BOLC II - Week 4 - Day3

Intense PT! A mile run to the stadium(DoughBoy Stadium), then we did the stairs. Then we drew weapons and headed out to the MOUT Site, McKenna. MOUT stands for Military Operations in Urban Terrain, which is basically moving in an urban environment and entering and clearing room.

I think the general consensus among the soldiers is that the preferred way to clear a room is either a tank round through the door or fragmentation grenade(sorry, but my preference is the health and safety of my soldiers. I am pretty unapologetic in that regard. This other stuff is far more dangerous), but unfortunately the ROE (Rules of Engagement) don't really allow for that anymore . So we are back on the standby of having 4 soldiers enter the room, packed right next to each other and exploding into the room, each heading to the point where we can dominate the room (killing any stupid bastard who is stupid enough to threaten American, Coalition or Iraqi forces).

The MOUT site is actually pretty cool. I will put some pictures up on Friday (as we will be staying out at the MOUT site tomorrow to do some night operations) of the place as it is pretty impressive. I commented to couple of my classmates that it really feels like a video game, since there are all these 1-3 story buildings that have no furniture and are all pretty much shells. Very much like some of the video games that that I have played over the years.

This stuff requires a lot of practice and repetition. Its actually pretty fun, since its a very active task and also requires you to think and move dynamically. Every room and building is different so you must constantly adapt the tactics to the situation. Today was all just familiarization with tactics, learning the correct way to handle different situations and working together as a tactical team. It looks really cool when you are working well together.

We worked on this stuff right up to 1600, boarded buses and then headed back to the barracks. I write this wearing my BDU's (today is the last day we can wear them in the Army so I figured one last hurrah, as of tomorrow they are no longer an authorized uniform) doing CQ. Tomorrow we have a long and exciting day, as we will begin to train with an OPFOR (Opposing Force) who will defend the buildings. Perhaps even more interesting is that we will be armed with Simunitions, basically big paint guns (they remove the upper part of our M4 and place a new one in that is designed to handle and feed the simunitions). Then we will do it at night before laying down to sleep out there.