Back from NTC

gekko · 06-18-2004, 02:50 AM

Well I'd like to begin saying the Army is a whole different breed. We get to the "field" and they have a PX, barber, laundry mat, BBQ rib place, Thai Garden, hot dog stand, coffee shop, internet center, phone center, hot chow, and showers. They even had ice water, in 110+ degrees! Ice water!!! In fact, their water gets replaced hourly. We're lucky to have water, and we never have ice. For chow, MREs. We pray to have some sort of shelter to create shade, and maybe a outhouse or two so we don't have to dig holes. They never carried their rifles with them for some reason. The guards were talking on cell phones all post, and they talked to senior ranks like they are back on the block. A completely different world for us.

Anyway, we started the training. There were 3 companies there from our battalion, and the training was 6 days long. We would do missions for 2, then post as a quick reaction force for 2, and then do firm base security for 2 as the other companies went out. Well instead of the Bn CO sending out the "inferior" companies, we did 2-3 missions a day, for 6 days. The other companies only left the firm base twice. These aren't short missions either, we're talking leave at 0500, come back at 1930. Lucky to pull off 1 meal a day, and we didn't get much sleep because once you go to sleep, people need to stay up to post security. We got ****ed.

We were the first Marine unit to ever play the BLUFOR (good guys, basically). We were rated above excellent, best they've ever seen. Surprised our company didn't have mutiny because we did so many missions so quickly and had nothing to eat but MREs.

This whole thing was stupid. Worst training we've ever done. We weren't even allowed to touch anyone, to search them or anything. This coming only a couple weeks after we trained ourselves for these types of missions full contact. We play rough, the Army doesn't. They hyped a lot of stuff, real casualty evacuations, massive CS gas attacks, real Iraqi/US citizens who won't speak any English. All stupid. Gas attacks never came, Hajis spoke Kurdish, and the casualties were just a waste of time, because the stupid situations we were put in we weren't allowed to do what we wanted. Basically all we did was break the vehicles that we need to send to Iraq in 2 weeks.

Whatever, it's over, we're home. But oh wait, a bunch of people had their rooms broken into. Oh yes, we have a 24 hour post who gets out and roams the then empty barracks. Well some guys manages to break into a bunch of rooms, and beat at our lockers with ****ing crowbars without anyone noticing! Oh yes, the locker with my computer, Xbox, GC, and everything else amounting to almost $10,000 worth of ****, I come back to find the handle had been hacked at and attempted to be pried off, and the lock had been changed. Found out it happened to a bunch of people, and people from our unit in another building. Thank god they didn't take anything, but makes you lose any sense that your **** is secure, being behind 2 locks that no one should have the keys to!

**** this.

Joeiss · 06-19-2004, 01:22 PM

Hey man. I see things aren't going too hot for you. Whatever though, just hang in there. Is theft a common thing in the Marines? I just assumed everybody would be all cool with eachother... Any info on who might have done that? Its just disrespectful.

And that kind of sucks ow they hyped it up and then it turned out to be crap. I am not really sure what you were doing, but was it basically like war game? Do you use real ammo and just aim low or something? Lol... I'm totally clueless about this, so please fill me in if you have the time.

And if somebody stole your videogames and systems... I think we would be hearing about some murders in the news, hahaha.

gekko · 06-19-2004, 02:03 PM

No, we use MILES gear. A laser is mounted to the barrel of your weapon, and you fire blanks. The laser detects the vibration of the barrel when the blank is fired, and sends out a laser beam. Then everyone wears sensors on their body and head that detect the lasers and kill you. Once you're hit, you can still physically fire your weapon, but the laser beam isn't sent out, so you can't kill anybody if you try to keep going.

We actually have MILES systems for our vehicles as well. Hell, we even have MILES anti-armor rockets (AT-4, and SMAW), and the OPFOR even had MILES RPG-7s.

Sounds cool, works like ****.