Having wrapped up our CTT, medical, and administrative stuff pretty much the first week and a half we were here, the only thing left on our to-do list at our mobilization station (here at Ft. Leonardwood) is to do some “Engineer Refresher Training”. Unfortunately, there has been no semblance of a plan for that (as has been the case with most everything else we've encountered here), and so pretty much the only training we've managed to get scheduled for engineer skills has been to sit in on a few EOBC classes. The first of those was today, and as usual the instructors had no idea they were going to be receiving guests (us), but they were gracious enough to let us stay and attend the training. (Last week for weapons qualification one of the TSB sergeants had to basically beg the units running the M16 and M9 ranges to let us participate -- they had no idea we were coming although all that was supposedly coordinated weeks prior). The training today was on mines, including how to detect them, how they're employed, and how to react if you find yourself in a minefield. The instruction was good, and next week we are scheduled to hook back up with the same EOBC class to go through some boobytrap classes, which will be the remainder of our training here. Unfortunately, two things I was hoping to get in, demolition training and US weapons (heavy stuff) training probably isn't going to happen at this point.

We found out today that we will be heading out to our CRC on June 20th, a Sunday as expected. I suspect we'll be going to Ft. Benning but I believe Ft. Bliss is also an option. Ft. Benning's website has a host of good information about their CRC procedures, and from the sounds of things we'll be there for just 6 days before we ship out and head overseas. So, as it stands now, it sounds like (if Iraq is where we're going -- we don't have orders yet so anything is possible) we could be on the ground in Iraq just in time for the interim government to take over. Which just thrills me to no end.

Tags - Browse all tags

• minefield-training

Category - Browse all categories

• iraq