Only took a pic before our insertion, but here’s an article.
My Soldier and I
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Waste of shiny stones fer sure
I’d say the bigger waste is operating these old ass Chinooks instead of upgrading.
Pre-deployment training isn’t really a waste, though. But I had fun.
How far is that, like a 100 miles or so? So must have been a fairly short hop, 45 minutes or so?
100 miles
Back in the day we would have marched the 100
That’s absolute stupidity, even if you weren’t exaggerating.
The point of rucking is to be at the enemy with minimum noise.
We flew in and walked a couple miles to Regensburg MOUT site.
A couple miles with full gear and I was tired, after 25 miles I feel dead and sore for a few days.
For reference, I’m carrying mostly a full battle load in the pic, plus body armor and ceramic plates. Quite a bit heavier than what you had to deal with, Duke. 
I’d say a full hour. We had to go out into the Sound and back up north in order to bypass some airports.
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Ya got too much stuff - part of the business
I’d rather fight light. Just a rifle… which is what we’re supposed to do in recon missions.
This training however, was urban operations where we’re expecting to take and draw fire… so… body armor.
So you guys are training for Jade Helm III?
What fukin army did YOU serve in? LOL I thot you had an aviation MOS.
When I was in the DR in 1965 I spent some time at San Isidro, the national airport where the Dominican AF had its 4 de Havilland Vampires, a handful of C-47s, and one Sikorsky H-34A Choctaw. All that shit was decommissioned and surplussed, the Choctaw was USN surplus and it had between 22,000 and 24,000 hours on the airframe which had a design life of maybe 2000 hours. They flew that bitch anywhere from 10-15 hours a day keeping an eye on shit. In the morning someone would come out and pour a couple of quarts of oil into the big old R-1830 radial in the nose, walk around it slapping tape on any new bullet holes, start it, warm it up til it quit smoking so bad, and off they’d go. I never saw any evidence of any preventive maintenance while I was there.
That’s what yer Chinooks are good for now. Strong AF, near bulletproof, easy to fly. A pox on yer “old ass” designation, they work and they’re paid for.
Yeah, I just complain. Lol
NATO deployment to Poland.
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You going?
I did data processing - Unit Record Equipment (punch cards) in 4 trailers that could be taken to the field - they expanded out 3 or 4 feet on each side - later they put a computer in one - you had to push the sides in then a tractor hooked up to it and away you go
kina like this
Kewl. So, how many 100 mile marches did ya do?
Not if I don’t reenlist.
$20k bonus sounds good… not sure if good enough. Lol
I remember seeing a bunch of these in that epic opening scene in Saving Private Ryan.
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Must be a magic FMTV- 100 miles long inside.
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I gotta go with zero on that
We used to have to run every morning - Me and this guy Bob took turns being first to drop out - runnin is not my thing esp at 6300 feet
Then I got to work third shift which got me out of most everything - rock painting and all