We ride the short bus - Mor-Tards!

That was my suggestion for our platoon name and motto. We DO ride a short bus; there's 32 of us in the class.

11-C school is easily the most challenging military school I've been in so far. Not because the subject matter is hard to understand; heck, we haven't been TAUGHT anything conceptual yet! But rather because of the complexity of the fine motor skills that we have to develop in ONE WEEK, in order to pass our Gunner's Exam.

We have the exam tomorrow, and it's going to be tough for some of us. Possibly including me, although I've been working hard to get as much time playing with the dials and knobs as I can. It's just that, like any other fine motor skill, repetitions are what grant skill, and you can only do repetitions for so long before you end up burned out for the day and need time to recover.

Other than that, things have been good. I haven't had the opportunities yet in this school to witness that I had in my other assignment, the dismount squad. But I've tried hard to have a good attitude and avoid losing my temper or spouting profanity when I'm having trouble with the tasks. That might just make me look like I don't care, this being the military.

I've also gotten terribly sunburned and windburned. We've been out in a field for the last three days. The first day was bright and warm (high 60's). The second day was cold (low 40's) and partly cloudy, with a consistent 5+ knot breeze. Today was similarly cold (40 or less) and sunny, and with a similar breeze. My right ear might fall off from sunburn (kidding!). But seriously, the right side of my neck is scorched, and when I'm in a warm room, my whole face feels like it's in 130 degree water.

Mortars are really neat, and the more I work with them, the more interested I am in finding out the details of what happens when we do certain tasks, and how the mortars get used and suchlike, but I know that now is not the time to ask those questions, since we need to pass the exam on Saturday. Failing the exam on Saturday means you're out of the class, and none of that other stuff matters anyway, then. So I've kept my questions to myself (VERY hard for me to do), and just put in my time working on the knobs and dials.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m252.htm is a website that includes an image of the mortar we've been training with. Thank God we have not had to pack it anywhere - we load it in a box and truck it out to the field everyday, while we ride our short bus.

There's lot of other exciting stuff about what we'll be doing, but it might risk opsec, so I'll keep it close to the vest until I've had time to think about it more clearly.