A Little CCR

In the words of John Fogerty:

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no Senator's son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

There has been a great deal of change in the world since April 30th of 1975 and a large number of those changes have been a direct result of the United States Military’s technological superiority. It is amazing to think that our country has the capability of killing terrorists thousands of miles away with unmanned drones. Heck, we even have a robot roaming around mars! However, at the same time the military also likes to do things the old school way and for the past month of my life I have experienced this first hand.

The good news is my platoon got pulled off the ECP. We are now doing what we were trained to do, which is fire infantry mortars. The bad news is that in order to fire mortars we first had to establish a mortar firing point and this involved a whole lot of physical labor. For the past 45 days or so I have been filling sand bags in the blistering Afghan heat and to really make me feel like a baby boomer, while filling these sand bags the Army would continuously fly helicopters over our heads. You’d think after all these years’ sandbags and choppers would be something of the past!

Due to our operation tempo this week I don’t really have a lot of time to write. But, I can tell you that I got to fire my first rounds in combat this past month. After working the ECP for so long it felt really good to actually join the fight. I’ve attached several pictures to this posting to include our living area, bunker, fighting position, and mortar pit. Keep in mind we started from the ground up on this project so I really feel good about it. Most units fall in on a position already established we had to build ours from the ground up. 

g/b