Now I'm doing some Army training - Part 1

So my life here at Fort Sill has started to pickup - some! We were actually busy on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this past week.

Wednesday started off with us going to do some HEAT training (Humvee Egress Assistance Trainer) or rollover training. (You know the Army and their acronyms!) Anyway, this training is to teach soldiers what to do in the event that their vehicle starts to rollover, whether it is by our own doing or by some IED or road-side bomb (sorry folks, but it happens). Apparently, there are staggering statistics that says the basic soldier is not prepared in the event their Humvee flips. Plus the fact that everything now is the up-armored Humvees so their center of gravity is way different. Anyway, the first day was just the class portion and only lasted a couple of hours. But again, the purpose was to teach us some different things explain how the next day would happen for the actual rollover training. Now my first thought was "we're actually going to get to rollover some hummers!!" but I knew that wasn't going to happen. So when we went the next day, it is actually a simulator machine. Its built just like a humvee on the inside, but the difference was that we would actually get flipped upside down. Once we first got in, they explained how the doors worked. The up-armored doors weigh 240 pounds and have a special locking mechanism. So obviously they want you to try them out. So once everyone is in and buckled and has the doors figured out, they start the machine. The first thing is they take you 25 degrees one way, then 30 degrees the other to demonstrate some of the max limits a humvee can go to. Then, they take you ALL the way around. Talk about a roller coaster ride!! It was sweet! For the next part of the training, they take you and turn you upside down--and then you and your team have to get out. Riiiiight. When you first get upside down, you have to wait about 10 seconds before they tell you that you can exit the vehicle. So if you think about it, we were just hanging upside down by our seat belts. Once they say "GO!" you have to unlatch your belt and FLOP. It was a good thing we wore helmets. :-) Anyway, you then have to get the doors open and everyone get out. As easy as it sounds, the doors gave some people some problems. The combat locks can be tricky. Needless to say (ahem), I was the first person to get ours open in our team. Piece of cake. It was SUPER fun but I'm hoping I never have to put the training to use. Anyway, some of the pictures are from this training.

This is what it looks like BEFORE you start rolling.

Round and round we go, where we stop...

And here we are completely upside down.

And now everyone GET OUT!!!

It was actually pretty tough but still a lot of fun. You can get so disoriented so easily when you're upside down and trying to remember which way to pull down and back (or up and back) on the handle and then try to push open the 240 pound door.

And then later that day, we went to a basic Iraqi language class. They gave us this little pocket manual. Apparently there are a whole bunch of civilian Iraqis on the base daily so I should get a little practice.

Its entitled the Language Survival Guide. Hilarious. Anyway, I'll have more to report on day 3 of cool Army training in the next post. Love you guys.

Josh