While in Korea, I spent probably close to six months of my time in country out on FTX. For the civilian readers, that is Field Training Exercise. Your unit goes out "to the field" for an amount of time. This is usually the local countryside, but there are also large areas the military owns specifically for this sort of thing - wargames. After all, the entire point of going to the field (besides making sure your equipment works) is to practice fighting so you can do it for real later.

Sometimes it is a day or two in order to test some new equipment, or to practice a specific maneuver or task. Sometimes it is a few days longer where you practice alone or with another unit against an imaginary unit. Other times you are actively "fighting" against another unit. Your guns have blanks and adapters, and you all wear the MILES gear, which is like laser tag. Those engagements were larger and lasted longer - might as well get your money's worth.

And no matter what kind of FTX you are out on, you are BORED. AS. FUCK. For most of it. Maybe except for the theater wide exercises like Team Spirit or Reforger that involve tens of thousands of service members across multiple branches and nations. You are too damn busy during those to get bored for more than a few minutes.

No, most FTX's are boring. At least as an ADA soldier. (EDIT: That is Air Defense Artillery) We roll out to the forest and hills in the designated exercise area. Our LT assigns each squad an area to protect after the battery is dispersed through the unit we are supporting. We analyze the terrain on the map as a squad. Where is the best terrain to both mount a fighting defense if we get hit with infantry or something, and also get our missiles off? How may ways to relocate quickly are there? Having a 4WD HMMWV or a tracked APC like the M113 or M163 made that easier. We went anywhere we wanted.

We pick a primary, secondary and tertiary firing position. We scout all three. For the tertiary one, we mark it on the map. For the secondary, we go and dig a hasty fighting position and make a quick map of fields of fire. For the primary, we dig in the vehicle and ourselves as much as we can. Some of us took prefilled sandbags with us to help out. Make a really detailed map of fields of fire and terrain. Put up camo nets, plywood, etc. You go all out for that one. That is the position that gets inspected by the platoon sergeant and others. So you take pride in it, but you also want to learn to do it right in case you go to war.

But then all the fun is usually over unless the larger unit you are supporting is moving. Sometimes command would simulate an attack and we would pretend to shoot down an enemy aircraft. When you aren't shooting down imaginary planes, you are listening to radio chatter.

Holy shit did that get old quick. At least in Korea we knew the enemy we just miles away and what we were pretending to do could not only help us win the war but also save our lives. So we didn't bitch much, but we did bitch. Team Spirit was really the only FTX I had fun on.

That boredom forced us into finding ways to have fun during that downtime.

In Korea, that looked like a few things. Rappelling down some 20-25 foot cliffs along side a hilly/slightly mountainous road for hours one day. We met up with two of the other squads on the edge of the exercise area, and found some cliffs that were about 20 feet tall. None of us had been taught how to rappel in basic training, but one of the guys had been to Air Assault school. He knew how to hook up the ropes, tie the knots, etc. So it wasn't long until we were taking turns going down this 20 foot or so cliff face. Nevermind that we were supposed to all be in our primary fighting positions. We were bored, and the team chiefs for our three squads said "fuck it" and we basically abandoned the exercise for an hour to go play. We were having a great time until we got a call on the radio to head in to the battery TOC for the night.

Telling endless jokes with your team chief or squad mates. I told jokes that would make me puke and get banned from reddit if I told them today. Soldiers are degenerates. Wondering if North Korea was going to start shit this month for the second time. Would they get uppity and shoot at Americans on the DMZ like us or just shoot at the South Koreans like they did most of the time? Seems they knew better than to shoot at Americans - it didn't happen often.

You learn to live in your head a bit. You stay busy. Maintenance to be done on the vehicle. Clean your rifle. Eat. Try to nap. Listen to more radio chatter. Oooooh - I just shot down another imaginary plane - yay. We did our best to make decent meals out of our civilian food we took and the MRE's, but it wasn't always easy.

FTX was never that exciting for sure. It is long days, you are dirty and exhausted, and everyone is on everyone else's nerves by the end. But you practice over and over and over. The old axiom still holds true, "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war."

FTX's taught me a lot, and I picked up a few awards over the years for my performance. But they are boring as hell.

OneLove 22ADay Glory to Ukraine