Today was full of surprises so say Taloney and I have to agree with him. It started out when we were both woken up for Arms Guard Duty. We weren’t informed of it earlier and the company wasn’t going to have formation until 0800 because we were having a long day today. Taloney was happy because he didn’t want to do PT and I didn’t feel like doing it in the rain. We both knew that today was going to be a company run which means that they would all run for a couple of miles. We had our take out breakfast in the arms room while everyone else was still sleeping. I knew that the rest of the company wouldn’t get up for breakfast unless they were told to wake up at a certain time.

When Taloney and me got off duty we went back into the barracks to get our stuff ready for the training today. I just had to make sure my MILES (Laser Tag) equipment was on my weapon and my vest and ready to go. We were all a little pissed off in 2^nd squad because no one informed us that we were supposed to eat lunch at 1000 hours before the 1100 formation. We would not be eating hot lunch or dinner in the field. So, some of the guys missed out on breakfast because they were too lazy to get up in the morning and they missed lunch because we weren’t informed that we were supposed to eat before we left.

The training in the field made the day drag by so slowly. The movement wasn’t too fast and the communication was pretty messed up. It’s ok, I’m used to it. I’ve been through this in the Army before. It’s not always perfect and I think that a lot of guys, especially the leadership, need to work on their communication skills. Half of the time we didn’t even know what was going on or what our mission was. I wanted to take initiative at times but then I figured, what if I had my team do something that we weren’t supposed to do. So I would just wait until we get yelled at for no doing what were supposed to be doing when we don’t know what’s supposed to be done. It’s funny, they want the Sergeants to start showing some leadership but it’s hard to do that when we don’t know what is expected of us. I had some sense of what the mission was today, the company would be going into the town to root out insurgents, but I didn’t know when and how we would go about it. I think it’ll get better as we go along.