COL Nighthawk Day 3

Our time here at the COL is almost finished, and I'm glad. Today we went over how to run and ECP (Entry Control Point). The ECP is the first line of defense for a base, or in our case, COL Blackhawk. There are 3 major pieces to the ECP: tower/gate guards, searching personnel, and the QRF (Quick Reaction Force). The tower and gate guards watch all the vehicles coming in, as well as the pedestrians and the respective holding areas for both. The searching personnel look through and underneath vehicle for anything suspicious, and also hand search any pedestrians. The QRF are the badass boys of the ECP, and I was glad I was picked for it. Anyone can call in the QRF if there is any chance of the ECP being overrun or heavily damaged. If anything gets out of control, we are called in to kick ass and take names later. Asking for the QRF is reserved only f or serious situations, and it’s not a force to be toyed with. We were called a few times that day, for everything from a riot to a sniper holed up in a van outside the gate. It was actually a fun exercise, and we did really well. Chief Mule Face was on Alpha Team of the QRF with me, and we had some fun running around with machine guns and firing blanks at simulated enemy, sliding behind barriers and calling in over the radio that we “need more fucking ammo up here sarge!!!” haha.

All in all, everyone learned just how chaotic the ECP can get, and how important it is to report anything suspicious before it gets out of hand. Everyone also learned that it is best to have all the badasses on the QRF. It felt good to be able to run everything out and kind of escape the bullshit for a few hours and concentrate on the mission. I don't know why, but I'm letting some of the soldiers in my unit get on my nerves about things that normally wouldn't bother me.

I also got dropped by Sergeant Know-It-All today too, for the second time. I've begun to take a different approach to this deployment, and I'm not sure if it's going to work for me. I told a good friend of mine before I left that I had planned to keep a light attitude towards this trip, and she agreed that it might be the best idea for me. Well, it sort of bit me in the ass when Sergeant Know-It-All called me out on it today. He took me outside after I spit out a few jokes before a class, and told me I am "not allowed to joke anymore". This is a senior NCO, been in the Army ten plus years more than me, and he's telling me I can't joke!? Talk about a waste of time. This guy should have so much more on his plate regarding our mission and the welfare of our soldiers, yet he insists on singling me out to stop my "unnecessary and disruptive horseplay". Now, I see Horseplay in the same league as GrabAss, and I clearly was doing neither from the position I was sitting in. Anyway, I did pushups while Know-It-All was explaining this to me, and I couldn't help but smirk. Know-It-All was about to blow a gasket, when a captain came outside to tell us class was starting. Nothing like getting saved by a captain :)

-Mac