Observation

The last two weeks we have been in an observation course.  Which basically involves learning about different observation gear (mostly thermal night vision).  There are a lot of different types, and we actually got to use some that just came into use.  There were two that we were the actually the first people to use in all of the army.  I would go into more detail, but I don't know if I can in this forum.

The basics of what we learned involve being able to instruct other units, airplanes, or helicopters how to get to locations based on what we see.  Also, this past week we learned how to command artillery to hit certain locations from miles away.

There was also something of a bitter sweet moment this past Wednesday.  Out of nowhere me and 5 other soldiers were taken aside and told we would be going to sniper school in two weeks.  On the one hand this was great news, but at the same time it just so happened that the dates of the course correspond exactly with the days I had been planning to come home.  

An unplanned stop

My last entry was something of a cliffhanger, and I had actually planned on writing the next entry immediately after finishing the first, but time kind of slipped away.

Anyway, after our last night of navigation in the south my partner and I had finished around 4 in the morning. We immediately proceeded to catch up on whatever sleep we could while we waited on the bus for everyone else to finish. As it turns out, the last group finished around a quarter to 6. Everything was loaded onto the bus and we began the journey back to the base. After about five minutes the bus came to an abrupt stop and we were all ordered to get off!
We all put our vests back on and opened up two stretchers. Two of the members of my team who had some injuries were placed on the stretcher and we began the run/hike. No one really knew how long we would be going or what our eventual destination was (and it was probably best we didn't know).
We ended up carrying the stretchers for about two hours (there were about 11 of us, plus two on the stretchers, which meant that there were not many people to change out for breaks). The end of the hike was a mountain top that was so steep we essentially had to crawl up it while dragging the stretchers around our ankles. I am going to try and put up some pictures later, but they don't really do it justice because I didn't get any pictures that show how steep of a climb we had.