Were you ever in the Armed Forces

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I'm in the Canadian Army Reserves. I'm in basic training right now, and am going on an excercise in a week


I dont see how you would be allowed to be using a computer.........are you in High School...

cuz i know that training days are set not to interfere with school.
 
we did Nuclear Biological Chemical Defense/Warfare training today...next week we go into the gas hut for the actual gassing of us. We had to use the old 1983 suits for training. My god do those things ever make ya sweat.

The Gas chamber is great! I had a really bad cold when I went in and after I came out my cold was all gone. It drained out of my nose and every pore in my body! Pretty nasty but when I look back on it, it was quite fun.

And yeah Eric pointed out, wait till you have to wear that in the desert! It blows, dehydration my friend!

Could you also please answer Hussars question as well...
 
I remember my first leave home, eating dinner with my mom and pop. I said "This is some great effing chow, Mom". My mom's jaw hit the floor and my pop was rolling on the floor. He was a Marine between WWII and Korea.

Yeah I had a similiar situation as well. My father was just laughing but then again he spent 3 years as a Drill SGT before going to flight school.
 
because im in the Reserves it is part time, and i just go to the armories in my city every weekday 0900-1600, and then the odd weekend i'll be there and then theres the excercises like the one next week. I get home around 4:30 in the afternoon and thats when i go on the computer. If i was training for Regular Force i would be in Meaford doing this and wouldn't have access to a computer. Thats what i love so much is that i can be home late afternoon and have time to do regular stuff. But for July i will only be home on weekends if im lucky because im doing my Infantry course to become fully qualified which means i wont be using the computer at all during the week and possibly during weekends.
 
oh and i do one full day and then one hour each additional day of schoolwork related to my regiment and military history to get my school credits for this semester.
 
The day we went to the gas chamber was the same day we were to crawl the infiltration course. It was hot and humid( we were having global warming) everyone's fatigues were soaking wet( we looked like we had been swimming) On a 5 mile march from the rifle range a few weeks before we had had 38 men out of around 180 pass out from heat exhaustion, they were following us with ambulances and deuce and 1/2s and picking them up and throwing them in the back. It was hilly and when someone passed out you could hear them hit the pavement and then hear their steel pot roll down to the bottom of the hill. Anyway, after going through the gas chamber my squad along with an lt from the cadre were marching along toward the infiltration course and a jeep drove up with a bird colonel in it and he said"get these men in the shade" I thought,"thank you God" and found some trees. A trainee had died from heat stroke so we waited until night before we crawled the infiltration course. I had lived in Texas all my life, mostly before air conditioning, had been through 2 a days in San Antonio and Kingsville many times and I was never as hot as I was at Fort Knox.
 
We did the gas chamber the 2nd week we were in Basic. The day we did the infiltration course though we were going through all these combat scenerios and the Drill SGTs were gassing us with CS grenades throughout the mock battles.

We did the infiltration course at night as well and I was real glad because it had cooled down by then and also you could see the Tracer fire going over your heads better.
 
You sure could see the tracer rounds alright. When I went through basic in 1959, most of the cadre NCOs were Korean War vets and they were almost all really good people and very good at what they did. I look back on it and think how lucky we as a nation are to have men as competent as they were to serve especially for what they earned in those days. One of those NCOs was named Plaster and I believe he is either the Plaster who earned a commision and became the famous sniper and special ops guy or his brother because he certainly resembled the Plaster I have seen on the history and military channel.
 
Yes, Plaster was a MSgt in my company and I have a picture of him in a book I got about our basic training and every time I see Major (I think) Plaster on TV I think about the resmblance except he had more hair in 1959.
 
Seeing the tracer fire during night ops has always been one of my favorite evolutions. It's amazing the crazy trajectories that the rounds take when they strike objects.

Adler - I enjoy the gas chamber too! It does clear out your head! It's sweet when you take a shower just after it...
 
I sometimes would even get side tracked watching tracers comeing up from the ground in Iraq when were flying at night. I would have to catch myself and tell myself to stay alert. You learned over time to stop being awed by it.
 
Speaking of tracers there is something I should have known for a long time( as I used to be a hand loader and studied ballistics) but fairly recently learned and that is that tracer bullets don't have the same trajectory as a regular bullet so seeing tracers around your target in a dogfight does not necessarily mean you are hitting your target. In fact some pilots did not want tracers in their ammunition because it warned the pilot of your target you were shooting at him. Would some of you with operational experience discuss this. I remember firing a M2 50BMG at tanks and trucks on a range at FT Hood and watching the tracers richochet for what seemed like a long way.
 
Well for Door Gunnary from the Blackhawk Tracer fire was helpfull because you could still use the tracers to walk your rounds in. Granted in the desert you really did not need tracers because you could see the dust coming up.
 
Especially at night. I recall reading about an F4U on strike missions in Korea at night. The pilot intercepted a NK convoy rounding a hill side. He pours in some 20mm, sees tracer fire immediately returned and breaks engagement. Making another pass, he notices immediate return fire. Only then does he realize that he was seeing his own tracer ricochets and the illusion that they were coming towards him due to the lack of depth perception.
 

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