Big Mistake

We just got back from the field this morning. Well, we got back early this morning like at around 0100 hours but we didn’t get to bed until 0300 hours this morning. Then we had to wake up at 0615 this morning. That only left me with a little over 3 hours of sleep. It sucked. I knew it was going to happen. If it were my choice I would’ve decided to spend another night out in the field instead of coming back to the barracks in the middle of the night. I knew this would happen but I’m not the one making the decisions around here. I know that I’m not the only one that wanted to spend another night out in the field.

The only night we stayed out in the field and it rained on us. Out of all the days that we’re going to be here, I bet that that would be the only day that it’s going to rain here. I doubted if it were going to rain the other night or not. The clouds were low but there was no rain. There were a few sprinkles here and there at night but nothing that prevented me from sleeping outdoors. They did provide us with tents to sleep in but I was more interested in either sleeping outdoors or in the Humvee. I’ve slept in a Humvee before and it’s not too comfortable but it’ll work when it’s cold and raining.

So, one of my Joes got me a cot and I set it up right by the Humvee. I laid out my sleeping bag and went to sleep. Hallier and me both knew that we had to get to sleep early in order to get some rest because we had guard duty in the middle of the night. I hate doing guard duty. Especially in the middle of the night. The best nights to do it are either on the first shift, when everyone is getting to bed and still bullshitting, or in the morning on the last shift when you have to get up anyways.

When Hallier and me got up to do our shift it began to sprinkle a little. It was at 0130 in the morning. We had a 45-minute shift and we had to pull guard until 0215 hours. The rain was light when we woke up. It wasn’t hard. Then it stopped towards the end of our shift. I figured it wasn’t going to rain anymore and I asked Hallier what he thought. He was thinking the same thing. He didn’t think that it was going to rain much during the night. So I decided to continue to sleep outdoors after our shift instead of going inside the tent. Big Mistake!

I woke up all cold and wet that morning. I didn’t bring my protective suit to keep my sleeping bag dry either, another BIG MISTAKE. I should’ve learned my lesson by now. I’ve been doing this shit forever.

I really don’t want to get into what happened this morning. We aren’t really attached with our platoon right now. They split my platoon up and divided us between the whole company just during the training here at Yakima. Well, I’ll get into it briefly. I guess we misplaced a set of night vision goggles and lost a compass. A big mistake because we’re supposed to be accountable for everything. Well, at least it wasn’t on our vehicle. I knew myself that we had all of our equipment.

We spent the night looking for the night vision goggles and the compass. The goggles came up but the compass never did. We searched all the Humvee. Our squad leaders searched all of our equipment. We had to go through all these inspections during the middle of the night while the rest of the company was sleeping. It really sucked. I didn’t blame any Joes for what happened though. I blamed the leadership. I’m glad it’s a lesson that we learned here instead of over there. I just hope that they got something from it. Especially how items are accounted for. It wasn’t my platoon so I wasn’t running things but if I were they would’ve been a little different. I know that they have a lot of things to do but the leadership also comes from the squad leaders.