FTX 3 -Day 5 (Final Day)

19 August 2011
Day 62

Final day of FTX 3! And what an interesting day it turned out to be! Wake up at 0500 with breakfast chow at 0800. Duty squad had the truck loaded with gear we had to return and after chow we headed to the main post to return it. However, on the way to the main post we found out that our priority was not returning the gear, but finding two missing soldiers from our platoon. Long story short, two soldiers had gone to sick call the day before and never showed back up at the patrol base, nor had they contacted anyone. So, duty squad rode around with our senior drill sergeants for 6 hours looking for these two individuals. They were nowhere to be found. Finally, around 14:30, they were reported AWOL (Absent without leave).

Duty squad came back to the FTX site and performed our training with the hummers like the groups from yesterday. Our team did well. The Battalion Commander, LTC Brown, was watching and he had some good comments about our techniques, as well as the drill sergeants. We finished right before dinner chow @ 17:00. The the real work began. Duty squad had to pack everything, collect and sort all ammo, and clean up many areas. No fun, but it did help pass the time. We finally bunked around 2300, knowing we had to wake up at 01:30 for our final training test: the 16k ruck back to the barracks.

I have more info on the AWOL idiots. They did indeed go AWOL. They were traced through the Greyhound bus system as passengers on buses to Kentucky and Chicago. More on them when updated.

Matthew