Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

More videos have arrived. Believe or not, but I still have a bunch more to upload. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to get them all up. Which means I won’t get them up until the end of deployment. Enjoy!

This is a quick dry rehearsal for our air assault mission. We used a CH47 Chinook. Once we dismounted the bird, we’d bound our squad up to the objective.

In the air, waiting to reach our destination.

Following the box, came boredom. Following boredom, came horseplay.

This was suppose to be a vid of us lifting a +600 lbs ramp door however the LT was slow in getting the camera going. The after action was still funny.

No surprise, one of the ATGM strykers broke again. We had to tow it back to the FOB. Despite me recording from atop a stryker, you can still hear my music playing from inside. Thats right, I have surround sound with a sub blaring. Oh Yeah!

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This should be the last of the photos. I had pictures spread across two different computers, several flash drives, and on my external hard drive. Hopefully I found everything. The first set is mostly from being in the box.

The second set is of our Air Assault mission. Unfortunately do to the type of training at JRTC, I wasn’t able to snap as many pictures as I wanted to.

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Here’s the next batch of videos. These are from Camp Shelby. Enjoy!

This heat trainer helps teach soldiers how to escape from a rolled vehicle. The “humvee” can rotate freely 360 degrees.

This shows what its like from on the inside of the heat trainer. At the end, everyone “floats up” since the camera is still dangling upside.

This video game is suppose to help soldiers get better out shooting the M240B. Its just like Duck Hunt except a big ass screen and a machine gun.

50 Cal firing from on top the Stryker.

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First set of videos have been uploaded. Enjoy!

Having arrived to Fort Polk, we are greeted by a large 200 man tent that will be our home for the next month.

A quick test fire to ensure a working weapon before heading out on mission.

This robot is used to investigate IEDs. If the bomb ends up going off, no harm done to any people.

While on mission, a gun shot wound was sustained by one of the soldiers. This helicopter was called in to medivac the individual out.

Having loaded up the wounded soldier, the chopper takes off.

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Holy shit, leave has finally started!!!  Though its only been one day, it already feels great to be walking around in civilian clothing with no fear of Uncle Sam hovering above my head.  With leave comes superb internet speeds.  With great internet comes videos and pictures.

Following Fort Polk, we all headed up to Fort Dix, NJ.  Its there we’ll stay until we leave for Kuwait.  At Dix I got alright internet speeds and attempted to upload pics.  Didn’t work as well as I hoped.  Now I’m at my brothers in West Point and have access to cable internet.

Over the next 10 days, expect alot of emails containing links to pictures and videos.  Not sure if I’ll be able to upload everything.  For now, here are the remaining pics from Shelby and the first set of pics from Fort Polk.  Enjoy!

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After 10 grueling days, the box has finally finished. The training was realistic, the work was hard, and simple luxuries such as sleep were nonexistent. Immediately following the box, I moved to a new FOB and lost all cell and Internet reception. Hence the delay in this post. Worse, my computer broke and I needed to borrow someone else’s laptop to type this up.  Water dripped into the keyboard and fried it.

As I mentioned before, my platoon was attached to B Troop of the 104th Cav. Together we traveled down to our JSS/JCOB(Joint Contingency Operations Base) for use during the box. The JCOB was an incredibly tiny base setup right next to an Iraq village. That village and surrounding area was considered our territory in which we were to help make safer, more secure, and ultimately bring stability too.

The amount of realism and complexity involved in making the box seem real was staggering. There was a permanent set of Iraqi civilians and IPs (Iraqi Police) that lived in the town. Some of the buildings had electricity and many times you could smell the food they were cooking. They even had goats that lived in the town. A few times, the goats wondered over to our JCOB and one even managed to break in through the gate.

There were also a set number of people who played the Iraqi Army, news journalists, insurgents, etc. Everyday the journalists released an exaggerated newspaper of the events happening for the entire brigade. Of course there were many fuck ups reported. That’s too be expected.

Life on the JCOB had worse living conditions then back at our FOB. There weren’t enough cots so most everyone slept in their strykers. Fuel was always low so many times we couldn’t even turn on the heat. It didn’t bother us too much since sleep was something we didn’t get. In fact, not once was anyone ever scheduled for sleep. For the first few days our schedule was do a mission for several hours, take an hour break, do another mission, take an hour break, etc. As time went on, the missions became more demanding. Our shifts become 24 hours long with maybe an hour break before starting another 24 hour shift. The 10 days seemed more like one long day sustained by a series of naps. Only twice did we get more then 2 hours of consecutive sleep. Once we got 3 hours and the other was 4 hours. Boy did that ever feel great. My platoon sergeant kept a tally and for 10 days, we got about 30 hours of sleep!

In addition to the lack of sleep, we also lacked any showers and hot meals. We did manage to get one hot meal delivered to us but just as we broke open the thermal cases our base came under attack. We scattered to our positions and a couple hours later came back to find our once hot food ice cold. Snafu. LoL.

On day one, my squad leader made a mistake. Too make a long story short, he lead a team in clearing a mosque. A big no no that resulted in a full scale investigation. He was taken away and sent back to the rear. Didn’t see him again for 6 days. During then, we had to rebuild relations with the pissed off town which included a press conference.

Our missions were very diversified. Being anti-armor in a country where tanks aren’t found puts us in an odd situation. Though we were never used as a main assault element, there were plenty of other uses for us. About 50% of the time we conducted dismounted operations while the rest was mounted. Some of the missions we did: PSD, leaders reconnaissance, QRF, casevac, medivac escort, EOD escort, base security, roving patrol, TCP, ECP, blockades, and OPs. Luckily we hardly did tower guard (my worst nightmare).

In all, this training was amazing. Though it sucked during, its the satisfaction afterwards that makes it all worthwhile. Looking back knowing I did that, survived it, and still maintained good combat effectiveness despite my zombie like state of mind from sleep deprivation brings a smile to my face. I’m hoping Iraq will not be as demanding. I believe they are setting the bar high so as to prepare us for worse case scenario. One thing sure, I now feel prepared for Iraq.

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