Third Way Dispatch

We’ve been working pretty hard. The past two weeks, we’ve had a half-day off each Sunday to do our laundry and get our gear in order for the next week. Otherwise, we’ve been training every day.

Week before last we spent the week in the field working on basic team- and squad-level tactics, culminating in a live-fire, squad-level fire-and-movement exercise. Last week, the machinegunners spent the week at Camp Pendleton, completing a course run by instructors from First Marine Division.

Our battalion arrived in California in early January, after a month of training in Massachusetts. During our first three days, we’ve been sitting through briefings all day. So far, we’ve gotten briefings on: the area of Iraq we’re going to be responsible for; Iraqi culture; the laws of war and the rules of engagement; identifying and responding to IEDs; desert survival; basic combat life-saving skills; radio communications protocols; house-to-house room-clearing tactics; strategies for surviving with honor in captivity; and how to handle the media (evidently, we are going to have reporters embedded with us).