Military Life

When I first join the Army back in May 1989, My goal was to "BE ALL I CAN BE" in the military. I attended basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. After Basic Training, I was stationed at Schofield Barrack, Hawaii. I had a pretty good experience there learning about my job as an infantryman and was it take to make it in the Army. I remember the very first field training I did was when we deployed to Japan for "Orient Shield" for about a month. That was my first experience working side by side with foreign soldiers. I remember one time there when we had just finished setting a stik lanes near a hill and the Japanese soldiers was suppose to pick us up but they must had been a miscommunication and we ended up walking back to camp there. Later, we was conducting WarGame with the Japanese Army. and we was defending a particular objective with triple strand concertina wire all around it with M1 Abram Tanks staged dugged in on all corner of our objective. We was on guard all night long and the only word we was told earlier that day was that they can attack anytime. Here was they did. I didn't attack all morning and all night that day but at first light at about 5am, I spotted movement from our front but it was quite a long ways away. Now the area they we was expecting them to come from was a pretty big open field from left to right. Anyway, I about 10 to 15 minute later we spotted some more movement from my front movement slow. I remember when 5:45am came we can see a whole fleet of tanks coming toward our objective and we also had helcopter gunships and soldiers breaching our wire from the rear destroying several of our tanks and over running our objective. We manage to establish a stronghold inside our objective and call in Artillery on all around our objective and call in reinforement. I'm not going to tell you who won but it was a good Wargame the Japanese Army must had send all there tanks on our objective. There was ALOT of Japanese tanks to our front and firing on our position. We all had had fun and at the same time learning.

My Overseas Experience

I had recently returned from a 3 weeks vacation in the Philippines and I must say that it was a good experience for me learn more about the filipino culture. For instance, I seen alot of things that we can't obviously can't get away with in the United States like 6 people riding on back of a motorcycle with one person holding a small baby with no helmet and speeding down the road. I mention that if someone would do that here, they all would be jailed, fined and the small baby will be in foster care. I remember the first time I was going to take a bath/shower over a family member house, I look in the bathroom and notice that their was no bathtub. The only thing I seen is a several tall plastic can full of water with a large scoop and I was stun on how on earth do I wash myself and I figure it out a half of minute later. I had to scoop water from the can and pour it on me, rub soap/shampoo on my body and do the process again. I let me add that the water was Really cold. There is no hot water there so every time I pour the cold water on me, I had to bold up and take the cold water being pour on me. This was definitely a experience for me.

This the first time on here.