Groundhog Day

By Jackson

As most of you know, I have been at Fort Lewis Washington since 1 June. I am working at LDAC, aka "Operation Warrior Forge," the same 33 day course I went through last summer as an army cadet. Every ROTC cadet comes here, generally the summer before they graduate as a requirement to commission. I am working with the Basic Rifle Marksmanship committee as the "data collections OIC" (officer in charge). I basically run the TOC (tactical operations center) and along with my staff of four collect, sort and record all of the scores the cadets get on the M-16/A2 rifle qualification range.

The cadets come through LDAC broken down into 12 increments or regiments. Each regiment spends three day at the range. On day 1 they zero their weapons, on day 2 they have a practice record fire and on day 3 they have their record fire. We let them have the better of their two scores (though sometimes a few are given up to four chances to qualify) and send them on their way. As I said, we get a new regiment every three days, with only 5 exceptions in 53 or so days so I don't get much time off. I do have my evenings free and have had 2 or my 5 days off already. I have been able to visit Tacoma, Seattle and Vancouver, BC.

While on the range the 10-12 hours days really seem to fly by, but they also seem to morph into the same day since I am doing pretty much the same thing all the time. I take it as a good sigh that I am really enjoying myself. I just ripped 7 1/2 hours of music onto the laptop I use out here so the TOC is rockin' and I have also started to find quite a bit of time to read. That nice discovery was made only yesterday and I will be taking full advantage of it from here on out.

Unless something really noteworthy occurs while I'm out here this will probably be the only time I post here, but it won't be long until I'm off to Ft. Sill, OK with what I'm sure will become more stories!