Convoy Operations

For the last two days, we've been training on convoy operations. Since the majority of the injuries to American soldiers in Iraq occur during convoys, the Army has taken some big steps to train us on convoy operations. In six years of active duty in the 90s, i only fired my rifle on a rifle range; never from a moving vehicle. Yesterday, I trained all day to do that and today I did it with live rounds. We drove four Humvees down a road and shot live rounds out of both sides. This type of dangerous training would never have been done by logistics troops before 9/11. Only infantry troops did such live fires then.
During today's training, we got hit by simulated IEDs twice and we were ambushed by insurgents 4 times. The four-vehicle convoy that I was leading had two disabled vehicles and three injured troops that I had to call in a (simulated) medevac helicopter for. The evaluators seemed to be pleased with my group's performance and the Lieutenant Colonel in charge told us that we were ready to execute a convoy in combat. That was nice to hear and I could tell he didn't lavish praise on every group that came through.
The top comments of the day, though, were when the NCO evaluator who accompanied us on the live fire training said that he would roll with me on combat patrol in Iraq. He served 12 months in Iraq last year, so that meant a lot to me. Right after that, one of my NCOs, SSG McElroy, said "That's my boss." That was the ultimate compliment. I hope that I can live up to my troops' expectations and bring all of them home safely.
I'm glad that the training went well today and that no one was shot by accident. Like most of this training, I hope to never have to use it.