El Torro's LZ, Explosive potatoes, Hotties with guns!

I am back from Camp Guernsey, Wy. Though I thought that we where going to get to fire the Mark 19, we didn't for several reasons... but I did get to fire the 203 Grenade launcher. The best way that I can describe what it is like is to say that it is a potato cannon... with high explosive potatoes! When you fire it, it makes that potato "POOP!" sound, then you can actually watch your round all the way to the target... then there is a very gratifying Kaboom! when your potato sized slug impacts in a small white sphere and shockwave. It is very intuitive to use and I was able to send my first round through a truck window at 200 yards. It may have been luck... but I don't think so.

I also learned that I should pay more attention to livestock in and around my LZ's. There was a valley we where going up looking to insert our "sniper" types... all of a sudden I spotted a beautiful LZ right out the right door. It was fairly open with almost no obstacles, into the wind, and oriented out the descending terrain. Perfect except that there was some livestock... cows or horses or something nearby. Not my problem, they will move! I flipped a "U"ee and put her in there. My guys jumped out and I pulled pitch and flew out the valley. The flight engineer called out on the intercom that one of the cows was looking at us the whole time. I naturally assumed that the cow was very impressed by my heavy weight, 180 turning approach into that great LZ; maybe he wanted an autograph! As I found out later, that was not a cow, it was infact a Bull! I had accidentally dropped my team off in a literal bull pen! There was a Benny Hill style chase between my guys and the bull. They eventually got out of the pen, but gave me a lot of shit about it at the end of the day. I gave them some beer.

Hotties with guns. During the exercise, I was shot down several times. (Simulated) I was in a bar after the end of the exercise and I ended up meeting one of my adversaries who shot me down. It was a very cute little 21 year old blond! We talked for a wile and I tried to figure out how we could have done things better to prevent that sort of thing...(my shoot down) Eventually I told her that it more than a little turned me on that she had shot down my helicopter. She laughed and took that as a huge complement and made me say it again louder so that her friends could hear! I then leaned close to her ear and told her that in real life I would have survived the crash unscathed, secured my wounded, then found the biggest gun I could and hunted her down! After initially looking quite shocked; she smiled, laughed, and leaned close to my ear and told me that her only job that iteration had been to kill the helicopters, so that by the time I would have gotten my seatbelt unstraped, I would have had a bullet from her gun in my head! So I gave her a beer! (It is like flirting!)