Two weekends ago, the LDSSA took a trip down to a Young Single Adult conference in Washington, DC. It was great to get away from West Point for a little bit and be able to mingle with other members of the church.
Last weekend was Family Weekend. Families got to walk around the barracks, academic buildings, and cadet gym. Seeing my family was so awesome but I was dead tired from trying to get all of my schoolwork done before the weekend.
The Fall Sandhurst Competition happened this weekend. Sandhurst is a military skills competition that West Point hosts. Teams from academies and ROTC programs from throughout the country and around the world come to compete in the spring. The Fall Competition is a qualifier for the teams from West Point. Out of the 36 teams that compete, 12 get to train through the winter and spring to compete in May. I’m on the team from my company, F3, the Troop.
For the duration of the competition, you wear a vest with all your equipment, a helmet, a 35 pound backpack, and carry a rifle. The competition started on Friday at 5:00pm with a round robin style rotation around campus. Teams had 20 minutes to complete each lane (station), then 20 minutes to get to the next one. The lanes included performing first aid to a casualty, using a radio to call for artillery fire, assembling and disassembling radios and machine guns, throwing grenades, building a contraption to carry 300 pounds of sandbags, and memorizing a bunch of signs and objects. If you weren’t actively doing the skill part of the lane, you were doing some type of physical exercise. The amount of burpees I did was absolutely staggering. After we finished all of the lanes around 10:00pm, everyone met up on the big parade field and had about 20 minutes to eat some food (MRE’s) and get ready for the ruck march out to the summer training camp.
The ruck march was the final event for Friday. Teams had to complete the 8.5 mile ruck march in 3 hours but the next day was staggered start based on the order of completion, which makes it a race. The implications of this is that the slowest teams would only get about 3 hours of sleep, while the fastest would get close to 7. It was about 40 degrees and extremely dark when we started. About 30 of the 400 people competing dropped out of the ruck due to sprained ankles, dehydration, or hypothermia. My team lost about 30 minutes when one of our teammates badly sprained an ankle and we had to carry the individual to the next checkpoint. We had to run the last mile to not miss the time cutoff. Everyone was given hot soup, told to change into dry clothes, and sent to bed without knowing when they would start the next day.
Due the number of teams that lost too many people to continue or had been disqualified for whatever reason, my team didn’t start until 10:20am on Saturday, which was amazing because we got so much sleep. We started with an obstacle course that we had to carry a pallet, kettlebell, and 20 gallon water jug through. We then ran with all of our gear to another obstacle course and completed that. We then had a rifle shooting portion after which we got bussed back to campus. For the final event, we pushed a big truck 50 meters, “destroyed” a machine gun nest with grenades, assembled more weapons, carried a giant log, threw on our gas masks and buddy carried people 200 meters. The ranking haven’t come out yet, but we are optimistic about our placement and satisfied with our performance.
Incredible experience Warren. Only the kind you read about in books! You’re living it. Good work.