Sunday, June 28, 2009

And Thus Be It Ever When Free Men Shall Stand


In clearing space on my camera for the upcoming adventures, I ran across a few shots of fellow Alphaholics singing the national anthem at the memorial service for our cadavers earlier this month and thought I would add a few more introductions. Lieutenant James Wirthlin, here on the left, is also a gem of a human being, but is not in our platoon, so we'll let someone else introduce him somewhere else. On the far right is Lieutenant Robbie Wetzler. Robbie isn't self-conscious about showing enthusiasm or curiosity or nerdiness. He has a confidence that comes from internal stability and doesn't need to validate himself from the judgments of others. Just right of him is Lieutenant Andrew Fisher, an acupuncturist in his former life and Army linguist before that. I've known him just a few days shy of a year now, and I don't think I've ever seen him upset. He has a serenity one might expect from someone who's studied eastern medicine, but wouldn't necessarily expect from someone running with a litter or shouting over simulated gunfire to get his team in position. I've nominated him platoon massage officer, though I'm not sure his certification is still current. I haven't exactly told him this yet. Lucas Groves has been voted platoon hug officer (also perhaps without his full knowledge and consent), though Sameer has put a procedural hold on the appointment until we elect a second, female hug officer, just in case Sameer lapses into "need a hug" status while the affirmative action measure is still pending approval.

The soldier in the beret is Lieutenant Marion Keehn, a former trombonist in the Army band with the magic superpower of getting the lights and sound to work correctly in the lecture halls. There is a line in Wuthering Heights (which may be perhaps the only redeeming thing about Wuthering Heights) where Cathy justifies her manipulative, vengeful, abusive relationship with Heathcliff by claiming, "Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Until that moment, I had never really thought that Cathy was the same as Heathcliff, and I thought less of her for thinking that, but that concept of being made of the same substance as me describes a few of the friends I have run across in life, and Marion is one of them. We both came from households permeated and shaped by NPR, where Cheerios and steamed broccoli were not just more healthy but more moral than Lucky Charms and canned green beans, and where road trips were about family bonding, darn it, not curling up in your own little world with headphones and a book. One could be stranded on a desert island with him for quite some time before it would start to get boring. I'm not exactly sure why you would train your trombonist in dead reckoning, but, between the two of us, we rocked the land nav course by eyeballing it, barely even breaking out a pace count or compass (though in the classroom he did pull out his calculator, which he had programmed to calculate the azimuths, just for fun).

We'll fill in more as the week progresses.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Esprit de Corps






















The Alphaholics started the morning on the soccer field with a round of overhead claps and a birthday serenade to Catherine Imes and Aubrey Waters. For those of you taking notes, feel free not to celebrate my birthday with any sort of calisthenics. Chocolate cake will do.

There are sectors of my life where I fancy myself to be rather impressive, and random bystanders have occasionally confirmed that assessment. The problem is that I generally am not amongst random bystanders in these sectors, but rather people who live and breathe those sectors. I will give an example. My best friend from college ballroom and her dance partner were grabbing lunch at a cafe across the street from their studio a few years ago when their waiter recognized her partner and asked excitedly, "hey, didn't you dance in that Latin demo last week?" He said he had, and waited for the follow-up compliment on how incredible their dancing had been. "Man, you look great in spandex!" (My friend, who looks pretty hot in spandex herself, sat there next to him thinking, "and what am I, sliced meat?") The three of us were discussing afterward how, coming from someone with no ballroom expertise, that was probably a more meaningful complement than just telling them they danced well. They could be twice as impressive as they are or half as impressive as they are on the dance floor and would probably still get pretty much the same reaction and comments from people on the street.

I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. See, I'm wary of trash talk. If I am clearly better than someone at something, how weak and insecure does it make me look that I feel the need to point it out and rub it in? I probably can't even take credit for much of the difference anyway--I got started earlier than they did or was given a more suitable genetic endowment or better opportunities. Or I'm just more into it. And if there's even a chance that I'm not clearly better than them, how much of a fool suitable for the pity of Mr. T do I become if I've talked myself up only to be beaten? Much better to let my performance speak for itself.

Not everyone in our class has the same philosophy, however. Someone from one of the other platoons challenged us all to a last-man/woman-standing push-up contest. To me, this seems rash. Given the number of incredibly fit members of our class, it would take a lot of chutzpah to presume you could outdo all of the rest of them, even if you are one of them. But down we went on Major Burns's count, then up again, then down. Now, the number of push-ups I can do is impressive to most of my civilian friends, but I don't talk them up because it doesn't mean much to be able to do more push-ups than someone who isn't tested on them to stay in his career, and the number is nothing special by military standards (even Air Force). So down and up I went until I was clearly breaking form, and then I stood up to cheer. As the numbers climbed higher, more and more people dropped out until the only four I could see left down were Amy Alexander and Edward Dolomisiewicz from our platoon and Connie Barko and Sean McIntire from the two platoons beside us. As they topped 130, their jugular venous distension got so prominent you could have just hooked your finger around the whole vessel. By then everyone's form had gone to pot, but Major Burns kept ordering them down and up, so they just kept going. Amy dropped out before Major Burns okayed resting in the "up" position and the rumor from the crowd surrounding Sean was that he had already taken a knee and was now back up just to push the others. To be honest, I think if Connie hadn't kept going past 150, Eddie wouldn't have kept going, but with all of us there cheering our lungs out he just pushed on until Connie dropped at around 172. She seemed pretty bothered that someone had beaten her. For his part, I think Eddie would have been fine had there been ten more people still up who just kept going beyond his breaking point (when your standard is the Rangers, it only means so much to beat a bunch of medical students), but when it was clear that it was down to just the two of them, he tapped into some hidden reserve and kept going by sheer force of will.

I decided yesterday that that's what I like most about our platoon. Not that we win a lot, though that certainly doesn't hurt, but that nobody is trying to lead by the ego. Eddie can beat the whole class in a push-up contest, but he's not so presumptuous to challenge the whole class to a push-up contest. Effective and expedient orders in the field often don't have room for friendly courtesies, but in the Alphaholics, nobody's pride is hurt when they're yelled at to move up or get down or take cover behind a bigger tree. Nobody's jockeying for position or trying to override the leaders of any given exercise or taking offense when her idea is passed up. When something goes wrong, we make corrections and adjustments on the spot, but then in the after-action reports we say "we made a bad judgment call in such-and-such and need to get x better next time" rather than "he made a bad call in such-and-such." Nobody makes comments just to hear his own voice.

We didn't win any of the individual skills awards this time around, it would have been pretty hard for any of the other platoons to top our esprit de corps. The only other platoon that had a motto was Lieutenant David Garcia's platoon's "Death Before Discomfort!" Which, I have to admit, is catchy. And if I were teamed with a bunch of people who didn't much care, I probably wouldn't mind so much partaking of their casual apathy, and I think most of our platoon members are probably the same way. But since the first week's military studies lab when we discovered a brilliant synergy that turned a physics experiment (creating an egg-protecting structure) into a risque yet ironic infomercial with pop-culture references and very un-PC stabs at public figures that still managed to be artful--since that very first moment when we tasted the possibility of victory, we have been driven. Our guidon is a work of art--a bottle breaking through bars with our motto "You can't C.A.G.E. this!" on a background of cammo-pattern flannel, execution courtesy of Catherine Imes and Nicole Baker but conceptually the product of group brainstorming, guarded diligently by Anthon Lemon. Plus the motto itself, with it's nerdy patient-interview reference twisted into an irreverent and sassy chant--how could we not have fun yelling that? We may not have individual superstars in the hot, buttered macho-on-a-stick sense or even the top level of collective proficiency, but we've got ganas and we've got style, and I'll take those any day.

The training itself for today was on preventative medicine (PrevMed). Ensign Rebecca Hardy from one of the other alpha squads briefed us on all the things we'll need to buy--oh, excuse me, do--before we go out: camelbacks, gobs and gobs of sunscreen, tons of socks, GORP, ear protection, bug spray, antihistamines, different wipes for different assorted body parts, and anything else that might possibly come in handy while being attacked in the woods of Fort Indiantown Gap Kazerkisan, Pennsylvannia. Somehow my conception of this whole exercise had been that we would spend the entire time in tents (except when they would send us out on missions in the middle of the night) and under constant attack by opposing forces and would only be able to bring what we could lug to the tents in one duffle bag, but I'm not complaining that there seems to be time built in for a religious service on Sunday and decompression while we're waiting to help Bushmaster. There are books I got for Christmas that have been taunting me from my desk for months as I parceled out my precious discretionary time to exercise and friends and sleep and found very little left to keep my droopy eyes open on another page. I still can't get over the fact that I'm actually on break.

But, once again, ahead of myself. PrevMed. Some people find this boring. I probably would have, too, had I not spent a year and a half in Central America after undergrad, where we didn't take things like potable water coming out of the tap (or sometimes any water coming out of the tap) for granted. To me, this is part of what makes America great. The Taliban or North Korea or even someone like China, if you get injured in combat to defend its ideals, is not going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into your medical care and rehabilitation, will not provide a lifetime of V.A. disability compensation. To America, military manpower is not expendable. We have invested too much in your training and your family and your future to send you on a suicide mission. And because we have so much vested interest in our troops and their effectiveness, it matters to us to what toxic materials we expose them and in what quantities, and whether or not they have hearing when we are finished with them. We are the most powerful military in the world because we are well armed, yes, but also because we have environmental engineers that make sure we are not incapacitated with dysentary and entymologysts and permethrin to keep malaria at bay and work-rest cycles to prevent heat casualties. Would Robert Mugabi do this for those defending his ideals? I don't think so.

After lunch we did an AAR (after-action report) on the week's training with Major Burns. In my own cheesy way, I believe AARs are also part of what makes America great. I mean, what kind of culture, what kind of an institution and system goes back after the fact to ask trainees how to train them better? It shows a respect for our intelligence, a humility, a desire for excellence, a capacity for introspection, an attitude that celebrates progress and doesn't condemn the admission of mistakes, an expectation of accountability for all participants. It also gives us all a chance to get a peek into what the other participants' perspective was and to reflect on the original mission and goals.

And now we're off for two weeks. I'll probably add a few things here and there in the next week that I missed, and then will have to figure out the logistics of blogging from up in Fort Indiantown Gap Kazerkisan, Pennsylvannia. But, no worries. I'll scribble a few notes on the back of leaves of not-three and stuff them in my pockets with my MREs as I'm running from enemy fire so I don't forget anything important.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Did You Ever Know That You're My Helo?















































































This morning's training on extraction began as many mornings do, with Powerpoint. Major Burns explained to us that there are four types of people in this world. The sheep just cower and wait for someone else to act upon them. The wolves prey on the sheep. The sheepdogs stand against the wall and say "everything's going to be alright." The wolfhounds track down the wolves and destroy them so they are no longer a threat. He neglected to mention a fifth type of person--the computer techs. Without them, neither the wolfhounds nor the sheepdogs can get their Powerpoints to work.

During the interlude while we waited for tech support, Lieutenant Brian Pomerantz from one of the other alpha platoons demonstrated how to remove an injured victim from a crashed car without aggravating any potential spinal injuries. Apparently, the the best way to keep them on a backboard is duct tape. Why is everything cooler when it involves duct tape? I sometimes get so caught up in how awesome our platoon is that I forget that our entire class is filled with people who are pretty darn spiffy. We've been operating in closer quarters with them today as we rotate through various missions, and I've been impressed with how often it occurs to me "oh, wow, it'd be great to have him/her on my team, too." I guess what makes our platoon exceptional to me is that it's filled with people who are under-the-radar awesome. Take Ensign Seamus Cobb, the delta team leader. Who would have bet the quiet, skinny redhead kid would have taken first of all the men in the class Marine PT test competition, beating out all the ostentatiously macho men in our class? (Though not, it must be noted, beating Amy Alexander.) During our third extraction exercise this morning, Seamus was promoted to platoon sergeant, and, as medic, I was assigned to stick with him like glue until there were casualties to treat. I could barely keep track of all the decisions he was making, seamlessly coordinating intel and orders from up front and reconnaissance from the flanks and behind to direct the movements of two rear squads, all of them operating with new leadership. He kept his cool when we were engaged from close range, adapted to changes in operation orders without flinching, and knew not only where all his chess pieces were at all times, but where they would need to be three moves ahead and how to get them there safely. Expect great things from that man.

But I am ahead of myself. Our first exercise involved extracting an IED victim from a Humvee that looked suspiciously like Major Burns's wife's Yukon. Minutes before the operation started, however, all three squad leaders and our platoon leadership had simultaneous cardiac arrests (have they no age caps on med students anymore?) and were taken out of the picture. Nicole moved from my Charlie team leader to second squad leader, and, by a careful and thorough rock-paper-scissors deliberation, I was chosen to take over Charlie team. It is so much more complicated to play the chess game than to be a chess piece. It's not enough for me to hear "bang-bang" and drop, point towards it, and yell it back. But when you're a leader, you have to think about where everybody else is supposed to drop and whom to leave covering security when the fire is suppressed and how to fill in gaps as each segment advances. You have to decide whether being able to see the opposing force is sufficient reason to hold everybody ready to attack or whether the fact that they're not actively firing means you can spare a few to fulfil other aspects of the mission. We managed to hold a solid perimeter, though, long enough that Catherine Imes the Supermedic could stabilize the victim and Anthon Lemon and Kevin Gray could carry him, first to the casualty collection point (CCP), then all the way up to the helo landing zone (LZ). I know these men in real life, and still I am amazed at the speed they carried that litter up that hill. Even simulated desperation seems to work for an adrenaline boost.

Our second mission was a hostage rescue. Our trek through the woods went wonderfully, easily suppressing the minimal hostile fire, until the opposing force saw us coming and detonated the bridge across the ravine. (Jaime Piercy, our real-world walking-wounded casualty, took on photo duties and trekked back and forth across the woods and even took some great aerial shots from the top of the out-of-play bridge.) So we--that's right--crossed the water. You can't really get away with "let's just not and say we did" when the building with your hostages is on the other side. For the sake of all the real-world cars in the parking lot surrounding our target building, we went on non-tactical mode to cross the parking lot, then set up road guards and attempted to secure a perimeter around Building 59.

And then things began to go wrong. Edward Dolomisiewicz directed me to guard a four-foot gap between a corner of Building 59 and one of the brain research labs while the first squad entered the building and secured the combatants and hostages, but I was on the medic's support team that needed to follow them up to help bring down wounded. My squad leader, Dan Bailey, who had managed to guide us all across the ravine faster than I ever thought I could run up and down such a steep gradient, placed Ensign Sameer Saxeena at the guard post on the corner. Sameer inched forward just a few inches too far, and one of the insurgents grabbed the musket of his rifle, came around the corner, and shot Sameer and our entire medic support team before any of us knew what was happening. I have to hand it to Bailey, everything we accomplished as a platoon outside the building from that moment on was a result of his quick reshuffling. With Jen Nuetzi, our original medic, now out of commission, Catherine Imes took the supply bag and an extraction team up into the building to bring down casualties while Bailey tightened our thinner perimeter security as more guards were taken off line to watch EPWs (enemy prisoners of war) and care for the wounded at the CCP. I didn't mind being dead so much, slumped along the side of the building and being carried into the shade, until a bug flew into my nose. When you're dead, you can rehydrate and reapply sunscreen and shout warnings at the guards not to place EPWs so close to piles of rifles. When the building was finally cleared (the two hostages we had been sent to rescue were nowhere to be found, rendering the whole mission gratuitous), the medivac came and magically healed and/or resurrected the rest of us casualties so we could escort the prisoners back across the ravine and woods to our original HQ. We took some fire from the sides and had a moment of chaos before the platoon leadership realized that they couldn't send EPW teams to pull peripheral security, but made it back with no new casualties.

Our third mission involved rescuing downed pilots--you guessed it--on the other side of the ravine. By this time Seamus was already wet to almost his waistline from plowing through the water on the last mission, and most of the rest of us had at least boots wet with sewage run-off stream water. But this time I was medic, so got to watch most of the chess game from the inside. Dan Raboin was platoon leader, and I have to say I was blown away by how effective and thorough communication was this time around. Unfortunately, somehow we misunderstood the original scenario and did not realize there was a second pilot to rescue until the litter team came back with the first one. They were tired and fairly deserved to switch out, but they were also already familiar with the terrain where the plane had gone down, so they had to do a second set of stream crossings and were not relieved until I had treated the burns and hemorrhages of the two mannequins. Watching my friends struggle to carry these mannequins made me much less sympathetic to the people who want weight limits in the military to be relaxed.

In the afternoon, we went over communications codes, both within ground forces and between the ground and a helicopter. Then we went back out into the fields to practice 9-lines, hand signals with noise discipline, and helo directions. (In between, one of the NNMC departments having a picnic in the pavilion invited us to eat their spare cookies, burgers, and chicken. It doesn't count as raiding and pillaging if you're invited, does it?) If you're ever looking for group participation, just call out "who wants to be the helicopter?" I can't think of a single time before this when all of us volunteered at once. Who doesn't want to be the helo? Then you can sing along with Enrique Iglesias, "I can be your helo, baby. I can kiss away your pain (oh, yeah). I will stand by you forever...." Anyway, today Dan Bailey was my helo.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

If They Decontaminated Me So Thoroughly, Why Do I Still Feel So Dirty?
















First off, I would like to apologize that I did not play paparazzi this morning. In my quest for consistently sharp action shots (except for, um, the ones where the camera woman is running), I have been recharging my battery every night. This morning I remembered the camera, but not to grab the battery from the charger. Catherine Imes got some decent shots, and a small cadre of videographers came to follow the morning's action, so it did not go entirely undocumented.

The morning began with the news that last night a man ran into Major Burns's fist. While Major Burns was walking in Georgetown with his wife, a middle-aged drunk tried to mug him. When he threatened to stab the pair, Major Burns broke his jaw and gave him a subdural hematoma, compressing Major Burns's fourth and fifth metacarpals in the process. He then proceeded to administer aid to the man like any good ER doc would do. ("Now, can you describe to me what happened?") To me mugging in general seems like a rather bad idea, but, even before seeing Glen Burns in action, I would still judge him to be a sub-optimal target. Something about the height, the shoulders, the utter lack of timidity, but, hey, what do I know?

This morning's adventures consisted, in the words of Lieutenant Edward Dolomisiewicz, of "getting paid to play GI Joe." Remembering, of course, that I never played GI Joe when I wasn't getting paid for it (unless you count the summer we set up little green army men to be Spider Special Forces in the shower to maintain security). For me, it's an exercise in irony, pretending to play GI Joe with my fake gun. For Eddie, the irony is that the gun is fake. It was hard not to get enthusiastic, though, when Lieutenant Dan Raboin started us out in full face paint and ultra-nerd gas mask insert goggles. Raboin was an Army pharmacist in his former life, and has always struck me as polite and reserved, but paint him green and out pops a commander capable of instilling obedience and just a little bit of anxiety in his troops. He and Eddie gave us a brief classroom overview on the basic choreography of tactical movement, then took us outside, handed out our rubber duckies, and coached us through individual movement techniques to stay alive while crossing terrain and engaging enemy forces.

Lewis Thomas writes about how one solitary ant or termite or fish is pretty dumb, but get a critical mass of them together and suddenly they move as if coordinated by one mind. They can turn en masse to evade a predator or devour a meal and can build using seemingly spontaneous structural design. Brazilian soccer players are kind of like that, handling the ball as a collective unit rather than as individual decision-makers. When Dan and Eddie took us out to the field and Dan took Ian McDougall, Dan Bailey, Lucas Groves, Amy Alexander, and Seamus Cobb through right-flank ("blackjack") maneuver with an enemy engaged, that was the image that came to my mind, this wonderful coordinated dance of running and crawling and shooting and popping up and down and yelling "bang-bang."

So we spent the morning trying to get the rest of us that well in-sync. In a stupid, myopic sort of way, I never really figured there was all that much an infantry troop had to know how to do. Point, shoot. Not shoot each other. Not get shot. Just those four tasks take a surprising amount of teamwork and practice, and we haven't even addressed doing the second one efficaciously yet. I am suddenly a lot less indignant about the fact that early in Operation Iraqi Freedom we had more casualties from friendly fire than from opposing fire and the fact that the number one cause of death in active duty military is accidents.

USUHS was built on the NNMC golf course and has some wonderful rolling, manicured hills that are pretty ideal for crawling around on one's stomach holding a fake rifle in various formations. Once we had mastered the sitting-ducks open-air maneuvers, we trekked into the woods and engaged the enemy from within the trees and ground-cover. I learned another reason to be grateful for my k-pot helmet; it makes a great battering ram against tree branches that would otherwise have constantly been slapping me in the face. My team leader is Lieutenant Nichole Baker. She likes things done right, and I respect that. She dislocated a rib last week and it's killing her not be full-on rough-and-tumble at all of this. At one point, we were attempting to charge up a ravine, and my boots could not find anything to grip in the mud. Every branch I tried to grab broke off in my hand like in a cartoon. Dan Bailey behind me had to run up and give my rear a boost, for which I was very grateful. We never quite got the whole group to be as smooth and synchronized as the demo team, but we did manage to bump off or capture every combatant we faced today without one of us dying, which was a huge improvement over yesterday. Jaime Piercy twister her ankle, but pressed on and navigated the afternoon on crutches.

This afternoon Seargent Ermle taught us how to handle attacks with chemical, biological, or radiological contamination. The trick is to put lots of dreadfully hot clothing and equipment between yourself and the outside world. The other trick is that previous users covered this clothing in charcoal powder to neutralize all things nefarious (except, of course, the spiders living in the gas masks), and that charcoal powder infiltrates everything. The NNMC decontamination experts came to show us a portable decontamination station, we learned how not to stab ourselves accidentally with the Valium pens, and we got to check out fake ordinances and IEDs. Then came the MOPP gear. We looked a little bit like astronauts and little bit like GI jet-puff marshmallow men before we put on the gas masks and a little bit like aardvarks or space invaders with the gas masks and a little bit like chimney sweeps in the charcoal, but it certainly beats dying of weaponized botox. Then we proceeded to do the MOPP gear decontamination strip-tease, just in case you were worried that we would make it through a training day without having a pretense to feel each other up.

When I got home, I called my roommate from the driveway so he could open the back door and I could strip off my cammies in the backyard and toss the whole blackened, muddied, and grass-stained ensemble in the wash without getting anything on the rest of the house. With my gear off, you can make out a bruise the shape of West Virginia just above my elbow. Actually, now that I look around, I think you could probably find a bruise on my body the shape of any one of the fifty states right now--this one from the butt of my weapon, this one from diving to take cover behind a log, this one from putting up a little too much resistance against the marine combatives trainer yesterday, this one from the Swiss seat. I have a massage scheduled for Saturday morning and I don't want her to be gentle. If it were a doctor about to see that much of my body, I would worry about having to explain that I'm really not a domestic violence victim, but I think with a masseuse I should be safe.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Introductions

Like any good story, Living Outside the CAGE will introduce its audience to pertinent characters as we go along, and leave the judgment of them to you. But I thought early on I should throw in a few highlights.

In our platoon, we all bring various talents to the table. Steve Colonna, for instance, brings a level-headedness and a knack for simplicity that makes him a comfort and a pleasure to follow. I know he won't ask us to do anything unless it's important. Catherine Imes brings style. Amy Alexander brings a gung-ho enthusiasm for all things challenging and the skills and persistance to back it up. Eddie Dolomisiewicz brings mature, pragmatic real-world expertise, and, more importantly, a patience for those of us who don't have it yet. And he brings duct tape that's so awesome that they don't even call it duct tape, they call it hundred mile an hour tape. Dan Bailey brings a Texas penchant for action. Lucas Groves has a pleasant-naturedness that always makes people more comfortable when they're around him. I feel very confident in the quietly capable hands of Dan Raboin and Andrew Fisher. And me? I bring snarky commentary and the chutzpah to share it with the world. More on team members later.

A Rather Successful Day, Except for the Getting Killed at the End Part















The Alphaholics began Day 2 at the luxuriously late hour of 7:30 a.m. in Lecture Room E, learning how to plot a dead reckoning course on a map, not to fall into ditches, and that azimuth is not a classic science fiction writer. In preparation for our every-day navigation across the landscape of Kirkeshner, Lieutenants Lucas Groves and Daniel Bailey taught us how to translate the lines and squiggles of a contour map into elevation gradients and geographical landmarks. After a few practice runs and measuring our paces on both flat and , we plotted our own courses connecting various checkpoints in the USUHS woods and set off with nothing but an aerial photo of the grounds north of campus, a blank grid with our calculated course, and clunky, Vietnam-era compasses. Lieutenant Keehn also brought along his wrist-mounted GPS, though it didn't get much signal in the woods. In teams of two, we got first-hand experience in figuring out how to translate trajectories through bushes and across ravines into something a little more navigable (though a few of us did play balance-beam across the logs).

After lunch Ensign Jaime Piercy taught us about the legal treatment of Enemy Prisoners of War and what to do if we are caught in such a situation. (Hint: resist. Then resist some more. Then try to escape. Don't give up, don't give useful information, escape, escape, escape. But if you're a doctor, treat all patients, including the enemies'. Then escape.) Ensign Seamus Cobb went over how we search and subdue captives. It involves more gratuitous pat-downs. Between practicing searching for bleeding, checking one another's harnesses, and searching for weapons and contraband, we've gotten a lot of practice groping one another this week. At least they're teaching us how to do it respectfully. (Hint: you don't need to, um, dwell anywhere. A quick sweep should tell you everything you need to know.)

Now I'm not a big woman, and I've always assumed that my self-defense strategies should involve things like not harassing people with known impulse-control problems or surrounding myself with people who have ulterior motives to keep me intact, but I appreciated the very useful, practical instruction on immobilizing the limbs and head and maintaining a search-ee off-balance. Then we went outside and got to practice. Wooo-eee was that fun. We worked on various two-on-one and three-on-one take-downs. I had been resenting our k-pot helmets for two days now, but I have to admit that mine probably saved me from a concussion when I decided to see just how much resistance I could put up against Lieutenant Anthon Lemon and his wrestling expertise. And wow--what a rush. I think I got the grass equivalent of rug burns on my face and am definitely developing bruises across my arms and legs, but I managed to hold them off for what seemed like a respectably long time. I wonder how his wife Val would take it if we just got together to wrestle in the living room every once in a while. For practice. We could, you know, move the coffee table first. Across the softball field, people seemed to be having similar jolly good times twisting and writhing on the ground in groups. The only thing missing would have been Jello.

To top off the afternoon, we learned how to clear buildings and rooms with "rubber duckies" (mock M-16s). At first we were very successful in rounding corners and shouting "bang" before the opposing force hiding behind those corners shouted "bang," but by our third attempt to clear all insurgents from Building 59, our platoon sustained massive (that is to say, complete, universal, total) casualties because of one sneaky booger who kept hiding in the bathroom stall and sniping people coming around the corner one by one. I will never enter a bathroom the same way again. Unfortunately, despite the incredibly Hollywood-esque setting in a building built around two-story dive tank with observation windows, we were never able to shoot them in such a way that they staggered backward over the railing and splashed into the water. Oh, well. For a day in which the entire platoon died, we can only expect so much.

Followers