Ranger Birthday

Well first lets get the big news out of the way! This past Friday I officially received the news that I have got my official Ranger School date:March 23. After nearly 15 years of perceiving Ranger school as a fictional land where the impossible happen, the world has flipped upside down and now I am finally getting my shot. All told I have a mixture of excitement and understanding heading into the trial. I have listened to so many people talk about Ranger that in the end I finally just want to go and be done with it all! It is really hard living your life with a cloud like that over your head.

The other big news is that tomorrow morning we head out to the field for our culminating event: Leader Forge. A 9 day straight FTX (field training exercise) that will see us operating out of FOB Leader conducting full spectrum operations (fancy army term for constantly doing stuff!) Once that is complete we begin out processing and graduate March 12th. If you want to come down and check out the ceremony you are more than welcome.

And to sum up is a picture/commentary that sums up the past three weeks.

This is FOB leader. A simple 500 meter square clearing with 8 tents that are lined with white insulation foam to keep in the heat. 20 men per tent, you do the math= Home sweet home. This is our platoon preparing to depart for the ruck march.

We spent a full week training for Urban operations. This is a fire-team practicing entering and clearing a room in our "shoot house".

This is the shoot house from the top. Note the concrete blocks that can be exchanged to make different rooms, kind of like a large rat maze. We practiced shooting at close range in tight rooms. Very intense but very important in the current fight.
This is our platoon doing what it does best "sit around and BS while we wait for hours on end". Inge is the guy on the right. A combat vet, he is a big source of common sense, experience, and overall humour.
This is Tim Mussack looking out of the window of the training house that we occupied for five days.My roommate Brian Varns. Part of the IBOLC course requirement is completing a series of footmarches ranging from 4 to 12 miles (with a 60 pound pack and weapon). Varns decided to wear the wrong pair of boots on the 10 mile march and ended up creating massive blisters on the front pads on his feet. He had to be taken out for several days after the medics decided to cut the entire blister off. Not fun.

While most of our time is spent sitting around, we occasionally get to do something really cool. This is yours truly preparing to detonate a claymore mine. What a Job!
The good time with explosives continued as we learned how to prepare C4 (plastic explosive) line charges. Instead of laying ours out, my platoon decided to lump all the explosives together.
The result was a meter deep crater that we were all really proud of!
We also created breaching charges to blow away doors. This is a silhouette charge that uses DET cord to cut a man size hole into a door.

LT Hanft. This is the result of a 12 mile road march complete with full kit. That is all salt residue on his face.

This past weekend was a real treat (no pun intended) as I got to surprise my mom for her birthday by flying out to Texas! It was amazing just to relax, eat good food, and run with the dogs. I only hope the rest of the world could have such an amazing family!