thedrifter
04-04-07, 12:34 PM
Downtime and a Trip to Las Vegas before Deployment: Part II of a Series
By Roman Baca
Special to the Recorder
“Downtime.” Training, missions, combat and war all have long stretches where you have nothing “scheduled” to do. In boot camp it was called “Senior Drill Instructors Time,” during training – whether during drill or in 29 – it is called “Platoon Commanders Time” and in Fallujah it was called “when I’m not on post, running a mission or volunteering for a mission.” There are certain duties you are expected to complete during this time: clean your weapon (this one will prove very important during our deployment), perform routine maintenance to your gear and vehicle, study Marine Corps knowledge, PT (to include running, push-ups, gym…etc.), eat or sleep.
If you are an NCO you are expected, in addition to the former, to monitor your Marines and make sure they have performed the tasks and are squared-away. NCO’s are also expected to monitor the general well-being of their subordinates, be a good example at all times, attend various meetings, attend extra classes, act as councilors, disciplinarians, mentors, physical trainers, education and career guides and, on occasion, “dad.”
Once in a while, when faced with a bad seed, being an NCO will end up feeling a lot like the babysitter of a kid who throws tantrums all the time. This is a daunting list of tasks for anyone, and it also proves why there are significantly less NCO’s than “non-rates”- Lance Corporals, Private First Classes and Privates, or, LCPL’s and below.
During our stay at 29, when we were not training, we sought out to “live it up” on our down time. We had several days when we were allotted enough time to set out to either 29 Palms “city” (which is one lonely stretch of road with tattoo parlors and fast food joints) Palm Springs or Las Vegas. A few lucky ones got to fetch their significant other and fly them out for a visit.
Lawton and I found ourselves lucky and met his wife and Lisa in Vegas for a weekend. There is a certain amount of reckless abandon that comes with knowing that you are headed for combat, and what better place to be reckless with abandon than Las Vegas? Every day and night we had way too much to drink, way too much to eat, spent way too much money and had way too much fun. Lisa and I escaped for an evening and got to see a Cirque du Soleil show that – in true Las Vegas fashion –was full of nudity, debauchery, loud music and sex. We went dancing and made out in elevators like high-schoolers.
My birthday fell during that weekend, and we planned on meeting a few of the Marines at Toby Keith’s Bar and Grill on the strip. They put a large cowboy hat on me and Lawton and his wife bought me a shirt. Then they dedicated a song to all the Marines in the place, who were all at my table – songs like “American Soldier,” “God Bless the USA” and others all take on a whole new meaning when you’re going to war – and people dining there sent over so many beers and shots I don’t recall how we got back to the hotel room. You are treated like ROYALTY when you are leaving – and you are slowly forgotten when you come back.
The breaks were well deserved, for the training was grueling. Our platoon was too small to go to Iraq on its own so we were attached to two other artillery battalions. They fired big guns and were from hot climates. We were from a cold climate and were trained to drive Humvees that were fitted with tank-killing missiles. We were going to a place that wasn’t that cold and that had no more aggressing tanks. We were not going to do the job that most of us had trained years for. Our whole unit was getting re-designated when we got back anyway. Bye bye missiles, hello machine guns. We were to get retrained in the role that most of the soldiers and Marines performed rolling out of Fallujah Base – Military Police.
My platoon, which I will refer to as TOW’s (the name of the weapon system we employed prior to 29), was skilled at driving Humvees and working in convoys. Most of the senior LCPLs and NCOs were also skilled in heavy machine guns. The two other platoons were not. So we visited the ranges a lot: .50 caliber machine-gun range; Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher range; close quarter battle range; M-4 service rifle range; M-16 service rifle range; M9 pistol range; convoy operations range; gas-mask range; land nav range. That’s what 29 is: over 200 acres of live-fire ranges.
A good amount of our NCOs ran the training scenarios. We even visited one of the brand-new, state-of-the-art convoy combat trainers. It was a Humvee in a trailer and a large screen. A computer generated program ran a scenario and we used retro-fitted weapons to run the simulator program. You could drive, the Humvee rumbled and the guns made a clack-clack sound when CO2 pumped into the receiver made the bolt “fire.”
Most of the ranges ran similar scenarios. We’d get up between 0430 and 05 (pronounced zero-four-thirty and zero-five). Some would run to chow if we had time; others were left to clean the barracks. We’d get carted to the armory where we would undertake the arduous process of getting our weapons and finally get bussed out to a remote spot in the never-ending landscape. Then we would split into smaller groups, some would fire their weapon systems while the others would switch between more hip-pocket classes and sweating their asses off in what shade they could find.
After firing our weapons, if the range was small enough, we would “police call.” (Police call: the all-too-familiar task of walking up and down the range and picking up “brass trash,” or the brass casings left behind after firing.) Every marine holds the traditional “police call” near and dear to their hearts. TOWs have police called in the dead of winter in three feet of snow, kicking the same to rustle up even more brass. TOWs have even walked miles of range to coil up the long copper wire left behind by their missiles. So we were damn good at it. Good thing, too, because the other platoons were not very good at police call.
Another thing I failed to mention: TOWs are above average Marines. Even before the famed Gunnery Sergeant Poe entered our midst in the last deployment and his moniker entered our psyches, “Do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do.” Even before Captain Kelly gave us our pocket cards with the many things we should expect out of ourselves to carry at all times (mine did not leave my wallet till after Iraq), TOWs strove for hard work, doing things pretty well and making pretty smart and fast decisions. Most of my NCOs pushed me, when I was a young LCPL, to volunteer, but not all the time, to lead, but lead fairly, to work hard, really hard and to have fun when the time was allowed. The NCOs of my generation worked hard to carry on in the same fashion. I spent the first year of my time with TOWs wondering if I would ever fit in, and five years later I hold those men close to my heart.
Ah, so back to the ranges. After the police call, which was inspected over and over again because if your police call failed you were not allowed back to the range, we would again get bussed back to the armory to clean our weapons and turn them in. TOWs are good Marines, sometimes too good. No cell phones on duty. Nacho brought their cell phones and we would moan and groan when they had pizza waiting for them at the armory. We got smarter though, and soon the “roach coach” (mobile snack command truck) was waiting for us.
There were four ranges that not even TOWs, in their vast range experience, had ever seen. These were the “new” ranges, designed to get us ready for what was described as the “wild west.” We thought we’d hit the ground fighting over there. That’s what they were getting us ready for. We ate it up.
Sgt. Roman Baca served in Fallujah, Iraq with the Marine Corps from 2005-2006. He is currently a senior majoring in graphic design here at Central.
Ellie
By Roman Baca
Special to the Recorder
“Downtime.” Training, missions, combat and war all have long stretches where you have nothing “scheduled” to do. In boot camp it was called “Senior Drill Instructors Time,” during training – whether during drill or in 29 – it is called “Platoon Commanders Time” and in Fallujah it was called “when I’m not on post, running a mission or volunteering for a mission.” There are certain duties you are expected to complete during this time: clean your weapon (this one will prove very important during our deployment), perform routine maintenance to your gear and vehicle, study Marine Corps knowledge, PT (to include running, push-ups, gym…etc.), eat or sleep.
If you are an NCO you are expected, in addition to the former, to monitor your Marines and make sure they have performed the tasks and are squared-away. NCO’s are also expected to monitor the general well-being of their subordinates, be a good example at all times, attend various meetings, attend extra classes, act as councilors, disciplinarians, mentors, physical trainers, education and career guides and, on occasion, “dad.”
Once in a while, when faced with a bad seed, being an NCO will end up feeling a lot like the babysitter of a kid who throws tantrums all the time. This is a daunting list of tasks for anyone, and it also proves why there are significantly less NCO’s than “non-rates”- Lance Corporals, Private First Classes and Privates, or, LCPL’s and below.
During our stay at 29, when we were not training, we sought out to “live it up” on our down time. We had several days when we were allotted enough time to set out to either 29 Palms “city” (which is one lonely stretch of road with tattoo parlors and fast food joints) Palm Springs or Las Vegas. A few lucky ones got to fetch their significant other and fly them out for a visit.
Lawton and I found ourselves lucky and met his wife and Lisa in Vegas for a weekend. There is a certain amount of reckless abandon that comes with knowing that you are headed for combat, and what better place to be reckless with abandon than Las Vegas? Every day and night we had way too much to drink, way too much to eat, spent way too much money and had way too much fun. Lisa and I escaped for an evening and got to see a Cirque du Soleil show that – in true Las Vegas fashion –was full of nudity, debauchery, loud music and sex. We went dancing and made out in elevators like high-schoolers.
My birthday fell during that weekend, and we planned on meeting a few of the Marines at Toby Keith’s Bar and Grill on the strip. They put a large cowboy hat on me and Lawton and his wife bought me a shirt. Then they dedicated a song to all the Marines in the place, who were all at my table – songs like “American Soldier,” “God Bless the USA” and others all take on a whole new meaning when you’re going to war – and people dining there sent over so many beers and shots I don’t recall how we got back to the hotel room. You are treated like ROYALTY when you are leaving – and you are slowly forgotten when you come back.
The breaks were well deserved, for the training was grueling. Our platoon was too small to go to Iraq on its own so we were attached to two other artillery battalions. They fired big guns and were from hot climates. We were from a cold climate and were trained to drive Humvees that were fitted with tank-killing missiles. We were going to a place that wasn’t that cold and that had no more aggressing tanks. We were not going to do the job that most of us had trained years for. Our whole unit was getting re-designated when we got back anyway. Bye bye missiles, hello machine guns. We were to get retrained in the role that most of the soldiers and Marines performed rolling out of Fallujah Base – Military Police.
My platoon, which I will refer to as TOW’s (the name of the weapon system we employed prior to 29), was skilled at driving Humvees and working in convoys. Most of the senior LCPLs and NCOs were also skilled in heavy machine guns. The two other platoons were not. So we visited the ranges a lot: .50 caliber machine-gun range; Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher range; close quarter battle range; M-4 service rifle range; M-16 service rifle range; M9 pistol range; convoy operations range; gas-mask range; land nav range. That’s what 29 is: over 200 acres of live-fire ranges.
A good amount of our NCOs ran the training scenarios. We even visited one of the brand-new, state-of-the-art convoy combat trainers. It was a Humvee in a trailer and a large screen. A computer generated program ran a scenario and we used retro-fitted weapons to run the simulator program. You could drive, the Humvee rumbled and the guns made a clack-clack sound when CO2 pumped into the receiver made the bolt “fire.”
Most of the ranges ran similar scenarios. We’d get up between 0430 and 05 (pronounced zero-four-thirty and zero-five). Some would run to chow if we had time; others were left to clean the barracks. We’d get carted to the armory where we would undertake the arduous process of getting our weapons and finally get bussed out to a remote spot in the never-ending landscape. Then we would split into smaller groups, some would fire their weapon systems while the others would switch between more hip-pocket classes and sweating their asses off in what shade they could find.
After firing our weapons, if the range was small enough, we would “police call.” (Police call: the all-too-familiar task of walking up and down the range and picking up “brass trash,” or the brass casings left behind after firing.) Every marine holds the traditional “police call” near and dear to their hearts. TOWs have police called in the dead of winter in three feet of snow, kicking the same to rustle up even more brass. TOWs have even walked miles of range to coil up the long copper wire left behind by their missiles. So we were damn good at it. Good thing, too, because the other platoons were not very good at police call.
Another thing I failed to mention: TOWs are above average Marines. Even before the famed Gunnery Sergeant Poe entered our midst in the last deployment and his moniker entered our psyches, “Do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do.” Even before Captain Kelly gave us our pocket cards with the many things we should expect out of ourselves to carry at all times (mine did not leave my wallet till after Iraq), TOWs strove for hard work, doing things pretty well and making pretty smart and fast decisions. Most of my NCOs pushed me, when I was a young LCPL, to volunteer, but not all the time, to lead, but lead fairly, to work hard, really hard and to have fun when the time was allowed. The NCOs of my generation worked hard to carry on in the same fashion. I spent the first year of my time with TOWs wondering if I would ever fit in, and five years later I hold those men close to my heart.
Ah, so back to the ranges. After the police call, which was inspected over and over again because if your police call failed you were not allowed back to the range, we would again get bussed back to the armory to clean our weapons and turn them in. TOWs are good Marines, sometimes too good. No cell phones on duty. Nacho brought their cell phones and we would moan and groan when they had pizza waiting for them at the armory. We got smarter though, and soon the “roach coach” (mobile snack command truck) was waiting for us.
There were four ranges that not even TOWs, in their vast range experience, had ever seen. These were the “new” ranges, designed to get us ready for what was described as the “wild west.” We thought we’d hit the ground fighting over there. That’s what they were getting us ready for. We ate it up.
Sgt. Roman Baca served in Fallujah, Iraq with the Marine Corps from 2005-2006. He is currently a senior majoring in graphic design here at Central.
Ellie