More From Tim

There are two major facets of life here at TBS. There’s garrison, which consists of the barracks, the classrooms, the chow hall, and the lieutenants. Then there’s the field, which consists of nature and its inevitable demise at the hands and unbound curiosity of countless lieutenants. A couple stories from each…

GARRISON
So imagine that you have a friend named Alfred. Alfred is a dear friend of yours, and you greatly enjoy his company. You look forward to a long and productive relationship with Alfred. But imagine that there’s one problem with our dear friend Al. Whenever you tell Alfred to do something, no matter how simple and painless it seems to be, you know that in your heart of hearts that something is going to go terribly wrong somewhere. It’s not even that you’re mad at Alfred when he does mess up. There’s only a deep-seated sadness at seeing him creatively fail again. Thus it often is with TBS and chow. For example, let’s take the instance that happened a few weeks ago (and yet sadly is oft repeated). We come back from class around noon.

“Can we go to chow?” someone asked.
“No, we have a class soon,” came the reply.
A few minutes later our chain of command came through the hall saying “go to chow. The class was canceled.”

I went to the Subway on the second floor and stood in line for quite a while. When I was just about to order, my visions of culinary euphoria were abruptly killed when someone yelled, “hey Charlie Company, we have to be in the classroom right now! They canceled the cancelation!” I ran down to my room, got my gear, ran to the classroom, and waited for everyone to show up. When everyone was there, the captain called the student staff together, (you know what’s coming), and told us that the class was in fact cancelled and we could go to chow. The interesting thing was the response. No one seemed the least bit phased. There was just that vague, deep-seated sadness. My theory is that TBS is sort of like kicking small puppies. After a while, the puppy just expects it.

Which leads nicely into the subject of tests. Studying for the tests is not that difficult. I finally figured it out. To study for the tests here, you simply find all the concepts that seem important and/or significant. Once you’ve done that, take a sharpie and mark them all out. Whatever’s left is testable. Here are a couple genuine made-up questions that illustrate our dilemma when taking tests.

Situation: You are conducting anti-terrorism operations in Iraq. Your patrol, consisting of a squad reinforced with an engineer attachment, is approximately 25 minutes away from the nearest supporting element. Your radio is not functioning, and you have just decided to take a security halt for a team photograph.
Question: What is the maximum effective range of the AT-4?
A. Yes
2. The fire support plan
FF. A tourniquet
C. All of the above

Question: Your M-249 barrel is hot. Is your barrel hot?
1. No
1. Enemy situation
4. Combat stress
3. Both A and C

So anyway, we continue our journey to

THE FIELD
Which is where we have epiphanies such as “Huh. I’m spending taxpayers’ dollars to go camping. Cool.” So just over a week ago, we went out to the field to do our live-fire exercise. It started out with all the lieutenants packing into the back of 7-ton trucks. All was well, all was good, another day training, when the corporal tried to close the gate on the back of the truck.

“Gentlemen,” he announced after failing, “I need everyone to lean to the right.”

We did so, and were rewarded with the sight of the whole roof of the truck shifting over. “Thanks!” he said, latching the gate, as the rest of us wondered if this was a portent of things to come. Suffice it to say, on the drive over, we discovered that the 7-ton was not designed from an ergonomic standpoint.

In the Field

Live-fire was a lot of fun for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was because we got to shoot tracers on the range. It’s really neat to be able to see the rounds go downrange, and there was a real feeling of accomplishment among the company when we set the woods behind the range on fire.

The other neat thing about being outside is getting to observe nature close-up and personal. For example, I found out that Black Widow spiders really like hanging out on our flak vests. Simultaneously, I found out that black widows can grow to be the size of my little fingernail. (That’s just the body, for the record.)

Later that day, my happy world was rudely shaken in an unexpected way. I was sitting through a brief when I saw an ant struggling with a crumb about four times his size. He dragged, he hoisted, he struggled, he persisted. He cleared a path and pulled the crumb over a stick 3 times his size. It took him an eternity to move it one inch. Then, just as I was thinking that I had a great illustration for my children someday, he gave up and walked away. I was very disappointed.