The first night we got to our lookout post as a storm was starting. As everyone was pulling out their rain gear I heard one of my friends start mumbling to himself. He started pulling out things from his bag as he was saying, "No...no...I don't believe it!" It turns out my friend had forgotten to bring his rain gear and most of his cold weather gear. Fortunately for him he had brought a jacket with him.
Being in the North during the winter made it cold enough, but being on a mountain top in the rain really compounded the cold. I was wearing a thermal underarmour shirt and pants, my uniform, a fleece, a rain jacket and pants, a thermal ski mask, and a neck warmer (I had heard stories of how cold the previous week had been and decided I'd rather be safe than sorry). I remember saying to myself, "Wow, its pretty warm. I think I should be good for the night.".... I was wrong.
Right when I laid down to go to sleep the rain started, then it continued and continued for the next 7 hours. This was no drizzle, marble sized rain drops fell from 11 PM until 6 AM. I don't know why but whenever it rains like that I think of the scene from Forrest Gump when Tom Hanks is wading through the water talking about how it just kept raining. I quickly learned that our rain gear was not made for these conditions. I would estimate that it took about 2 or 3 hours before the rain managed to make its way to my clothes. I found myself shivering from the cold and simultaneously cursing myself for thinking I was gonna be warm and wondering whether my friend was catching hypothermia. I distinctly remember having a dream, either having dozed off or out of pure delirium, of a nearby house with nothing inside except for a hot shower. Everyone waited in line to get in, the room filled with steam, and just as I was about to enter I was brought back to the real world by my own shivering. I quickly realized there was not going to be a shower anywhere in my near future.
The worst part was waking up the next day to a completely grey cloud covered sky. During a normal week in the field I lived from sun-up to sun-down. What I mean by that is that the nights nights were a nice escape from the grueling sun and by the morning the heat was a welcome refrain from the cold nights (with the added benefit of drying rain or sweat soaked clothing, since most of the walking takes place at night). When I woke up that morning I new that my soaking wet clothes would not be dry any time soon, and my only hope was that I would warm up when we started walking again.
I packed up all of my cold weather gear and started walking to our next reconnaissance post (You may be asking yourself why I took off all my warm clothing, but I can assure you that no matter how cold it is, once you start walking you will get warm - quickly). After we arrived we set up our gear and prepared ourselves for another night of rain. I was pretty tired of being cold and wet, but on the bright side at least the rain wasn't going to bother me that much.
We had a rotation in which we would man the thermal night vision for 30 minutes and then try and sleep for an hour, lookout for 30 minutes, struggle to doze off for an hour, so on and so on all night. As expected it rained again, but not until early in the morning, and not nearly as hard as the night before. Then in a miraculous turn of events...the sun came out.
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