 My name is Theodore Zechariah. I am an E-4 and I am with Charlie Company 1143 Air Force. At first formation, sometime around 05. Once we had everything set up, we got onto the buses. I just love driving buses. Down to Quonset Airfield, we got wheels up. We did in-flight rigging, so before usually we would sit in a hangar and get all our gear on there, all of our chutes and get JMPI'd in the hangar and have all our gear on us ready to jump. And then we would walk out to the aircraft ready to jump. This time we took everything with us on the plane and we had, I don't know, maybe like 10 or more jump masters on there. So while we were flying in the aircraft, while it was moving, they were able to get all of our gear on us, inspect it and get us ready to jump. The in-flight rig is definitely proof of concept that our airborne company can deploy anywhere very quickly with a short amount of notice. Honestly, like when we were getting rigged up, it was obviously a little bit uncomfortable and very crammed in the aircraft. But as soon as I got to that door, it was just, you're in sunny Florida, you know, we just got back from Rhode Island. It was all, it was snowing and there was like right at sunset. Once you exit the aircraft in an airborne operation, you have about six seconds before your main chute deploys. Once your parachute deploys, you look up, everything's fine, it's just silent and peaceful. Had a great landing, could honestly, couldn't have asked for a better landing. Jump went very smoothly. I think some people had like rougher landings, but I don't know like actual injuries. Once we did that, we hit a decent length rock all the way to our air evaporation. Did about an eight mile rock to the live fire chute house. Once we got to our destination, we bedded down for the night because we had an early morning. I think we got to bed, I want to say around maybe 11 or 12. Yeah, it was a little cold out there, the weather hovered around in the 40s. Because it got very, very wet and very, very windy. You just have to go through the suck and move on from there. It's just one of the things we do. Second day there, we worked with blank rounds in the chute house. This weekend, going into the chute house was a lot bigger than anything I've experienced before. There was long hallways, plenty of rooms. I think we ended up clearing, I think five rooms in total was the most. Moving through those rooms is something that, as an infantryman, you need to know how to do well and safely. So when you're going through with blank rounds, it's not too bad because they're not real rounds. But once we started using live rounds, obviously there was more of a safety concern. The craziest rush is definitely operating at night and with live because that's where there's the most room for failure. Before the Army I've never used night vision goggles and it's not as easy to use as you'd expect. It's really just like this little tube as if you're looking through a paper towel. It's just everything's green and you don't really have much peripheral vision, so you really just have to be very conscious of what's around you and everything. It's really, really tight inside of the chute houses. You have to be able to move safely and effectively. It needs to be very, very perfect. There's no room for error. But as long as you trust your teammates, you know you're doing everything, everyone comes out safe. For the blank iterations and the night iterations, we ended up staying up until around midnight. Blank iterations ended up about 11.30 and live iterations ended up about midnight. So the sleep was very limited, but that's one thing as an infantryman, you have to understand that you need to function on these low levels of sleep. Next morning woke up early again, probably same time around 05-06. The machine gunners, which is what I am, we headed over to our range, our machine gun range. Then we rolled into some machine gun drills and we would start at the base of a hill, charge up, lay down our tripod, mount the 240 on the tripod. All of this as quickly as we can. We practice suppressive fire, grazing fire, plunging fire over different distances, different targets at different distances. We also practice rolling guns, which is another method of engagement we use to employ machine guns to support our maneuver elements. We also did a little bit of unconventional positions, like hit firing the 240 or shoulder firing it, which is something that we don't usually do, but if we had to, it's good to know how to and what to expect. As the night came on, we threw on our nods and conducted some night fires. After that, we broke down, went back to the shoe house where the rest of the company was and just got ready for the next morning because we were heading out pretty early again. This morning, we woke up really early, probably around 04-45, and got all our gear on the buses, headed back to the airfield, loaded the C-130, all our gear and flew back to Quonset. Overall, it was a great drill weekend. Honestly, from start to finish it was great. We started off with the jump, which is always a really exhilarating experience. I mean, everyone's nervous no matter if it's your first jump or your 100th. Definitely got really good quality training on that. Definitely became more proficient in using the machine gun and more confident in my own skills. Yeah, so I actually, I'm from a town called Philsburg, New Jersey, so once we finish up cleaning our weapons and everything, when we get released, I actually have to make a four-and-a-half, five-hour trip home and I got school tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock. I know a bunch of guys from the unit there from Jersey, a couple guys from Texas, Florida. People come from all over the country to be in this unit. Tomorrow, after I drove home to New Jersey, I'll wake up to start work. So after I leave here, probably going to be later on. Hopefully around 6, going to be able to get home, shower, because none of us have showered in what, three or four days here. Going to have to wake up early tomorrow, probably around 7 to get to work for 9. After that, I actually have class after work, so tomorrow is going to be a full day. And that is essentially your typical four-day drill and you just got to wake up now for work in the morning at 6.