Man vs. Wild

For those of you who haven't seen the show Man vs. Wild on the discovery, you should tune in some time. This past week I used a survival technique from the show out on the melted tundra of the Alaskan summer. While going along my merry way conducting land navigation, I found myself walking in some pretty thick mud. In fact, after about 3 steps I was in over my waist and could not get out. Fortunately, having seen an episod of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls intentionally jumps in quick sand and then demonstrates how to get out, I remembered his technique and used a nearby M4 to liberate myself. While my mom's saying "Too much tv rots out your brain" is undoubtedly true, sometimes a little tv can actually help you survive, or at least avoid the shame and humiliation of having a subordinate pull you out of the mud.

Training Training Training

This past week we spent 12 hours a day training on basic infantryman tasks. Each day we rotated through lanes covering tasks such as weapons from the M9 pistol to the .50 cal machine gun, calling for indirect fire, using claymore mines, basic first aid, camouflage, and individual movement techniques. These tasks are the bread and butter of the infantry and we can't accomplish our mission if the guys don't master them. Tomorrow we start back after a 1 day weekend, but we have to take full advantage of the long hours of daylight and warm weather to get this stuff done before the cold and darkness set it. Also, it's exciting to see soldiers becoming experts at their job so that they can form lethal squads which I can then train as a platoon, which is the best part of my job.

"Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office seeking."
-Rutherford B. Hayes

Clemson Connection and the Cadet

Well, things have been quite busy this past week. The unit got back from block leave and had to jump right into training, which is great but tiring. Platoon leaders end up working some pretty long hours, but that's why they pay us the big bucks. Any way, one of my ROTC instructors from Clemson is now our battalion executive officer so he'll feel good about his instructing abilities after he sees me platoon-leading... The West Point cadet made it through his first week here with only minimal shell shock- he's a sharp guy and could probably run the platoon without me. Maybe he'll get a shot. Unfortunately work doesn't generate awesome pictures so we'll just have to wait until the next great adventure to bask in the glow of my photographic prowess.

"First class training is the best form of welfare for the troops…The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle."
-Irwin Rommel

Independence Day Quotes

Declaration of Independence

"Among the most inestimable of our blessings, also, is that of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support."

-Thomas Jefferson

"It may be the will of Heaven that America will suffer calamities still more wasting, and distress yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in States as well as individuals...But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe."

-John Adams

"What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?"
-James Madison

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."
-Alexis de Tocqueville

"Americans have worked at war since the seventeenth century, to protect themselves from the Indians, to win their independence from George III, to make themselves one country, to win the whole of their continent, to extinguish autocracy and dictatorship in the world outside. It is not their favoured form of work. Left to themselves, Americans build, cultivate, bridge, dam, canalise, invent, teach, manufacture, think, write, lock themselves in struggle with the eternal challenges that man has chosen to confront, and with an intensity not known elsewhere on the globe. Bidden to make war their work, Americans shoulder the burden with intimidating purpose. There is, I have said, an American mystery, the nature of which I only begin to perceive. If I were obliged to define it, I would say it is the ethos of work as an end in itself. War is a form of work and America makes war, however reluctantly, however unwillingly, in a particularly workmanlike way. I do not love war; but I love America."

-Sir John Keegan

Bonus Pictures

Usually it takes a while to upload pictures, but today the Alaskanet is moving pretty good, so here's some more pics from the trip up north.

A good method of waking people up is to take their tent down while they're sleeping. Hopefully whoever you do this to can take a joke.

The double rainbow.

This is the Arctic Ocean, which you have all now experienced vicariously through me. Note the ice that begins a couple hundred meters out.

The clouds are making it dark here, but the sun is higher up than it appears.

"No man in the nation desires peace more than I. But I prefer the troubled ocean of war, demanded by the honor and independence of the country, with all its calamities, and desolations, to the tranquil, putrescent pool of ignominous peace."
-Henry Clay

Local Pics

Here's a few pics of some of the areas surrounding Fairbanks. Although Fairbanks is a pretty drab town, there are nice areas all around, although the mountains aren't quite as "dramastic" (word courtesy of K-dizzle, CU class of never) as the Brooks or Alaska Ranges.
Army wise things are pretty slow right now, but the training ramps up alot in the coming weeks, which is a good thing because it keeps the guys out of trouble plus it's practice for what we all signed up to do: close with and destroy the enemy.

"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."

-Thomas Jefferson