Gott’s Blog

So the exercise has been pretty exciting…except for those of us that don’t get to go to the field!  Ironically enough, some of the Joes are probably a little sick of going to the field already.  But from here it sounds like some cool stuff has happened. I’d like to talk about some of the stuff that’s supposed to happen tomorrow, but that would probably violate OPSEC, so I won’t go there. 

 The one thing that has been really fun is wearing MILES gear every waking minute.  If you don’t know what MILES gear is, you simply don’t know what you’re missing!  So sometime many many years ago, the Army bought the contract on this stuff that works kinda like Laser Tag.  Except that it’s bulky, and really friggin’ annoying.  it consists of three pieces: a harness contraption with a big ‘ol battery box that you wear kinda like suspenders, a halo that straps on the outside of the helmet (also conveniently fitted with a big ‘ol battery box), and an emitter device you attach to your rifle that shoots the ‘laser’ when it registers that a blank has been fired.  The cool part of this story is that even us REMF’s wear this gear, and things like fluorescent lights and copy machines seem to set it off.  And when it goes off, there’s this painful high-pitched squeal it makes, and since the speaker is conveniently located right next to your head, you begin to feel like someone is sticking a drill in your ear…did I mention how much I like this stuff?

And so, I present to you Exhibit ‘A’, MILES Mike.  Well, I don’t know if that’s the official name of the statue, but that’s what we call him!  Boy, I’m really gonna miss this gear when we check out of here….