Manassas Run

While Manassas Run wasn't nearly as bad as some of the infantry style FTXs I've been on (I'm of course referring to the ten days at LDAC), I wouldn't exactly say I enjoyed the experience. All I can say is that I hope to God I get assigned to a Movement Control Team or a Cargo Transfer Unit because if I get anywhere near a truck platoon, I'm going to get myself killed. Granted, I think they went about it all the wrong way: we basically went on STX lanes without ever having really gone over battle drills (a slide show and a walk through with forty+ people that couldn't hear anything doesn't count). It would basically be like taking a freshmen in ROTC on an FTX without ever having explained what a squad attack is and then evaluating them on their execution of Battle Drill 1A. It also doesn't help that everyone was saying, "in Iraq you would have uparmored vehicles so you wouldn't get out of the vehicle" - let's train for Iraq then.

Surprisingly enough, I did very well on my evals and actually had the fifth highest grade in the class. In order to create more eval positions, they actually made two people plan the missions and two different people execute. Fortunately, I got planning, because if I'd had execution I probably would have had the worst grade (apparently, one of the guys was making fun of me to the other guys - granted, I was slightly clueless, but this guy is pretty out of it on a general basis).

I just hope somebody actually trains me on something before I ever get deployed - as far as this place is concerned, I definitely don't think they utilized their time very well. I honestly still don't really know the difference between most of the trucks or their capacities (of course this is coming from someone who didn't even know how to open the hood of a car she'd had for four years until six months ago - yeah, I belong in Transportation).