This started as just a plug for a band, Five Finger Death Punch, but I got carried away (WAY too long). I hope you all don't mind, I want to start constructing a story, maybe even turn into a book one day. I plan to explain my experiences from the Army, Basic, joining young, as well the wart itself. But I also want to introduce a band that, with my family, also helps me get through so much, Five Finger Death Punch. If it is okay with everyone, I'd like to continue to add to this thread until it's done.
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I joined the Army at 17 years old during my junior year in high school as part of the delayed entry program. A little over one year later, it is July of 2001, and upon HS graduation I meet with my Army recruiter for the last time before I take my flight to Fort Benning, GA as an official member of the United States Army.
Fast forward some weeks and I am a mere week away from graduation from Basic Training during our final training exercise, as MonsterJam knows as well (my Army veteran brother), the event in which we take all learned and apply it to a simulated combat simulation.
The day is now September 11, 2001, and our once strict, rigid, tough Infantry bred Drill Sergeants (mind you this is Fort Benning, home of the 82nd AIRBORNE Div at the time - also the satellite site for Ft. Bragg) call us all into an open field for a, what we thought, was simply another moment for Drill Instructors to utilize the moment for another learning experience via hardened learning as I like to call it. This time it feels very much different than the normal way we were used to experiencing our Drill Instructors, there was dread, despair and what I thought as an inevitable fear of their fate.
Drill or not, you are still a US Army soldier too, feeling the very same emotions us trainees would. As they began to explain the events occurring that Sep 11th morning the emotions shown by them sunk in. After the explanation they had to do, with the mindset of a teacher to a student after a tragic event, had to break the truth to us, "We're going to war." This was the last thing heard prior to graduation as we learned our chosen duty stations.
I now know my future in this new, modern era of war, of conflict. I would be joining the 66th Military Intelligence company, the largest "MI" company in the known world. We were an attachment of one of the most feared heavy armor regiments in the modern age. The 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, consisting of an inconceivable number of 72 ton M1A3 main battle tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Scouts and an entire aviation squadron. Though thrown into a world of turmoil and deployment uncertainty I finally find a sense of comfort, confidence and enter a Brotherhood I will be a part of forever.
It is now December of 2002, and we begin to hear news of our leaders next plan to combat the atrocities of this world, that target is Iraq. It's now 2003, January, as the brisk moist freezing weather overtakes and takes our very breath, we learn this may actually be our last company run along the golf course and foothills of Fort Carson, CO.
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I joined the Army at 17 years old during my junior year in high school as part of the delayed entry program. A little over one year later, it is July of 2001, and upon HS graduation I meet with my Army recruiter for the last time before I take my flight to Fort Benning, GA as an official member of the United States Army.
Fast forward some weeks and I am a mere week away from graduation from Basic Training during our final training exercise, as MonsterJam knows as well (my Army veteran brother), the event in which we take all learned and apply it to a simulated combat simulation.
The day is now September 11, 2001, and our once strict, rigid, tough Infantry bred Drill Sergeants (mind you this is Fort Benning, home of the 82nd AIRBORNE Div at the time - also the satellite site for Ft. Bragg) call us all into an open field for a, what we thought, was simply another moment for Drill Instructors to utilize the moment for another learning experience via hardened learning as I like to call it. This time it feels very much different than the normal way we were used to experiencing our Drill Instructors, there was dread, despair and what I thought as an inevitable fear of their fate.
Drill or not, you are still a US Army soldier too, feeling the very same emotions us trainees would. As they began to explain the events occurring that Sep 11th morning the emotions shown by them sunk in. After the explanation they had to do, with the mindset of a teacher to a student after a tragic event, had to break the truth to us, "We're going to war." This was the last thing heard prior to graduation as we learned our chosen duty stations.
I now know my future in this new, modern era of war, of conflict. I would be joining the 66th Military Intelligence company, the largest "MI" company in the known world. We were an attachment of one of the most feared heavy armor regiments in the modern age. The 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, consisting of an inconceivable number of 72 ton M1A3 main battle tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Scouts and an entire aviation squadron. Though thrown into a world of turmoil and deployment uncertainty I finally find a sense of comfort, confidence and enter a Brotherhood I will be a part of forever.
It is now December of 2002, and we begin to hear news of our leaders next plan to combat the atrocities of this world, that target is Iraq. It's now 2003, January, as the brisk moist freezing weather overtakes and takes our very breath, we learn this may actually be our last company run along the golf course and foothills of Fort Carson, CO.
