Every semester, BYU Army ROTC performs a Field Training Exercise (FTX) to prepare third-year cadets for LDAC, and provide some hands-on training for everyone else.
We left Thursday afternoon. Each cadet had the standard ruck sack along with a duffel bag with a sleeping bag, mat and four MREs (which we were to nibble on whenever there was down time.) Once all three platoons were loaded on the buses, we hauled up to Camp Williams, a national guard base located north of Lehi (between Salt Lake City and Provo.) Camp Williams is vast...seriously, this thing stretches out forever.
Upon arrival, we unloaded in the Forward Operating Base (FOB)...a gravel-grounded enclosure with standard army green tents.
While on the FOB, and really throughout the whole exercise, we were to always travel with a "battle buddy"...even when going to the latrine. The "buddy team" is the smallest unit in the Army. It's not much unlike the mission field.
My shadow on the FOB was this plucky young freshman...who by the way handled the whole "expeditionary" environment well.
We slept on the ground in our sleeping bags. Even with all this cover, we froze. It got
cold at night:
By 2330 lights were out...six hours later, they came back on and we hustled into formation as a company to gain accountability (that's a militaristic term for attendance.)
On Day 2, we focused on STX lanes. Basically, those are battle drills that we practice for given scenarios (reacting to an ambush, knocking out a bunker, etc.) Throughout the day, each third-year cadet (myself included) was given the opportunity to lead a squad into a battle, while senior-level cadets evaluated us on following proper procedures and leadership techniques. It was lots of fun! Here's my squad:
They were a good little group. After going through a few exercises, we got good at working as a team. We also had plenty of "down time" between lanes to munch on our tasty (heh) MREs:
We used airsoft weapons, which aren't as messy as paintball...and the weapons are more realistic-looking. All our exercises were safe, but we did have a few injuries:
Yes, one cadet sat on a cactus...and yes, we did have to pull those out of his rear end.
At the end of the STX lanes, we returned to FOB for our night land navigation exercise. Just as the sun was setting, we each received a map, a protractor and set of grid coordinates to record on our map. We were to go out, armed with just a compass and flashlight, and find these points in the dark. It was challenging to say the least, but I did okay.
The next morning, we had a three-hour daytime land navigation exercise that started about twenty minutes before the daylight! Needless to say, it was much easier in the daytime...plus Camp Williams looks amazing at sunrise:
...and here are a pair of cadets who located their point and are writing down the "code" on their scorecard.
The less-experienced cadets got to work in pairs.
Once that was completed, we got to do some repelling!:
Doesn't that look fun? I'm deathly afraid of heights, but after the first try, it's easy. I want to do it again to improve my technique (I was making a very gradual descent and one of the Captains was like "Kolkena, jump like you mean it!")
Once we were all done with that, we got back on the buses and returned to BYU for a final formation, equipment return and dismissal.
Here we are getting our last briefing from Sergeant Straight.
