Miles and Miles

The first time I joined the Navy, I joined the Civil Engineer Corps. After completing our training at Officer Candidate School, where unfortunately I did not get to karate fight my drill instructor Officer and a Gentleman style, I went for additional training in Port Hueneme, California. This is a beautiful area just outside of Santa Barbara.

The first week of training consisted of a field exercise. Which is sort of like camping, in the same way a travelling carnival is sort of like camping. We had tents and cots, but everything was on an enormous scale. We had multiple trucks full of gear, we not only set up sleeping tents but Comm Centers, a giant dining tent and so on. One experience, in particular, sticks out in my mind.

It was the Warrant. Warrant Officers are an interesting bunch. In the Navy, you can become a Warrant Officer only after making it to Chief Petty Officer, an achievement in itself. In theory, Warrant Officers are sort of a bridge between Enlisted and Regular Commissioned Officers. They are generally regarded as subject matter experts, and are very intelligent. They are usually incredibly salty and almost without exception hilarious. Most of them have been in the Navy for a significant amount of time before they become Warrants, and they tend to stay in for awhile longer. I am so glad we had a Warrant in our group. Although he was a relatively new officer, he had been in the Navy for 15 years or so at the time I met him. For whatever reason, he decided to take me under his wing.

The first thing the Warrant did was to appoint himself head chef and declare that he was not going to participate in any of the field exercises. For all of us new people, we were super excited about the field exercises, because it was a chance to traipse through the woods in Camo with an M-16. We had this pretty cool system that was like laser tag on steroids. You wore a series of sensors on your chest and back and had another set on your helmet. A laser was affixed to your rifle and you were armed with blanks for the weapon. When you fired the weapon, it would trip the laser. Depending on where your laser hit the other person they would hear either 1, 2, 3, or 4 beeps. Increased beeps meant the hit was more lethal. If you landed a kill shot, the other individual would hear a steady beep that could only be turned off by an instructor. Although you could still fire your weapon after a kill shot, it would not trip the laser, so it became an expensive party favor.

Before we got started, the Warrant advised me that I should take all the ammo I was issued and bury it. I thought he was crazy, where is the fun in that. So, I ignored the Warrant and thought I had made the right choice as I burned through as much ammunition as possible. The Warrant was definitely the right man to run the kitchen. He consistently cooked really good meals for the 80+ people we had, armed only with a BBQ and a few other rudimentary cooking machines. Perhaps my favorite part, was that you could pop up to the dining tent in the middle of the afternoon, after a fairly intense fake gun battle and he would cook you a real nice hot sandwich with the crispy bread and the gooey cheese. It was made even better if you ate it under the warmth of the sun with your rifle across your knees.

Throughout the course of the week, you do a number of different engagements interspersed with practical training. The staff members represent the opposite forces and wear a different kind of cover (hat) to distinguish themselves. If you happen to knock one out, they will take their cover off and wave it in the air to indicate that you killed them. On one of the later days, we were on a patrol up on a ridge. Down in the valley, probably 250-300 meters away, we saw a group of staff engaging a fellow platoon. The maximum effective range of an M-16 is about 400 meters or so. I don't know why I decided to do what I did next. I took a knee, chambered a round and fired. Two things happened almost at the same time. First, my entire platoon quickly turned around to figure what the hell I was shooting at, and almost at the same time I saw the staff members hand go towards his cover. As he took it off, he was looking all around wondering where the shot had come from. That was the closest I would come to being a sniper, just an incredibly lucky shot.

On the last day in the field we had to break camp. Once again, the Warrant came through for me. He told me that I should grab a shovel, put it over my shoulder, look angry and limp. That is what we did for the next few hours, no-one ever asked us to do anything. The Warrant knew all the tricks. I was about to see his best one yet.

At the end of the exercise, we spent an entire day at the armory. The weapons get pretty dirty from all that firing, particularly from firing blanks. The armorers who run the armory are very strict. Once you bring your weapon up for inspection, they will conduct a very detailed inspection with a white cloth, if any part comes back dirty you are sent back to clean it again.

I glanced out of the corner of my eye, and there is the Warrant, smiling as he absent mindedly gently rubs a cloth over his immaculate weapon. Again, he was smart, he could have turned it in early, but he was content to just take in the sun as we furiously digged into every knook and cranny of the weapons. I could hear him chuckling the entire time.