[WarriorDiplomat]

Ft Lewis,

Doing the 12b Sapper stakes annual TPU field re-cert.

Squad re-cert miserably wet doing an 11 row wire obstacle @0200 the night was so dark no nods, we would have someone hold the pickett at the bottom place the picket pounder on the pickett and then adjust where the hands were clear so we could pound the pickett into that rocky ass ground. Fingers got so cold, wet and throbbing and trying to tie the barbed wire with the 3 wraps.

Then doing a triple standard wire obstacle once we got into Platoon as we shaped the battlefield and had to build a kilometer's worth. And again pounding picketts, tying wire and stringing out concertina.

The work is hard enough but with full battle rattle no night illum, raining, cold, fatigue, burning traps and back, M16-A2 slapping around, and a fence or obstacle that seems to never end.

Been colder in the Mountains and midwest and have been in inhospitably hot places in Africa and Iraq but there is something about those field problems in the Pacific Northwest.