I am the Infantry Nov. 10

Our uniforms have a new addition, shiny brass discs bearing two crossed rifles, the branch insignia marking us as newly christened Infantrymen.

Our final test was a week long Field Training Exercise (FTX), which put our skills to the test. The first two days were spent at Mokenna MOUT, a little brick village used for Urban Warfare. While we spent an entire week learning the basics, these two days focused on squad level actions, eventually incorporating multiple squads, , a whole block of the village, and a ton of OpFor and civilians scattered throughout.

On Day 2 we packed out rucks and in the afternoon, rucked about 2 miles uphill to our home for the remaining 5 days, the F.O.B. (Forward Operating Base), each platoon set up a patrol base outside the FOB where we camped for a few days while learning ambush, react to sniper, react to indirect, react to ambush and convoy react to conflict.

Wednesday, day 5 we all moved into the FOB and spent all day laying out razor wire and building guard towers and an entry control point. That evening at 1800, the Final 48, nicknamed the Gauntlet began, making 48 hours until Honor Hill, but those 48 hours would be continuous operations, sleep was little and far between. Our schedule for both days was 6 hour guard shifts from 1800 to midnight followed by a 6 hour mission at 0100, return at about 0700, grab a few hours of sleep, 6 hour mission at 1100, then a little more sleep after we returned at about 1700 until we repeat the process again at 1800. Very, very long days. Nights were also freezing, Thursday it hit 24 degrees.

Friday evening first platoon broke down the FOB while the rest of us rucked up, expended out extra ammo, and got transed via deuce to a point about 2.5 miles from our battalion. Once the whole company arrived they passed out the crossed rifles which we put in our pockets and stepped off at a slow pace to Honor Hill. When we got there, our Drill Sergeants starting shooting off all the extra smoke grenades, frag sims, artillery sims, and illum as we began our ascent up the road lined with the entire battalion cheering us on and their flashlights organized into red, white and blue. Once at the top we dropped our gear, grabbed our canteen cups and entered the wooden palisade where out ceremony took place. The ceremony itself is sacred so I will not speak of it, but there was lots of heavy metal, grog, and we had our crossed rifles pinned on and slammed into our chests without the backs on the pins, welcoming us to the brotherhood of the Infantry now and forever.

These past few days have been spent cleaning, we have to turn all this gear in after all, and getting smoked since our discipline has become lacs. Beheyt got in a fight with Burns today and is getting restarted 7 weeks.

We lost our phones thanks to Fernandez, but I don't feel like telling the story for fear that I might stab him. This will probably be the last major update though I'll update as needed.

By the way, for those wondering what missions we did during FTX, we did an Ambush, Mortar Raid, and ECP route clearances and CCPs. I'm not actually gonna go into detail about them, so if you know what they mean, good for you, otherwise, ask me.