Day 18 at NTC

[aadler]

 

Up 5:00 AM to work with interpreters on recording the approved scripts. Pulled up to the wire and started delivering the messages by 6:40. Continued doing so (with an interpreter on-scene after the first few broadcasts) until the patrol returned at 10:00 AM.

Wrote up the sitrep, and — just like last night — got caught up immediately in planning and prep for another mission, this one in the afternoon.

The team chief of Team 73 has been stuck here an extra two days, and may not get to leave at all. I haven’t had time to write anything. I got barely four hours of sleep last night.

One more day and a wake-up. Getting great experience, but I’m tired. I just want to go home.

*           *          *

Back before everything started going crazy, I put my ATL in charge of the team for the afternoon mission, to give him some experience in that role. Then the CO (of the battalion to which we’re now assigned) swooped in and took over, and everything instantly got more complicated and more stressful. The mission itself — once we got done carrying across two hundred yards of open ground the 150-pound product board the CO had insisted we prepare and bring along — was unproductive for us but not at all arduous; we were posted at the southeast edge of town for rear dismounted security, and there we stayed until time to leave. Annoying not to be able to do our jobs, but at least we didn’t sweat much.

As always, by the time I was done writing up the sitrep, another mission brief was being held. I listened to that, then went to bed.

About 1:00 in the morning, the Team 73 team chief and our now-redundant former team member (the one from the motor pool) finally caught a convoy back to FOB Dallas, and I was at last able to move up onto one of the cots — ours, left behind when we were only supposed to be here a couple of days — that they’d brought with them. I’ve been sleeping on the ground for the last three days. This feels better.