge change of pace for everyone but refreshing at the same time. After doing a normal group 4 workout in the morning (I believe it was a combination of 50 yards sprints, pull ups, berpies (those are dropping and doing a pushup and then jumping up from that position to repeat it), lunges and push-ups) we had our criminal law exam. Unlike the first one, this one was more difficult. I believe a number of students got below 77 and that delayed getting our grades...read more

Hazed and Confused

Bobby Luyties — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 06:18:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This week consisted of a lot more school work, working out, and events in general. Although I cant complain about getting paid to go to school (actually I probably can), I was never warned that we had homework or school work so it wasnt a pleasant surprise. Our trial notebook was due this week on Friday and worht 50% of our grade. Although it was estimated to take between 10-15 hours to do, I think in reality it took around 4 at the most. Now onto the physical part. Its...read more

The Blues, APFT, and rain

Bobby Luyties — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:56:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
This past week has seen a lot more classroom with all the focus now on Criminal law. We are breezing our way through the UCMJ and the other 8 books we've been assigned and there is A LOT of lecture. We've been assigned our trial memo which is supposedly going to take 10-15 hours to complete, but having done one before, and this one only being 3 pages long, I would say more like 2-3 hours (although it does count for 50% of our criminal law grade). We started our...read more

Week in review

Bobby Luyties — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:50:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
So this last week has seen a lot of different things happen at JAOBC. We had 2 short papers, 3 seminar classes (get a practice problem and answer specific questions or point out errors in it), and our first exam. Although it sounds like a lot of academia, it really wasn't to bad as we have good instructors, reference materials, and they don't hide the ball on the exams (they tell us what we need to focus on). Unlike lawschool, our exams were graded and returned to us within 2...read more

Zer0 day

Bobby Luyties — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:23:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
Alright everyone, so zero day has come and gone and it was a ton of fun. Like I said previously, we were outside at 0435 in the morning in our ACU's and boots. When the cadre showed at 0450, we started a run that was probably about 3/4 of a mile or so to a parking garage area. Before the run was over, we had one person drop. Once there, we lined up and first sergeant pointed out that there was hot chocolate and donuts for anyone who wanted to quit (and that they wouldnt...read more

Twas the night before zer0 day

Bobby Luyties — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:20:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
We are quickly proceeding through the first week in Charlottesville. Monday was a little inprocessing and meeting some staff in our big classroom with all the 181st getting assigned seats. Im in the back corner of the room right next to two cool guys who like to laugh and even though it will definetely be DPP (death by power point as Ive been told), its been great so far and very informative. Essentially our schedule is this: 0550 we have PT til 7. We have divided...read more

Charlottesville

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:15:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
The last few days at Fort Lee went by really fast. We did a mock PT test (2 minutes of push-ups, sit-ups, and 2 mile run). We had to do this because the confidence course that was scheduled had to be cancelled due to weather (this is the obstacle course that we always see during basic training on television shows). I was impressed at how good some of the athletes were (again, army athletes not power athletes :) ). We had people getting sub 12 minute two miles (only 3 or 4...read more

GAS

Bobby Luyties — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:01:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
16 Feb. 2010—The one thing I learned today is that breathing in gas really gels the unit together. Today was the gas chamber so after PT at 5:50 we had to show up at 9 to go to the chambers. Once there, we had 4 different 45 minute stations about detecting chemical/ biological/ radioactive/ or nuclear agents, maintaining and cleaning your mask, decontaminating yourself and gear, and how to properly wear your protective gear. After that, we got to enjoy our MRE’s and sit in the sun...read more

playing soldier

Bobby Luyties — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:36:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
13-15 Feb. These days have been a lot more fun than some of the others. Over the past few days we got to play soldier a lot more and were outside most of the time (being that it hasn’t gotten above 40 degrees and 2 of the 3 days were rainy/snowy, could have been better weather). For those of you who want the best job ever, go into the July or September classes if you get the chance. On the 13th we went to the EST 2000 which is basically a high tech 9mm simulator. Although there was a lot of...read more

hurry up and wait

Bobby Luyties — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:39:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
8-11 Feb. Most of these days start around 5am (some I wake up in the 4am which being from Texas means 3 am until my body gets adjusted to the time). This year has been pretty bad with winter weather and its snowed at least twice since we’ve been here and is usually in the 20s when we go out for PT in the morning. 1st Sgt and the Chief divided us into two platoons and assigned student leadership (chain of command consisting of all prior enlisted) to help everyone with the drastic learning curve....read more

Lets get it started

Bobby Luyties — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:56:00 GMT

By: Bobby Luyties
7 Feb 2010- Today is our first report day!!! Already we get to see what military life is like with the posted 25 mph speed limit (warning, if you exceed by 1 mph you will get a ticket). I arrived at Fort Lee about an hour early which was lucky because our destination had been changed to another parking lot. Just a forewarning, you may here me complain about the weather or waiting around a lot, but everything here is awesome and this is truly the best job ever. We arrived in our PT (physical...read more