Stuff

Today I got to sleep in 'til 0400. It's depressing to be able to type that sentence. We had a Class A inspection which I somehow passed 100% despite my uniform having been in a box since June and me putting on the bits of shiny by eyeball alone. I think that the first sergeant was distracted by the two epic fuck-ups standing behind me.

A kid fractured his neck being a dumbass in combatives. It was a simulation of crowd control, and he somehow managed to get his Kevlar to fall down over his eyes. He panicked. He took off at a sprint, tripped, and landed headfirst on a wall. He's in a halo thingie now, complete with struts drilled into his skull. He'll live, but I doubt he learned the lesson of "If your helmet covers your eyes, push it back up." It's amazing how the obvious solution evades us when we're in a panic.
I had to resist the urge to write 'Keep your chin up' on the get-well poster.

For the record, when I went through I immediately 'shot' the guy who grabbed my secondary weapon. A second guy tackled me, I kicked him off (shouting "Bad Iraqi! No cookie! No chocolat*!" as I did so) and 'shot' him. The NCO in our group did even better, beating them back with his rubber ducky before the big guy grabbed him. The NCO calmly put a pistol to the side of the big guy's head and said 'bang'. Another kid was pretty damn hostile - he had his knife out and 'in' the attacker before he hit the ground. It was pretty cool to watch.
*: Not misspelled, the Iraqis pronounce it funny.

We did a land nav course yesterday. The group I was with had it wrapped up forty minutes before the next team and about two hours before the last team. I'm fair to sure it's because they realized rather quickly (with a little pointer from yours truly) that land nav courses are maintained by a buncha old graybeards who don't want to walk for hundreds of meters, so almost all of the points are within about a hundred meters or so of a path. It was refreshing for them to put down the damn compass and just navigate. It's been my (albeit limited) experience that compasses are good for orientation, resection, and intersection, not for actually navigating your way from one place to another.