The Brigade, and specifically Troop A, is approaching the halfway point in our training. We've completed an excellent three days in urban operations training and have demonstrated how well we have come together as platoons and a Troop. We've also gone through our combat patrol lanes where we were thrown to the wolves at the squad level. Alpha continues to prove its worth. We are at the end of our scout gunnery and a comment made last night by an OIC with the observer controllers struck us as both amusing and irritating. Upon looking at our qualification scores and the lack of Q2 (second time qualifications), this OIC said the evaluators were being too easy on us because a National Guard unit shouldn't be doing so well in a gunnery. He was set straight by our evaluators...they said, Alpha is just that good. It helps that quite a few of us come from the organic Troop and the concept of gunnery is not foreign to us. Humvee gunnery is simple compared to Bradley and Tank gunnery and we have demonstrated how well we can accomplish any mission put before us. Granted, we're a little irritating, slightly arrogant, and don't exactly like to conform...but that's ok, we're the Cav and know we're always right.

My Platoon is coming together and we've grown into a tight knit group of guys. I've been blessed with some great troopers and the majority of them are a great fit, given my style of leadership. We've got a Mission Readiness Exercise coming up in a few days where we'll combine all of our previous training into a force on force exercise. While it will be exhausting, we're looking forward to it because it means that it's all downhill from there.