I've given plenty stories, I think it's time I note some important values, things and lessons I've learned.
Some physical aspects
--- I was already a great shot before I joined, but once I joined a special operations unit, I was able to learn some of the finer details of shooting, and took what they learn, and now I am probably the best shot I know. I got 127/120 on a live fire moving stress shoot. Emptied all 7 mags in the target with 0 misses. Which consist of standing and shooting, walking and shooting, strafing, or walking side ways shooting, running and shooting, running / walking turning around shooting, all sorts of silly stuff. Expert pistol/rifle. Granted, all Rangers get ridiculous amounts of gun time, so near perfect, if not perfect is to drilled into you constantly be expected on every weapon.
--- Clear rooms, clear rooms, clear rooms. I couldn't even fathom how many times I've cleared rooms and buildings. It's the hot topic in today's wars, so most every military across the globe trains their troops to some degree in rooms clearing. What sets special operation units across the globe apart, is they train constantly on these things day in and day out. That's how 75th Ranger Regiment trains. Constantly, clearing buildings and compounds and shooting until you can clear rooms and distinguish between friendlies and enemies and kill with surgical precision. Comfortable enough where I could easily fit in with any american special operations teams / swat and clear rooms. Granted every unit has their own SOP's (special operating procedures) when it comes to the fine details or clearing rooms, but generally speaking, each person has a way that they must go based on the size / windows / doors / things in the room, and the 1st guy who goes in chooses which way he goes, so the rest of the team reacts off him. With all the variables, usually in darkness with night vision goggles in, all pumped up and ready to go, and your guys start rushing in, whether you're the front or the guy behind, you have to be able to take it all in, process it, react and move all in an instant, and not only can a mistake put your own life in danger, it could be putting innocent civilians in danger, but most importantly, the guys next to you. But, even though you train constantly and even though you'll get it right 10 times in a row, sometimes variables are crazy and you mess up, but it's one of those things where you can still recover and get the job done. It's just not as pretty I suppose.
---Medical training. While I'm no doctor or anything like that, on top of the basic medical training the army gives you, as an army ranger, you do tons and tons of medical training, nothing too crazy, but you get really good at evaluating casualties and determining what kind of injury they may have gotten. You never really know, one second you look over and your boy is passed out not moving, with all the shit going on around and it probably being dark, it's hard to tell what may have happened. You learn about airways, different types of bleeding, arteries, blood pressure, pulse rates, tourniquet tourniquet tourniquet!, tension pneumothorax (basically, stabbing in their side to create an airway to their lung through their ribs because they've probably been shot in the chest or back and can't breathe.), nasal pharyngia, or this tube that you can put in someones nose that goes down their throat and generally creates an airway. (Side note - If you have any military pals and you guys are drinking or something and he says let him put NPA in your nose, don't do it. I mean, perhaps everyone should experience it once, but unless you've got a snahzuer, it sucks ass and hurts. I've done it multiple times and it sucked every time. One particular time, we had done it right around 7am, and I had it done on me as revenge for messing up an IV and spilling his blood everywhere [loooool], and for some reason, that NPA left me with a headache and a weak body all day. Not sure what happened there. You learn to tend to and stuff wounds, make splints, basically all sorts of medical shit that you would actually have to sit around and train for to know and it's really extremely useful in the real world. Generally, you always return fire and make sure it's clear before you do any real medical aid aside from maybe a tourniquet. If the situation calls for it and you're in a safe position to do it, and you've got other people firing at the enemy, you can apply a tourniquet. Better to potentially lose one guy than to lose multiple guys helping one guy. When I was in RASP and we were taking ranger first responder notes (fancy name for the medical certification all army rangers get), they showed us these pictures and the story behind them. A team of marines were crossing a road, one at a time, and the 1st guy got hit by a sniper. So a guy goes out to try to save him, boom, gets hit too, so a third guy goes out to try to get them, boom, down. They eventually get their shit together and clear the sniper. But that's the point - It's better to maintain the safety of everyone first. Your boy, or soon I suppose, girl, will understand. Generally, you always return fire and make sure it's clear before you do any real medical aid aside from maybe a tourniquet. The tourniquet is the most useful, time proven medical device humans have ever came up with. In most cases, a tourniquet will save you from bleeding out of a limb if you are severely bleed or severed an artery. Quick story, which actually happened a couple months ago. A soldier and his wife at Ft. Bragg went drinking at another married soldiers house. They got into an argument and one guy tried to kill the other guy with a machete and ended up cutting his arm realllllly bad. The wife was driving the soldier to the hospital on base and the guy was passed out, losing tons of blood, even the MP gate guard had enough since to put on a tourniquet, which in turn saved the guys life and arm. That MP gate guard probably got an award too. Even though I saved a guys life when the idiot MP's rounded us all up (in one of the above stories) on an old, decrepit dam, and a guy fell 20 feet through a hole that has old rusted, broken, jagged re bar coming from the sides during the descent. At the bottom is old washed up logs, broken beer bottles and various shit from years of partying. The MP froze and I took his flash light, hopped in, swam to the guy and swam him in. As suspected he sustained side injuries. I figured it'd get reported up in an incident report and I'd get a medal. But I didn't. I'd do it any day for anybody. Long story short - Tourniquets are awesome. I keep one in my hiking bag, jeep and gun bag. Bare with me, I'm on a graveyard shift sleep schedule and late at night I get bored and feel like writing. It's good to have some basic medical knowledge. Honestly, they should teach basic medical in schools for children. Imagine the lives it would saves if every year kids are taught some sort of basic medical knowledge in school. All the idiot children who get hurt when by them selves or with their friends away from adults or help. I'm going to push for some some how at some point, I believe it would make a substantial difference and save lives.
--- I jumped out of planes. I'll say that again, I jumped out of planes.
--- I used night vision and other fancy high tech equipment. Some things worth millions of dollars. A small piece of equipment that holds all radio encryptions that you can actually serve jail time for losing because that piece of equipment in the wrong hands could put the lives of tons of people in danger.
--- Extensive training in radios frequencies, air waves, communications and all the commo and high tech side of all the bang bang bang you all love in movies and video games. I actually did the course at the location of swamp phase in Florida for ranger school, which happens to also be my hometown (go vikings)
It was an advanced radio course designed to get in depth knowledge on a plethora of radios, frequencies, cell phones, lap tops, connecting to satellites, building antennas and wires, and wire repair, basically all things any special operator needs to know about radios and electronic shit. At the end of course, there was an extremely huge land navigation course that at each point, and there was 5 or 6, maybe 7 points if I remember, was a test of things you learned at the course. My partner and I were released with the second iteration at 1215am. The entire time you're competing for the best time for an ARCOM (which is a performance award) and bragging rights because you're the fucking best and you're a ranger and ranger specialize at being the best at everything. So friendly competitions are commonplace. Hell they have a military soldering competition called the 'best ranger competition'. Anyways, we started at 1215, and it's a timed event, knowing only that our points covered well over 20 miles, we had a long way to go. We jogged most of it, occasionally walked to drink or eat a part of our 1 mre. This course spans across a giant airstrip, a drop zone, empty fields and woods. The maps weren't exactly the tit for tat with the terrain and we got lost at one point and over shot by a km or so into some deep woods. We only burned about 30 minutes looking for a road, but we got confused because there was a new road, so when were making progress points, that new road wasn't accounted for and caused to severely overshoot. Got to our first station, basically building this piece of equipment that I totally forgot what it does, but it's about the size of a generator. Ran to our next point, which was using that encrypter to encrypt radios, etc. The next couple hours are bor the most part a blur, this event started late thursday night, 12am friday morning, and I had got absolutely shit faced hammered at the gator lounge off yuenglings wednesday night and I was sick all day, vomiting, couldn't hold down a drop of water, nor a bite of the army issue scramble egg. I slept and vomited on and off most of thursday and during the cell phones portion, which was undoubtedly the most tedious and boring portion of this training. The first time I was able to drink or eat anything was about 9pm. I died all day to be able to eat 1 wheat snack bread out an mre 3 hours prior to a 9 hour land nav course. I filled my camelback and only took 1 canteen because I had only brought 1 canteen pouch to fit on my rhodesian (not sure where the name comes from, but it's what we called our kit that didn't use plates), thought I was able to fit a dasani bottle in a mag pouch. and of course I had a dip can in my grenade pouch and actively had a dip in my mouth I'd say roughly 50% of the entire time. I don't *know what it is. I've never smoked a cigarette a day in my life, I dipped here and there in highschool, but didn't pick it up seriously until the army. I can see why people tobacco though. It's one of the things you can look forward to when the rest of everything is shitty. and when stress is over whelming, it removes a layer. I am an avid dipper. I've stopped before just to see if I could stop, and I can, so until a job as a personal body guard requires me to not dip (some companies require their body guard employees take tobacco test frequently to keep their mind as sharp as possible. so you're not thinking about your next cig or dip when you need to be focusing on your environment), or I decide to kick the habit my self. So this entire ordeal is very physically taxing on my body, even a healthy me. But a me, who has very little food in my stomach, dehydrated, hung over and tired, but even though the dip was not helping the situation by any stretch, I still managed to push my self the entire 9 hours and about 21-22 miles of land nav and test. Like I was saying before I got terribly side tract, for the most part 3-7am is a blur because I was tired, dying, my feet hurt, the distance was long and I knew in my mind we weren't even half way done. There was some more tests, and quick water breaks. A lot of the time, I would be running and trying to blind text my ex wife what I was doing. Anything I could do to distract my mind from the pain in the rest of my body. Which is really the key to any physical event that requires pushing your self. Just gotta figure out ways to deal with the pain. It hurts, and it sucks, and you wanna die, but there are no time outs in war. When I did 5 mile timed runs, I would imagine me beating my squad leader up at the boxing competition at ranger rendezvous, which is a yearly gathering of all 3 operational battalions and their are numerous competitions. I am a terrible runner, and I hate it. And this line of work requires A LOT of running all the time and I hated every run we did. Luckily you do enough badass shit to make up for it. The last point, before the 500ish meter run back to the finish point, is assessing, providing aid to, and calling up a 9 line medevac for a casualty and a 100 meter dummy carry to the extraction point. The worst part about this entire fucking thing was, we flew from ft benning ga, to the ranger school camp in florida, and if you've ever been to ranger school, or jumped there, you can personally attest to how shitty that drop zone is. Not only is it uneven, with ditches and roads and shit, it's filled with large shrubbery. Nothing is as bad as hitting asphalt, or a building, but this is about the next worst thing. I landed in this fucking revene at a downward angle, slamming down reallllllly hard down hill and twisting my ankle badly, and was subsequently drug about 30 meters because my chute caught wind and I was slightly discombobulated at first, and when I was what I landing in and the terrible pain that shot through my foot when I hit, I really honestly thought I broke my angle or leg. After about a minute of being drug, realizing what was going on and check my ankle, I disconnected my chute, and though with a terrible limp for a week to come, packed my shoot up, put my ruck on, took my shoot to the truck, we all gathered and did a 3-4 mile walk to the camp. I learned a buttload of valuable information about radios and shit and was really proud of my self for completing that end of course exam like I did.
---operate/licenses multiple 4wheelers, humvee, gmv, dirtbikes, large trucks, regular vehicles, boats, stykers, ride in planes and helicopters. I've gotten to drive almost every type of vehicle that has wheels, short of an 18wheeler, and rode in helicopters as well.
---Most military and law enforcement, etc aren't like how they are portrayed in the movies and shit. From seals, special forces and other units. Chances are you're not going to bruce lee people around, but there is a moderate level of hand to combat training, focusing on takedowns, usually with a weapon, or how to strike and separate. You do learn some useful things that may give you edge in a real world fight or a gun fight. There's a couple ways to quickly disable, or to reverse a hand gun pointed at you in under a second. Positioning of the foot to use the other persons weight to trip them down, just some shit that could help you out in sticky situation, but movies are movies, no one fights like that, ever.
---Situational awareness and a different more eye opening view of things. I also spent time in a long range reconnaissance and surveillance unit, and the main mission of a recon unit is it recon, usually for days at a time, covertly on small teams deep behind enemy lines far away from other units. So both ranger regiment and a recon unit both require a heightened situational awareness to truly complement the natures of the job. And after an advance situational awareness course, that was painfully long and focused on being able to read and interprets peoples body language and change in tone and other subtle body movements. When someone is doing something bad somewhere, if you truly look, you can easily read the uneasiness on their face, the nervousness and all sorts of signs. We reviewed metric fuck tons bf pictures and videos of actual terrorist, or people doing really bad shit, and broke down and analyzed every aspect of it. Some people are really, really casual about lying, and it's slightly harder to detect, but when most people lie, it requires them to actually think about it. Which for the average person causes a certain uneasiness that triggers those nervous habits, ie, grabbing watch / constantly looking at the time, nasal flare, skin may slightly redden around the face, a lot of blinking, fidgeting, tapping, hair pulling. While looking away can signify lying, you can't assume everyone who looks every at some point for a second and looks back is lying. People look away briefly to give the brain a super short break, but long enough to articulate more clearly on a thought. When I walk into a room a building or basically where, my mind instantly asses my immediate surroundings and simultaneously takes in all the people I see, what they look like, what they're wearing, if I look at their face, their facial expression, all possible exit points I can initially see, or suggest exit routes, anything I could use for cover or concealment, or any weapons. I've always been aware of my surroundings, but the military has taught me all the critical and small things to look for. I feel like I use to walk around so innocently, and while 99% of the time it's completely unnecessary in the civilian world, but that one time that your initial assessment of a room may save your or someone elses lives. Long story short - I see things from a very tactical and aware point of view.
This post was edited by sank on Nov 22 2014 03:33am