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.
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