Tornado Week In Funtown

This has been a heck of a week here in Funtown. The week started out pretty good, the weather was in the 80’s with a nice breeze so, it wasn’t that bad at all. We went to the M240 Machine Gun Range during the day and during the night. It was actually fun and I guess I found the one weapon system that I am good at.




Click here if you cannot see the video above.

By Tuesday—when we had to do the 50 cal range—it was already getting cloudy and miserable. The rest of the week was like living with a person with multiple personality disorder; fine now and completely different a few moments later. We had some boring classes from Wednesday through Friday that confirmed my assumptions about this to be wasted time. We are still not sure when we are going to fly out and how much time we are going to be able to spend with our families. I cannot even begin to tell you all my thoughts on that.

For the past 15 years, I have known nothing but the Army life and I have tried my best to be a good leader and a good example for my troops. I have especially made sure that I do not cheat my soldiers out of their family time because this time—I truly believe—is what drives us all to continue with the difficult task that are cast upon us. Now, as I sit as the “soldier” that needs to be taken care by the superior, I cannot help but to feel dissapointment on the little concern the leadership has given to ensure we spend time with our families before we go to Iraq—especially now that our tours have been extended for 15 months. I guess I will just have to get used to be an expendable thought for some that seem to have better things to do.

The weather in Kansas has been out of control. There has been tornados, floodings and even deaths throughout the area. I had a pretty disturbing night last night because we were under tornado watch and I could not stop thinking that I am presently living in a mobile home…SWEET!!! We were trying to figure out where we were going to try to run to if something happened and came to the conclusion that we would most likely have a pretty windy night.

I also decided to go the people at the dinning facility and told them to change the channel from FOX news to CNN or some other news channel because I was interested in knowing what is really going on in the world…sometimes I cannot help myself. Needless to say… the channel is still in FOX news, God forbid we are informed of current events without having a conservative spin on it. That could be disastrous!!! I did have enough time to see that the new book by George Tenet have some people pretty upset… funny, now I want to read it. Any thoughts?

Changes…

Another week has gone by here in Fort Riley. Time here seems to be flying by which could be good or bad—depending on how you look at it. Many of the people that were with us in the Captain’s Career Course are getting ready to leave,—or are leaving today—giving our team the loud and clear message that our time is up really soon. It is an eerie feeling to see so many people that you know deploy. I can only hope and pray that that they get to come home safe and that their tour is not met with unfortunate events.

As for us,—our team—we have been waiting for higher up to tell us when we are going to be able to go to see our families before deploying. The word was that we might have at least a week to see our loved ones but now—as everything in the Army these days—our deployment date has been pushed up and consequently we will be lucky if we get four days at home. Since the news, all of our training is being jam-packed in our schedule and now we seem to be scrambling to get out stuff together.

My sentiment on all these changes is ambiguous. At times I am glad that we are leaving sooner because that means that our time will start counting down and this means a day closer to come home but sometimes I am sad and disgruntled because I wanted to spend more time with my family before I have to leave them for so long. I have been living on my own since August of 2006 and by the time I come home, it will be 25 months that I have been gone away from my home. I often wonder how I am going to be able to make it or how my children are going to deal with it.

Distance can be a real nuisance in somebody’s life. Most people change when they are apart, especially when they are apart for two years. Most people learn to get into a routine that will aid them get through the day and this is often hard to merge with the routines another one brings home. As I sit here, I have to learn to make it through the day without listening to my children laugh or even cry. I sit here living with memories of what it used to be when I was home like if it was a distant dream, something that I cannot experience for a long time. I wish I could be home…

All I can hope for is that this distance and this loneliness that forces me to scrutinize my life, my actions and what I thought was important to me, transforms me into a better person. I know that like things in the Army, I will have a different outlook on life when I come back. I know that I will have seen and experienced things that the majority of Americans cannot fathom; I just have to figure out how to turn these experiences, these two years, into a positive change in my life and hope I never think of it as a wasted years.

I use to be Vanessa, now I am just CPT Hill…

Another week is going by in beautiful “Funtown.” The training has required us to wear about 60 pounds of gear almost everyday and this has made my body start to ache as if I was an 80 year old woman. My competitiveness is a problem with me sometimes since I refuse to sit down and take a rest.

We were taken to do a “stress fire” range. Here, we were instructed to run ±100 meters with all of our gear, and weapons then, we had to low crawl in the mud for another 50 meters and finally start shooting at targets while we were dealing with absolute exhaustion. We shot from the prone position,—laying on your belly—from the kneeling position, then standing and finally walking towards our target. I did well but I could feel my legs and my arms giving up slowly as I kept pushing harder and harder to make it through.

Throughout the week, we have simulated attacks on our convoys and even when we walk around the compound. It is a nuisance at times but sometimes you end up learning a lesson and thinking about other possible actions to take if something like it would happen in reality. Our team seems to be coming together better with time. It is always challenging to group 10 people together 24/7 and force them to work together. It was rough in the beginning but it is getting easier with time.

Here I am just another soldier. The roles that I am used to—wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend—have no place in here. My name is just CPT Hill. It is like jumping into another universe and learning to be somebody completely different than what you used to be.

I listen to people talking—soldiers and civilians alike—and I can sense how some of them feel our leaders—all the way to the top—are pushing our limits and using us in disregard of the true meanings of our lives. Some think that the Congress is pulling the rug off the troops by wanting them to come home and others think that’s the right thing to do becaue we’ve had enough. My question is for those that think bringing the soldiers back home is not a sign of support: how can you think that saving more American soldiers lives is not supporting them? Does people really think that all of the Armed Forces are tickled to go and put their lives in danger for a situation that has not gotten better in four years? I wish I had the answer but unfortunaly those are the questions I will leave you guys with to think about and maybe you can post a comment or two and let me know what you think.

Until the next one….

Four Weeks in Funtown

It seems like yesterday that I set foot in “Funtown,” now—four weeks into the madness—I do not feel any more prepared that I had before. I am not going to lie and will admit that I have learned some new skills and have refreshed others that I have not had the need for in a long time. Albeit the few success stories—we will call them that—I still think that the time spend here is not managed adequately.

Our team is made to help an Iraqi Motor Transportation Regimen (MTR), thus our mission as advisors is going to revolve around teaching them to do logistical convoys to deliver supplies and also to teach them how to train and sustain the soldier skills of their regimen—i.e. weapons training, physical fitness, etc. The training in “Funtown” is not geared to our kind of mission and it is frustrating sometimes to sit through hours of training that is not the main—is mostly remote—mission of our team. There has been other MTRs trained here but it seems like they also did not get the training that would focus on their team mission. Moving on….

My computer was fix and I finally received it…it seem like an eternity and it is kind of funny to think how attached we are to these things. I have been a little calmer and I am trying to keep my cool while I am here. The news of our deployment extension has drained me a little but I am still trying to keep a positive attitude. I mean…they are going to give us an extra day of leave and $1,000 for every extra month that we spend after 12 months…I guess that will make up for me missing another birthday missed and for yet, more time away from my family. Evidently, an exit strategy or an effort to increase recruitement levels is not an option…and yes, after stop loss, deployment extensions, recalling people that have retired or have been inactive, this is not so much of a voluntary Army anymore.

This week, we were trained to be Combat Life Savers (CLS). The training encompass a brief tutorial on how to provide immediate medical care—breathing, circulation and tourniquets—to injured soldiers in the battlefield until they can be transported to a medical facility. The highlight of the training was when had to learn how to administer an IV to each other. I have seen people walk out of the class with huge bruises on their arms because the other person cannot find their veins but luckly the female that did my arm got my vein on her first try.



The news this past week have been concentrating on the killings in VA Tech and although I understand and believe it was a shame, it enrages me to think that other news are being push over by it. It seems that the news media has forgotten that there’s a war going on and that American and innocent Iraqi lives are being lost everyday. I guess their thought process tells them that since we volunteer to joing the Armed Forces of this country we have should not be surprised to hear that we are losing more and more soldiers in a “war” that was declared “accomplished” four years ago. So, if the war is over and our mission is accomplished, why are we still having repeated deployments to Iraq?

My Third Week in “Funtown”

I am back from my Eastern weekend now trying to be calm and deal with all the “training” scheduled for us. A typical day in “Funtown” starts with PT at 6:00am, breakfast and hygiene until 9:00am and the rest of the day varies according to whatever the people in charge of the training decided.

We started the week with what they call drivers training. We sat through classes that emphasized the importance of knowing what the heck you are doing while you are driving in Iraq and also presented a lot of the dangers of the road (i.e. IED, small arms fire, etc). On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to sit inside two roll over simulators—called HEAT trainers. It was quite fun but scary at the same time if one start thinking about the possibility of our vehicle rolling over and the possibility of opening a 450 lbs door while upside down and hurt. After the HEAT trainers, we were taken out to a muddy trail where we had to maneuver through with our vehicle to make sure that we know how to handle a similar situation. It was real fun, much like going four wheeling. Then we came back at night and drove our vehicle for a short stretch of the road on black out operations—all lights off—and wearing our night vision goggles.





Last week we were told that we would be going to Kirkuk which is in the northeastern part of Iraq. The news is better than hearing that we would be going to Baghdad so I was happy to be somewhat up north.




The news channels have broadcasted that Sec. Gates announced all army troops will have their tour extended from 12 months to 15 months. This is a blow to all soldiers and their families since it makes it even more difficult to deal with 15 months of separation from their loved ones—married or unmarried.

As I sit here and observe my fellow soldiers I can’t help but to wonder if the media have asked deployed or soon to deploy soldiers what they think about this extension and if it affected the morale of the troops. I have watched several officers here that are so disgruntled, they have resolved to write editorials in various newspapers indicating the weaknesses of our contemporary Army and the problems we will continue to foresee as a consequence of “the war on terror.”