So white phase was longer than I remember so I’ll split this post into 3 parts.
We got back from HBL on Jan 3rd. Some people were ready to be back. I wasn’t one of those people. Lol. It was a weird long night because people got in at various times. I got back at 1400; some people got back as late as 0200 the next morning. Be forewarned, they WILL give you a drug test when you get back. Most likely first thing. So don’t go crazy over HBL. “Don’t jack it up, privates.” Just as promised, the DS’ tried and tried to put us back in red phase. But alas, we were more squared away than they thought so we did the bare minimum to stay in white. During the next week we learned some Army combatives, continued PT, and did post detail (basically ride around and pick up trash). The next big training event was land navigation or land nav. Land nav seems overwhelming at first, but its not that difficult once you get the hang of it. It involves a little math and being able to identify terrain features. You can read all about it here. For the BCT requirement, you have a certain amount of time to find 5 points. We were given 3 hours. Sounds easy right? We found the first 3 points in 45 minutes. The last two took a while and we barely finished in time. Word of advice, play to your team’s strengths. One guy in my team was good at plotting, another at shooting the azimuth, and I was good at reading the terrain features. Once we figured that out, it took less time. During white phase, you’ll also be fitted for ASU’s. This is your Army Service Uniform or Class A’s. If you’re unsure about what you’re doing, getting fitted for these will change your mind. It motivated me to finish the last part of training and graduate. The day the DS’ had been hyping up for weeks was finally upon us….FTX II. But FTX II with a kicker; we also get the 10K ruck march. So we were killing two BCT requirements in one fell swoop. We rucked the 6 miles and it felt like forever. The worst part wasn’t how cold it was or rainy. It was the stopping. Every hour we had to take a tactical halt. This was the worst because we would tighten up while stopped, then we had to get going again. By this time, the first group of student leadership had been fired in our platoon, and I was glad. The responsibilities were a LOT for FTX. Including running up and down the tactical formation the whole 10K.
It wasn’t bad until we got to the hill. Then I felt bad for the PG. Once we got to our MOUT site, we had to pull perimeter security while leadership did their recon. Needless to say while in the prone position, a lot of people fell asleep. They then got smoked and got extra duty for it. Don’t fall asleep on security. We then put tents up. Not regular tents, the big Army tents. I won’t ruin the surprise on this one either. After we finally ate, we had to put up shelter halves. If you don’t know what this is, here is what they look like
In two man teams, one person has a half and one person has the other half (that whole Battle Buddy concept, remember?). They are small and have very little room. One false move and the thing will fall over. But I digress. I think this may have been an Alpha 1/48 thing because I didn’t hear of anyone else using shelter halves. Day 2 and 3 of FTX were spent learning Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills such as access control points, detainee operations, dismounted patrols, and more CLS. FTX II ended with us shooting blanks out of the 240B and the 249 SAW. Joke was on us because we had to clean them. Blanks suck. We also started Advanced Rifle Marksmanship. This is the cool stuff like learning control pair firing. When we finally got to the barracks, showers were mandatory. For good reason. White Phase was winding down. Only a few training events left before we could go into blue phase. More ARM, Night Fire, U.S. Weapons, Urban Ops, and Warrior Tower.
A Specialist's Tale 