WARRIOR TRAINING

I thought I checked the box “Navy Emergency Medicine Physician” but I must have accidentally checked the box “Army Infantry.” Uh oh! Oh well, I made the most of it as you can see from the pictures. Two words- BAD ASS! We continued training on weapons for over a week, and now I am an EXPERT marksman with the M9 (9mm pistol) and a SHARPSHOOTER with the M4 (the shortened version of the M16). I am also capable of firing the M246 as well as M240 machine guns as you can see. (what you can’t see is me kicking up dirt downrange trying to hit the targets with the M246!) We also learned basic convoy training, map reading, and IED recognition (OK, let’s be honest, if I am using any of these skills something has gone terribly wrong in this deployment).

After 19 days, we were done with the training. However, this is the military, so we waited an extra 2 ½ days for the transportation to Kuwait (and it is a chartered flight!!). With the extra time, some of us rented a car and got a hotel in Columbia to celebrate the Navy’s 236th birthday. We had a nice happy hour at the top of our hotel, watching a storm roll in and toasting the Navy. Afterwards, we found a bar that had over 100 beers on tap. Why it was named the Flying Saucer I have no idea. Then back to camp McCrady the next day to await our trip to Kuwait.