A Delicious Meal, Maybe.

So when we were out at the farp we had a lot of MRE's to eat. I have received some questions about MRE's before so I thought that this would be a perfect time to take some pictures and do a post about the wonderful thing that is a Meal Ready to Eat.

MRE's come in several different menu's with this particular one be meal #17 sloppy joe.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the entire contents of this package. From the top left to right is the MRE bag; baked snack crackers(also known as Cheeze-its); Orange beverage powder(gator-aide); a beverage bag for coffee or the beverage powder; cheese spread with jalapeno's; a spoon; wheat bread(more like cardboard); a heater to eat up your food; the sloppy joe(in a bag in the box); a condiments bag with things like a wet wipe, salt, Tabasco sauce, coffee, matches, and chicklet gum; and another wheat bread.

To eat up your meal you pour a little bit of water into the green bag and stick the meal in then wait about 10 minutes and it will be warm enough to choke down.

Here is the completed meal. Looks delicious doesn't it? No it doesn't I know.

If you're lucky you may get a meal that has M&M's or Skittles in it. Of course everyone knows which meal's those are in so you gotta be quick to get those ones when it's meal time in the field.

Where Has All The Common Sense Gone?

I really enjoyed this posting at Scattered Stones about the death of common sense, here is a few examples of no common sense of things that have happened to me lately.

I have not felt like posting much lately. I don't know why, just haven't felt like it lately. Sorry. Anyway's the farp went ok. Could have gone better but the officers in charge of planning it did a poor job of that. Probably due to a lack of common sense. That is going to be the dominant theme in today's posting by the way. Common sense, or lack of. Anyway we would get out to the farp at 6:00 am and the weather would be nice with a clear sky. Clear of clouds and helicopters. By noon the clouds would roll over the mountains but not so bad that the pilots couldn't fly. But they didn't. As we say the Apache is a all weather aircraft with fair weather pilots. By mid afternoon it would be raining and we would go home at 6:00pm. A full day wasted. This went on for two weeks with the random aircraft coming in once in a while. However I did get a army achievement medal for being the best pad chief and working the hardest out on the farp so that kinda made up for some of the crap.

The next thing has to do with my recent status update on facebook. For those of you that didn't see it I posted that I hate my unit and company commander. There are a few reasons for this. The first happened a while back when we had to come in a mothers day Sunday to work because apparently we weren't working hard enough during the week and getting aircraft fixed but there was several other things leading to this that weren't our fault. We were doing the best we could with what the higher ups were giving us. The second reason happened last Thursday when we found out that another company had lost two FCR's which sit above the rotor blades on the Apache and can locate tanks, trucks and other sort of large enemy structures. It's a big radar. Altogether these two components are worth about $15 million. Yes, $15 million. So we spent two hours looking for them after work when we should have been at home. We later found out that they were in the back of a truck the company had sent to get painted. There is much more that I could go on about but that doesn't matter. Just let me ask, do you lose all common sense when you assume command of a military unit, or are some people just not born with it? I personally would go with the second answer. I do feel a little better for venting though.

Questions Answered

I had planned on answering these earlier but the gunnery was not going very smoothly and after working from 5:00am to 7:00pm all I felt like doing was sleeping at the end of the day. But I will post about that later.

1. If you were not in the army what would you do for a career? If you had asked me this when I would have said without a doubt be a pilot. Now I would still like to get a pilots license but I think if i wasn't in the military I would probably say be a police officer or something close to that. I will never be able to have a office job.

2a. Do you miss your Mom? of course
b.  What things in the army live up to your expectations and what do not? I didn't really have a lot of expectations when I joined. I didn't know what I was getting into. I did expect basic to be hard, and parts of it where. I didn't expect to have to put up with a lot of the politics and other sorts of stupid things that commanders and other higher ranking people can pull.

3. Is it harder than you thought living away from family? In basic and the first few months it was. But it isn't so bad anymore. I am able to call them everyday, talk for as long as I want, plus we can use a webcam whenever. There are still moments though. I think the worst times is the day before and after I leave from being home on leave. I don't like those days.

4. I would like to know what your favorite part of being in the military is? There is a lot of things I enjoy. How many people can say they work on a multimillion dollar flying weapon everyday. Or have done all and seen all the things I have since joining. But I think the best part is the memories I will have. Like getting lost in Korea, or any of the things we did in Korea for that matter. Things like that are what I really enjoy.

5. Are you glad you're not in Korea right now? Yes very. I have heard that the troops there are on high alert which probably isn't very fun. I would really like little Kim to wisen up because I don't want to end up back there.

6. So is Army food as bad as all the "army songs" make it out to be? It depends where you are eating it and what it is. Some things you learn to avoid and other food you get every time you see it. However if you are in the field, you can almost expect to not enjoy the food. But if it's a hot cooked meal you eat it anyway simply because it's not a MRE.

7. Are you looking at the Army as a career, or only short term? That's undecided yet. I planned on becoming an officer and going to flight school but I don't know if I want to do this for the rest of my life. I waiver with that everyday. But I don't have to make that choice for at least another three years.

8. So far how do you like Colorado??? So far it hasn't been bad. The weather could be better but when it is nice it's beautiful. And there are so many places to explore you should never get bored. I kinda sound like a brochure advertising CO. So who wants to come visit now?

Thank you to everybody who asked a question. Here's to (possibly) another 100 posts!

100 Posts

So this is my 100th post. I don't have anything witty to say so I will leave it short today. The gunnery is not going to well. I will post more info on that though once it it over. I have seen lots of other blogger's do a little Q & A segment on there blogs for certain occasions so I decided to do that. If you have a question post it in the comments and I will post the answers to them next week. Otherwise hope your week and weekend have been going better then mine.

That's Pad Chief to You

Well I hope every one has a good relaxing memorial day. I know I will because I have a busy 2 weeks coming up. It is once again time to go to the farp, which stands for Forward Arming Refueling Point. Basically it is where we armament dawgs make our money. The Apaches will come land at the farp and we will load some 30mm rounds and rockets up then the pilots will go shoot at some targets.

At a farp the spots that the helicopters land at are called farp pads. The head guy in charge of each pad is called the pad chief. And lucky me I got put as the pad chief for the number one pad. This is good and bad. I am looking forward to doing this because I love working at the farp. It's always awesome, loading up rounds and rockets with blades spinning and feeling the immense power of the aircraft as it lifts off the ground just feet from where you are standing. But the bad part is that the number one pad is usually the busiest.

This is supposed to be a two week long gunnery with the Apaches firing during the day the first week and at night the second week. However it is supposed to storm and rain off and on this entire week, so I guess we will see how much ammo we actually go through.