Back from Bridgeport
So! I'm back from my wonderful trip to the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in sunny Bridgeport, California.
Before I tell you how it was, I want to make it known that I came within inches of not even having to go. And not only not having to go, but going somewhere completely awesome instead, and for free. A couple days before we left, I was pulled aside by one of my staff sergeants and told that he had just talked to the company's most senior master sergeant. He told me that I was on the short list to go to Boston for Fleet Week, but since I was already on the roster for Bridgeport, I couldn't go. So I'm super glad that they sent me, a short-timer, to three weeks of mountain warfare training instead of a week of awesomeness in Boston, running some easy static display then going out and partying in my dress blues. I'm still not over it. NYC is having their Fleet Week right now, but I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go with me on such short notice.
So anyway, Bridgeport has to be one of the most remote Marine Corps bases I've seen outside of Iraq or Afghanistan. It feels like the kind of place Marines get stationed when they get in trouble. You fool around with a colonel's daughter and he finds out? Maybe you get "disappeared" to Bridgeport for the rest of your enlistment. It was hard for me to believe that the instructors out there volunteer for three-year tours. They're tough men.
Our training was broken up into week-long segments. The first week we'd go up into the mountains and do stuff, then come back to lower base camp to rest and refit. Then we'd go back up for another week. And so on. The big snowmelt didn't happen until the end of the second week, so until that happened, the mountains were full of waist- to chest-deep snow. We had to wear snowshoes to keep from plunging down in the snow, but with our 80-pound pack and weapons, sometimes it still happened and we had to help each other regain our footing. We didn't bring tents, so we slept in snow caves. We'd dig out the snow all the way to the ground, put a poncho or tarp over the top, and cram a few guys in there in their sleeping bags. It was surprisingly warm, and I actually got plenty of sleep out there. When the day's hiking was done, there was nothing left to do but eat, dig your bed, and go to sleep. So I'd usually go to sleep before the sun went down and wake up as the sun was coming up.
Our packs were filled with what we needed for the week, and although we were issued enough MREs to have three per day, I only packed enough to eat two per day. I rationed it to save space and weight. I lost almost 10 pounds throughout the whole three weeks, so what little muscle definition I had gained from working out since we've gotten back from Afghanistan, is now gone. Just in time for beach season!
And since the MWTC is in a national park, we weren't allowed to dig holes, leave trash, make fires without a permit, or even poop outside of a bag. But the instructors had fire permits, and as long as they were somewhere nearby, they didn't care if we started fires. Now, carrying your trash with you and not just leaving it around is completely legit rule, and that's something that's pounded into Marines' thick heads since boot camp. But I took personal offense at not being able to dig holes and do my business in them. Countless animals crap wherever they please in that national park, but I had to carry mine around with me until we got back to lower base camp? This was a rule that the instructors didn't seem to care about one way or the other, but the officers in my platoon made the NCOs ruthlessly enforce it. So I held it until I absolutely could not hold it anymore. Luckily, MREs kind of dry you up, if you know what I mean, so it wasn't that big of a problem. Just a gross premise.
We stocked up on clean water before departing lower base camp, but that was gone after the first day. So I filled up my nalgene bottles and camelbacks straight out of the mountain streams. We had water purification kits and iodine tablets, but that made the water almost too salty and disgusting to drink. So I just took the risk and drank stream water. And my gamble paid off! I didn't get sick.
The last few days of training, we were bused out to a supposedly abandoned Army ammunition depot in Hawthorne, NV, that the Bridgeport Marines use for live-fire. If I thought that Bridgeport was where Marines go when they get caught messing around with the wrong daughter, Hawthorne must be the place where Army soldiers get sent when they murder someone. It is literally in the middle of the desert, on an enormous plain between two mountain ranges. There is nothing there except sagebrush and rocks, and I didn't even see any soldiers there except for the poor souls who were guarding the gates. It's the kind of place you'd expect to read about in a Stephen King novel, where the base puts up a good front, but you just have a hunch that something shady is going on. We'd see government vehicles and 18-wheelers come in and out of the base, but we'd never see where they'd go. And we never saw any people! So the conclusion that we came to was that the government is either hiding nuke silos there, or, more likely, they're housing aliens and zombies underground.
But that about sums up the month of training. It was good for the guys going back to Afghanistan, I guess, in case the Marines ever move north out of Helmand Province and into the mountains. But it was pretty worthless for me, your friendly neighborhood short-timing sergeant. Now that we're back, I really hope to step up my slacking. You know, bring it to a whole new level. I've already gotten out of the annual rifle range (shooting for qualification), so that's two weeks where I won't be doing much. I'm trying my best to get out of going to the company's last big pre-deployment exercise in Arizona, which I think happens in August. And they go on pre-deployment leave in October and deploy shortly after that. So unless they send me to another unit, it looks like I'll just be sitting around in like a 10-man remain-behind element who just keeps the place from falling apart while the unit is deployed. So I just have to lay low until October, then hopefully I'm home free until I get out in December.
Happy Memorial Day weekend!
Before I tell you how it was, I want to make it known that I came within inches of not even having to go. And not only not having to go, but going somewhere completely awesome instead, and for free. A couple days before we left, I was pulled aside by one of my staff sergeants and told that he had just talked to the company's most senior master sergeant. He told me that I was on the short list to go to Boston for Fleet Week, but since I was already on the roster for Bridgeport, I couldn't go. So I'm super glad that they sent me, a short-timer, to three weeks of mountain warfare training instead of a week of awesomeness in Boston, running some easy static display then going out and partying in my dress blues. I'm still not over it. NYC is having their Fleet Week right now, but I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go with me on such short notice.
So anyway, Bridgeport has to be one of the most remote Marine Corps bases I've seen outside of Iraq or Afghanistan. It feels like the kind of place Marines get stationed when they get in trouble. You fool around with a colonel's daughter and he finds out? Maybe you get "disappeared" to Bridgeport for the rest of your enlistment. It was hard for me to believe that the instructors out there volunteer for three-year tours. They're tough men.
Our training was broken up into week-long segments. The first week we'd go up into the mountains and do stuff, then come back to lower base camp to rest and refit. Then we'd go back up for another week. And so on. The big snowmelt didn't happen until the end of the second week, so until that happened, the mountains were full of waist- to chest-deep snow. We had to wear snowshoes to keep from plunging down in the snow, but with our 80-pound pack and weapons, sometimes it still happened and we had to help each other regain our footing. We didn't bring tents, so we slept in snow caves. We'd dig out the snow all the way to the ground, put a poncho or tarp over the top, and cram a few guys in there in their sleeping bags. It was surprisingly warm, and I actually got plenty of sleep out there. When the day's hiking was done, there was nothing left to do but eat, dig your bed, and go to sleep. So I'd usually go to sleep before the sun went down and wake up as the sun was coming up.
Our packs were filled with what we needed for the week, and although we were issued enough MREs to have three per day, I only packed enough to eat two per day. I rationed it to save space and weight. I lost almost 10 pounds throughout the whole three weeks, so what little muscle definition I had gained from working out since we've gotten back from Afghanistan, is now gone. Just in time for beach season!
And since the MWTC is in a national park, we weren't allowed to dig holes, leave trash, make fires without a permit, or even poop outside of a bag. But the instructors had fire permits, and as long as they were somewhere nearby, they didn't care if we started fires. Now, carrying your trash with you and not just leaving it around is completely legit rule, and that's something that's pounded into Marines' thick heads since boot camp. But I took personal offense at not being able to dig holes and do my business in them. Countless animals crap wherever they please in that national park, but I had to carry mine around with me until we got back to lower base camp? This was a rule that the instructors didn't seem to care about one way or the other, but the officers in my platoon made the NCOs ruthlessly enforce it. So I held it until I absolutely could not hold it anymore. Luckily, MREs kind of dry you up, if you know what I mean, so it wasn't that big of a problem. Just a gross premise.
We stocked up on clean water before departing lower base camp, but that was gone after the first day. So I filled up my nalgene bottles and camelbacks straight out of the mountain streams. We had water purification kits and iodine tablets, but that made the water almost too salty and disgusting to drink. So I just took the risk and drank stream water. And my gamble paid off! I didn't get sick.
The last few days of training, we were bused out to a supposedly abandoned Army ammunition depot in Hawthorne, NV, that the Bridgeport Marines use for live-fire. If I thought that Bridgeport was where Marines go when they get caught messing around with the wrong daughter, Hawthorne must be the place where Army soldiers get sent when they murder someone. It is literally in the middle of the desert, on an enormous plain between two mountain ranges. There is nothing there except sagebrush and rocks, and I didn't even see any soldiers there except for the poor souls who were guarding the gates. It's the kind of place you'd expect to read about in a Stephen King novel, where the base puts up a good front, but you just have a hunch that something shady is going on. We'd see government vehicles and 18-wheelers come in and out of the base, but we'd never see where they'd go. And we never saw any people! So the conclusion that we came to was that the government is either hiding nuke silos there, or, more likely, they're housing aliens and zombies underground.
But that about sums up the month of training. It was good for the guys going back to Afghanistan, I guess, in case the Marines ever move north out of Helmand Province and into the mountains. But it was pretty worthless for me, your friendly neighborhood short-timing sergeant. Now that we're back, I really hope to step up my slacking. You know, bring it to a whole new level. I've already gotten out of the annual rifle range (shooting for qualification), so that's two weeks where I won't be doing much. I'm trying my best to get out of going to the company's last big pre-deployment exercise in Arizona, which I think happens in August. And they go on pre-deployment leave in October and deploy shortly after that. So unless they send me to another unit, it looks like I'll just be sitting around in like a 10-man remain-behind element who just keeps the place from falling apart while the unit is deployed. So I just have to lay low until October, then hopefully I'm home free until I get out in December.
Happy Memorial Day weekend!
posted by Ryan at 5/30/2010
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