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For most of the month of July, I will be conducting training with my unit. It is going to be miserable, hot, and exhausting. I am not looking forward to it at all. Ever had to lug around a flak jacket with SAPI plates around? It is not fun, especially in 120 degrees heat.
My unit conducted some training earlier this week, though my section was only there for less than forty-eight hours. For the most part, there was a lot of downtime as were really the ones conducting the training, not the ones being trained. The weather was a lot gentler than I expected it to be, though the added humidity was rather surprising.
I have gone through half a large bag of sunflower seeds and I still have more than twenty hours left in this field operation. Handful after handfuls of sunflower seeds disappear into my mouth as I sit, bored, while manning the radio. The radio emitted short bursts of message traffic between the COC and the road guards, barely audible from the mechanical growl of the military trucks and the sound of fighter planes flying overhead.
All around me are sleeping marines, exhausted less from actual toil and more from the oppressive heat and, not the norm in this desert clime we grudgingly acclimated to, humidity. The weather has been comparatively gentle and training will be mercifully short. Only forty-eight hours stands between me and civilization, and I am already past its halfway mark. A hot shower and my soft pillow awaits me back in garrison.
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