Actually, I need to amend my statement above. The forward air controllers assigned to us in the 10th were always right there humping alongside us (and they were even wearing 10th Mountain Patches) and we respected them because they shared our hardships but then they didn’t have anything good say about the regular Air Force either.

Hell, excluding my deployments over 15 years of service, just my 60 days of back to back training at both Grafenwohr (live fire) and Hohenfels against the OPFOR was more traumatic than what this lady endured. Training at Hohenfels to counter the Soviet Air land Battle Doctrine for thirty days twice a year consisted of 3 hours of sleep a night, murmited weak ass green eggs and soggy bacon for breakfast in portions so small that they still left you hungry (at least I always had as much coffee as I could drink though), MRE for lunch, and T-Ration for dinner. Shoot, move and communicate all day long consisting of about 6 daily battery moves and six hasty fighting positions dug every single day. Damn I hated digging! I got sent back to the rear area one night to go to a meeting at the TOC and sleep in a GP medium tent and sleeping bag over night…and Murphy came for a visit. The OPFOR happened to attack the BN TOC that night and I ended up out in my fighting position in my brown Army underwear, combat boots, LBE, helmet and my weapon fighting off an OPFOR attack in the rain. Oh, did I also mention that I did this in my underwaer in the mud (I knew I should have slept in my BDUs that night). Anyway, as you can see, my routine training was worse than her real world experiences (and I haven’t even touched on NTC and Twenty Nine Palms rotations nor my time spent in the 10th Mountain Division or 66 below zero at Fort Drum wher we did PT in the snow and slush even when it was 20 below outside).

Color me unimpressed at her suffering.

This is the kind of crap that always made the combat arms guys I served with despise the Air Force. They don’t have the first idea of what true hardship is.