How are you doing? Reporting in with another army update.
The first two weeks at the Armour Jaeger Company have been busy but a lot more interesting and motivating than the rookie season now that we got to know the final and definitive positions of ours. There's somehow a lot more serious feeling in the game now that I'm dealing with the guys who I'd be there in the field with in an actual war. Let me break up the structure a bit for you guys.
The Armour Jaeger Company consists of four platoons which are Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. Each platoon is divided into four sections, for example Alpha 1, Alpha 2 and so on. Each section consists of ten soldiers and they're also the room mates of yours at the barracks and the guys you share the tent with at the camps. Basically the section is your main group when it comes to training how to go to war. Each section has it's own
MT-LB vehicle that we move around with in the battlefield and go to the front line with and then step out from to fight.
Guys inside the MT-LB then, the structure of a section. The ten guys include the vehicle team, the commander and the driver who are obviously in the cockpit of the MT-LB. As far as I know, they don't leave the vehicle in an actual battle but rather fight with the vehicle's machine gun and move forward with the team after the infantry have stepped outside and back them up and so on. They're both guys who came January this year. Then there's the infantry in the back of the vehicle which include eight guys. Two of them, the commander of the section and the older member of the heavy anti-tank weapon team are standing up from the hatches, the first to command the whole section and latter obviously to be able to instantly shoot an enemy vehicle with the
APILAS. Six guys are in the back sitting, which include the younger heavy anti-tank weapon member who I think picks up the APILAS in case the older is lost in the battle, the machine gun team (older & younger), the light anti-tank weapon team who carry M72 LAW's, the primary medic of the section and the backup leader of the section. Written like this it might sound a bit messy but basically a section drives around with an MT-LB with the other sections of the platoon and carries heavy and light anti-tank weapons, machine gun and basic assault rifles and steps outside of the MT-LB when entering the battlefield.
I'm the younger member of the machine gun team of the Alpha 2. Within the last two weeks I've been taught how to take apart the PK machine gun and clean it, how to take different shooting positions with it and how to actually shoot with it. It's a big gun compared to our basic
RK 62's, has more parts and a lot more area to clean and weighs 9 to 10 kilos depending on the amount of ammunition and is a shitty thing to carry around while running, but shooting with it is worth all the shit... Feels unbelievable. And the funny thing is that as a younger member of the PKM team I only need to carry the 100 ammo can with me (besides the basic RK 62) and I even got an extra pocket into my combat vest to carry it, but I still get all the training required to use it and I even get to shoot it at the camps while the older guy is the one who carries the 10kg beast while training... Have fun.
Most of our service for the last two weeks have revolved around the PKM in a group that includes the machine gun men of the whole company (4x4x2) and also attacking and defensing within our section, the basic stuff...
I don't have many pictures this week as I can't carry a phone into the woods safely but I'll get some for the next weekend. In this post I'll include a picture of how the locker needs to look like in order to get to the weekend holidays, a picture that demonstrates how hungry you're when finally getting home and how you don't give a shit about what you eat as long as it tastes good as fuck, a training bullet that I didn't steal, a random coffee & smoke picture and how I now look at 67kg's.
Brb, camping from tomorrow to Saturday... Enjoy your showers and sleep while I don't! One of the new tricks now that we have MT-LB's are the kind of alarms at night that include taking apart the tent, getting it to the truck and getting inside the MT-LB within 15 minutes. That's when "readiness to move" is shouted at night. Can't wait! I'll let you guys know about the camp next Sunday...
Take care everyone!
