Well,

I'm back. JRTC was a helluva lot better than I thought it would be. It
was a month long, and though at times more boring then anything I have ever
experienced in my entire life, I still got to get attacked by an actual
Hind-D helicopter, Soviet BRDM's, suicide squads with backpacks stuffed with
chemical weapons and explosives that charge your tactical operations centers
(TOC) then detonate themselves.

Basically it went like this.

As soon as we got there we started preping for a Light/Heavy Combined Arms
Deliberate Attack Live Fire Exercise. Basically what this came down to was
we had 155mm and 105mm howitzers, and 81mm mortars with more ammo then you
will ever see in an excercise. Kiowas, M1A2's Bradley's, Tow vehicles,
engineer platoon, and a dismounted platoon. Our job was to assault through
a bunker complex to set up a support by fire (SBF) posn in order to
facilitate the main efforts assault on the Battalion's (Bn) main obj.

Basically what this boils down to is smash a path from start point to bunker
complex, smash bunker complex, continue smashing path to SBF posn. Once at
SBF posn, smash (put hellacious ammounts of steel on) the Bn main obj for
15+ minutes to allow a notional Bn Main effort to get up to the obj,
unmolested.

Needles to say it was awesome, I will never see that many assets together,
using that much steel unless some bad guy screws up really really bad
somewhere and we go do it for real, after experiencing this there is no way
in high holy hell I would ever want to be anywhere near the recieving end of
this hellstorm. It was my first act out of OBC with my Company and the Live
Fire O/C thought I did well enough to warrant recieving a Division coin,

As far as the actual JRTC rotation went it was pretty boring compared to the
Live Fire. It was four phases, 1. Entry into the Box (seizing an
airfield/foothold) 2.Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) 3. Attack on
Shugart-Gordon (MOUT stuff) 4. Defense.

The only exciting stuff came in phases 1 and 4 when we actually had heavy
contact. 4 was especially cool cause me and my guys were personally
responsible so much death and pain to enemy dismounts attempting to breach
our obstacles in order to pass their main effort of 60 armored vehicles (30
T-62's, and 30 BRDMs) that the little bastards backed up reconsolidated and
tried again (by this time our plt defending the obstacle was wiped out,)
But guess what, my Forward Observer wasn't with the Platoon but was in an OP
closer to the obstacle, the bad guys smashed the platoons posn and thought
it was safe to try again on breachin the obstacle. We called a mass repeat
on the obstacle (60 rounds of 155, 105 and 81mm) needless to say they got
the hell outta there in a hurry but not without leaving a couple of smoking
vehicle hulls and a mound dead dismounts. As a result of destroying their
breach effort we turned them back into the Brigades main Engagement Area
where the Armor guys slugged it out with them for awhile.

Anyways, JRTC was fun, if you like ur people, any deployment will be fun,
Louisianna was nice, a welcome change to this Island stuff, plus the
terrain looked just like home. In fact it was 1 and a half hours away from
your deer camp Bill, I was tempted to just pack it up and take off walkin
and just wait fer opening day.

Well this concludes my post JRTC brief, any quetions?
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