An Adventure on the Roof

A maintenance guy was on the roof to clear off all the stray balls. We were hoping our soccer ball would be located before we moved, but to no avail. Benjamin thought he needed to be in the stairwell when the guy went onto the roof and asked if he could go on the roof with him. I'm sure the guy didn't think Benjamin could reach up ~5 or 6 feet and scale the wall to get on the ladder, but he didn't know that Benjamin has been practicing. So, he told him that he could go up if he could get on the ladder (and if I said it was okay). He was surprised to see Benjamin climbing up behind him. I promised I wouldn't incriminate the maintenance guy by including details of the location of these photos so he wouldn't get in trouble with his boss for allowing Benjamin to go up on the roof.

Platoon Marching Compitition

We practiced marching on and off for during Chaplain Initial Military Training (CIMT). This was supposed to take place a week earlier, but it kept getting delayed. My Platoon was the only one that stuck with standard military movements. The other three Platoons made it look like an interpretative dance. It made sense why they were spending so much time out there. It was frustrating to have it pitched as a military marching contest, to only see a bunch of silliness that was not remotely in the Field Manual (FM).

Battlefield Movement

This was a long day of ranges. The pictures are from the morning. In the morning we practiced individual movement under fire (no pics of me doing this one). We high crawled for 50 meters, than we low crawled for 50 meters, crawled under barbed wire for 5 meters, and than rolled over a small wood wall. There was pyrotechnics going off the entire time.

The pics are from when we practiced battlefield movement with Chaplain Assistants. These young men and women are trained to protect the Chaplain at all costs. You can see from the pictures, that the Private is rolling on top of me and than I got up, grabbed onto him as we rushed to the next piece of cover. It really opened up my eyes to what the Assistants are trained to do.

Here we are taking cover behind a rather beaten up Pontiac Fierro. What you can't see in the picture is that just prior to getting there, I slipped and fell cutting open my hand on the rocks. On our way to the car, the Assistant slipped, and I was able to haul him up and we got to our cover.

I am looking forward to meeting the Chaplain Assistant that I will be assigned. I was impressed with all of the Assistants at the range that day.