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What is life like for a 13F (Fire Support Specialist/Forward Observer) in the Army?
I ship off to Basic Feb 2 (Tues) and go to AIT for this MOS right after. I was just looking for some insight on what to expect when on duty after training.
Hey man, have fun with that. I was a 13F for 4 years. I don't think I knew this going in, but you might: We are called Fisters by the rest of the Army (FIST: Fire Support Team). It sounds kind of suggestive, but at least we have a cool emblem. I was gonna post it but I couldn't find a pic. Unless it changed since I went in '04, you will have what is called OSUT, one station unit training, which means that unlike other MOS', you will do basic and AIT back to back at the same base (good ol' Fort Sill, OK) with no break in between, whereas other MOS' may have a break, and may go to a different base for each. In basic, your drill sgt's will tell you that your bread and butter as a Fister is ruck marching and radio skills. You may do a 15 mile ruck march with a 35 lbs ruck towards the end of OSUT, but as the trend was going before I got out, it will probably be shorter/easier than my experience. I don't know if you want to know about basic or garrison life, so I will brush over both. Basic sucks, especially in the first couple weeks. You will probably want to quit, just because of how retarded the Drill sgts are to the privates, if not the hours of pushups and jumping jacks you will do. Just wait it out, it really isn't that bad. You will pick up on all the cues that every other army soldier learned to so that you will fit perfectly in your slot and perform your duties well. In basic, you learn things like first aid, ranks, Drill and ceremony, MOPP and NBC stuff (chem/bio warfare), infantry stuff like tactical road marching, low crawling, marksmanship, reacting to contact, etc. OH! and the gas chamber is GREAT! Have fun with that! Talk about clearing your sinuses!! When you complete the basic portion of training, there will be a small private ceremony in the field somewhere, and you will then begin AIT. This is where the Drill Sgts actually start to be somewhat friendly (maybe) as long as you don't act like an idiot. You will also have your first interaction with nondrill sgt. soldiers, instructors, civilian teachers, etc., who treat you like a halfway normal human being (very refreshing). You will learn to read a map, to talk on the radio, to operate and trouble shoot a radio, you will learn orienteering, and how to call for fire (your main job). This part is actually pretty cool. You get to tell people a mile or two away how to aim a 24 ft long, 155mm cannon at a target 5-10 k away that they can't even begin to see. You'll learn the different kinds of calls for fire, the format, the different kinds of rounds the guns can fire, etc. You will learn to set up an OP (observation position) so you can observe troop movements from far away while so hidden that troops could walk right over you and never see you. You will learn lots of cool stuff, maybe train on a vehicle (hopefully the BFIST, not the retarded FISTV), there will be competition for the top fister (the Master Blaster) Red leg challenge (a field problem) and you might get a chance to take part in exploding an Elk.
Then you will graduate (I know, just when it was getting good) and go on leave, then to your first duty station. It is quite possible that you will never call for actual fire again, except in the simulator. It all depends on your unit, really. An artillery FTX (field training) takes ALOT of coordination, plus it costs a lot of money to get all those guns out there, and the ammo ain't cheap either, so they just don't happen very often. I was in the army a total of 4 years, and spent them all with the 3rd Infantry Division. While in the states I sort of called for fire once, and we were right next to the guns and we weren't really shooting at anything in particular, and nothing more than 2 k away, so they really could have aimed the guns by themselves. I deployed to Iraq twice in those 4 (yep, 2 out of 4 years deployed, but that depends alot on unit too). I took part in 1 "call for fire" in iraq, I didn't actually call it (of course they will have the highest ranking call it, not you) and it was an illumination fire mission from mortars (SUPER LAME). I was in Baghdad, so unless you get sent to the boondocks, you can't really shoot a 155 into a city without destroying something, so artillery doesn't apply there. They did use it outside Baghdad and in Afghanistan, so again, it all depends. Also what you do depends greatly on what kind of unit you get put in. All units are integrated now, meaning that infantry, armor, scouts, mortars, etc. can all be in one battalion. If you aren't actually being a FISTER, then you will do what ever your unit does. If you get put with tankers, you will learn to be a tanker. I was with infantry, so in Iraq, for all practical purposes I was an infantry soldier (unless you asked the infantry). We cleared and searched buildings with them, drove and gunned hummvs with them, missions, maintenence, whatever they did, we did the same. The only difference was that we also had more responsibilities. The average Infantryman is
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Call for fire
Would the MOS 0861 (forward observer) for the Marine Corps be considered a grunt?
I enlisted in the Marines and chose this as my job. I would ask my recruiter but he got promoted and I am without a recruiter currently. I ship down to Parris Island in 3 weeks. Also what group of jobs would 0861 fall under? (For example would it be combat support, etc.)
No. You would not be considered a Grunt. Any 0800 MOS is Artillery, you will be considered Artillery. There are Grunt Forward Observers ( they are usually 0341: Mortarman but any 03 can be trained to do this ) The jobs are very similar but 0861's would call for fire for primarily Artillery pieces and a Mortarman FO would call for fire primarily for Mortars. 0861's are trained specifically to be a Forward Observer for Artillery where as 0341's are trained to use the Mortar system but as they progress in their careers, they can serve on the gun line as a gunner, squad leader, section leader; be a part of the Fire Direction Center (FDC); or they can be a forward observer. You will probably end up working a lot with Grunts and will probably doing similar things but you won't be considered a Grunt.
Filed under: Britains Deetail
Self defense from incoming artillery, which is called in by a person with eyes on a target (Forward Observer). Eliminate him, no more accurate artillery fire.
How I Repelled the Advances ofRoman Catholic Pedophilic PriestsWhen, in Italy, nonne and nonni are at their wits’ ends caring for their grandchildren whose father and mother are at the factory or office, they threaten their little hyperactive ones with this cutting admonition: “If you don’t stop misbehaving, we’ll call the Germans!” When, in New York, my Irishamerican grandmother or her husband lost their patience with me and my sister and brothers, they discouraged us with these words of caution: “If you don’t stop showing bad manners, we’ll send you to a school where the Irish Christian Brothers teach!” I often wonder whether it would have been more brainy to smack us on our backsides with a curt jolt to our overactive nervous systems instead of filling our tender sentiments with empty threats (I never studied with overtly sadistic clerics) that had no bases in reality and only occupied our minds with junk ideas—enough of them already! Why not tickling? Wouldn’t that have done the trick? My parents and grandparents could have tickled my short-lived aggressiveness out of my nerve endings, and because I would have been in fits of hysterical laughter, I would never had been able to file a cease and desist order against them in juvenile court. The centuries-old despotic streak of the Roman Catholic church (RCc) is well documented. Whether it be the cruelties authenticated during the Inquisition, or the blessings bestowed on nations stringently promoting colonial and imperialistic evildoing, or the collusion with the atrocious Nazi regime (Bavaria, Hitler’s stomping grounds, is a citadel of Roman Catholicism) during World War II, or the gratuitous patronage offered to fascist military dictators in Southamerica, or…, there is no doubt that the RCc serves not always as an eleemosynary spiritual leader bent on encouraging the Christian virtues it so vociferously exacts others to simulate. Nothing and no one is perfect, you might say.Nevertheless, we have an earnest discrepancy here when we set about finagling a logic which might in some determined fashion legitimize the actions of one of Christianity’s most powerful spiritual institutions, and a divergence even its wishy-washy but authoritarian RCc archpriests and women servants married to God cannot contravene. Out of the mouths of pious religionists affiliated with the RCc, which I know best, there oodles a barrage of love, peace and hugs for all of us which does not trip the light fantastic with many of the actions of the RCc carried through during the two long millennia that it has subsisted.Two direful personal observations taken from my university and military days come right away to my mind and these offer further cogent evidence that bear witness to the megascopic sanctimoniousness of the RCc. The first is its loathsome frame of mind with regard to women. Females are not only deprecated by RCc clerics themselves, the warped dogmas of the church’s canons serve to handle women as second-class, docile laborers assigned to cook, clean and, above all, teach little Catholic rascals their catechisms and the Ten Commandments they will so diligently, so relentlessly disobey and then constantly seek forgiveness for their infringements of them. When I attended St. Bonaventure University, I was stunned one day in World History class when an often drunk Franciscan friar, nicknamed “The Spike” for his harshness, instructed the three female students in our class of thirty-five (set in alphabetical order by “The Spike”) to “occupy the front row, cross your legs, and close the Gates of Hell.” All the “Bonnie men” in the room ripped out with huge roars of laughter. The three ladies sat petrified in silence. At St. Bonaventure sadistic pranks were frequently perpetrated not only on female co-eds, even nuns who attended the learning “institution” were victimized by often drunk, childish “Bonnie men” trying desperately to be something they were not. If only James Joyce had attended St. Bonaventure University! His A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man would have enjoyed a slew of additional anecdotes testifying to the stupidity of untested, horny Roman Catholic boys endeavoring to be adult males. It is late August 1967. I am sitting in a Continental airline’s Boeing 707 at Travis Air Force Base, California set for takeoff to Saigon—via Guam and Manila. There is only one “class.” The whole plane is divided into two sections: one and the other of rows of three from forward to aft. Still, officers are at the front of the jet. I’m to the left, seated five or six rows from the front, in the middle. On my left, at the window seat, is a US Army chaplain. Captain. (Captain is the entry rank for lawyers, doctors, dentists and religious types into the US Army—those who have something to say to you and something to ask you to pay for! RHIP. Rank Has Its Privileges!) He tells me he is a Trappist monk on leave from his monastery “so I can go to Vietnam to help the boys.” We talk some in flight, but for the most part, like most of the others in the plane who are not drunk, we remain mostly mum about our feelings and are immersed in thoughts of what might befall us. We are told we are descending and will land at Guam for a fuel stop. As we touch down, I see to my left ranks and ranks of B-52 bombers! The sight is shocking. I give up counting—there are so many! The Trappist monk, to my amazement, is fanning crosses, is blessing the B-52s!Then there was the Fourth Division’s caput chaplain, a full-bird (chicken [sic]) colonel), Irishman from Brooklyn, New York. This person of grotesque appearance was a blustering, overbearing character who made no bones about pushing his Roman Catholicism wherever he visited throughout the Fourth Division’s base camp. Every so often, in his freshly-starched fatigues and boots spit-shined by Vietnamese workers who were permitted to work in the BC for $1.00 a day, a polished chopper reserved for high-ranking officers would carry him to the battlefield to give general absolution to the troops. One day when I was jumping up and down with nervousness about an impending combat assault into unknown enemy territory, the chaplain’s copter clock-clocked above and spiraled down to meet us at our “saddle up” area. About to be inserted first into a suspect enemy location in waves of three-a-breast Huey choppers, all members of my forward observer party then those of the infantry company to which we were attached were terribly anxious thinking whether or not we would jump into open fields and find ourselves on a “hot” LZ (landing zone). The warriorlike man of the cloth walked over to the largest group, and without saying a word or even asking if there might be any Roman Catholics there, put a purple sash (stole) around his neck and began absolving all in sight their sins—he too fanning crosses over the men! After confession, the colonel returned to base camp to count communion wafers for the next day’s mass and then went on a priggish binge pulling Playboy centerfolds off the walls of soldiers’ barracks! (Guess the name of the patron/patroness saint of the Artillery!) A more contemporary transgression—that has caused the declining RCc not only outpourings of protest and has dishonored it irreparably demanding of it astounding accumulations of its wealth—is the scandal of pedophilia that has concerned an abundant number of its brothers and sisters and priests. Throughout the world, high-ranking RCc authorities have scurried to squelch the thousands and thousands of victims’ revelations of maltreatment perpetrated by Roman Catholic churchmen and churchwomen. The RCc officials have offered the unfortunate characters monetary compensation if they waiver their legal claims and refuse to accept media coverage which might detail the events of their sexual abuses many of which were suffered at so tender an age, it would take a lifetime for them to come to grips with themselves and finally muster the courage to admit that which they were subjected to by the promiscuous religious associates of the RCc. Papal crackerjacks of legalese have not been successful in crunching down the outrages caused by decades-old pedophilic dereliction in Ireland and the DisUnited States, but they have had success in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain where the RCc holds powerful sway in the media and political institutions. The “Devil” would need to be interviewed to determine the exact number of RCc clerics involved in sexual abuse among themselves and others not belonging to their religious secret club.The thought of pedophilia at once brings a sense of repulsion to most individuals. This astonishment very often also provokes the curious to investigate the subject, and today there are innumerable websites where access to unnatural sex acts—even among animals—is casual for those who still do not own pedophilic predilections. The repugnance for pedophilia is rooted in the notion that an unknowing, ingenuous child (boy or girl) is overwhelmed, seduced by a consenting adult (man or woman) who performs sexual acts that normally are the reserve of willing adults (mature individuals)—only. It is understood that a child is neither prepared nor competent enough emotionally to respond to the sexual inclinations of an adult who is both sexually more sophisticated and indeed more clever about the exigencies of life. In a pedophilic relationship, the child is someone who is initiated abruptly into the sexual rite without having the astuteness to say yes or no. Not only is the child’s body invaded, his or her mind is interpenetrated by an individual whose lasciviousness is superimposed on the injured one by means of verbal deceit and trickery which could not have been contended by the minor.When a priest or brother or sister engages in pedophilic matings, the disapprobation is magnified further. We do not expect those—for example, politicians—who constantly preach to us concerning our manners of performing, to flout the rules established for all of us to obey. We feel betrayed when they do so. We believe we have been duped. (The voting records of Northamericans testifies to the “faith” they hold in their politicians!) Ecclesiastical double crossing has encouraged many Roman Catholics to abandon the RCc, and today the RCc is in a scramble to recoup the religious formidableness it once possessed. (It took the RCc four-hundred years to accept the teachings of Galileo Galilei [1564-1642]! When will it permit gay and non-gay marriages among its spiritual leaders?) Yet, there is another aspect concerning religious pedophilia which should be mentioned. A youngster who is inveigled by a clergyman or clergywoman is approached by an individual who is a symbol of an institutionalized say-so, dominance. The brother or sister or priest is garbed in those robes which relate to a two-millennia tradition that basks in an almost universal acquiescence. It is often easier for an ecclesiastic, whether male or female, to lure because he or she is propped up with a visible assurance that is spontaneous—as when a police official flashes his badge before us and wants to see our documents or a pregnant woman requests a seat on a bus. A child can be more easily overpowered sexually by a pedophilic reverend than by an old man or woman, with children as their preferred sexual object, sitting on a park bench. Consequently, mothers and fathers of children, who frequent Roman Catholic religious and social activities, must be cautious. Kids are not to be left alone with brothers, nuns and/or priests. Beware of the confessional. Many, many sexual impieties have been committed in confessional boxes. From when I was a boy of twelve years (1957) to that of being a young adult of twenty-one (1966), I lived the most dramatic and depressing time of my life. For it was during that period that I had to succumb to the pedagogy of the Roman Catholic church dictated to me by priests and an occasional nun. I recall suffering enormously trying to understand why I had to accept various nonsensical precepts—merely obligated to believe them as a matter of faith. This tore at my intellectual faculties strenuously primarily because I felt alone, with no one to sync with my notions. It was a joyous day for me when I was “let out” of St. Bonaventure University’s internment camp of Roman Catholic religious dogma. (See St. Bonaventure University: A Gulag of Militaristic, Sexual & Philosophical Indoctrination on http://www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior.)I have reported the five Irishamerican Roman Catholic priests, who I believe approached me seeking illicit sexual relations, to Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (www.snapnetwork.org) not because I was victimized by them, I was not, but because my “testimony” might help others who reluctantly could have been their sexual prey. I support the efforts of SNAP, and I am perspicacious enough to know that the RCc does not hold the registered trademark on pedophilia—nevertheless, many of its members are foremost practitioners of sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object.Why did I not become pedophilic quarry for the priests who were my instructors for almost a decade? There are two main reasons. The first regards the respect for women which, inadvertently, was the norm in my upbringing. My mother, some aunts and older female cousins held positions of authority in public and private organizations in New York, and these “role models” encouraged me, at a very early age, to come to expect that women were, like men, held in high regard by society in general. It was a terrible awakening for me when, in later years, I would come to learn that women did not enjoy the high esteem that many of my family members experienced working as professionals and managers in the not-terribly-so feminist 1950s. However, from 1957 to 1966 I carried with me the idea that gentlewomen were on an even par with gentlemen socially, politically and economically. Therefore, their role and my part to be with them, was what I envisioned for myself as I grew older. Secondly, my sexual disposition is decidedly focused on females. There are a number of reasons for this. One in particular is the fact that when I was a small boy, five girls, who shared an apartment with their widowed mother and lived directly above my family, took an interest in me and frequently served as my babysitter. I received their affection and goodwill and I recollect best that time when I reflect on a passage from my manuscript, Why I Live Beyond the DisUnited States of Northamerica:…I was in the back seat of the car with three of the sisters.The girls were all modestly dressed and wore pants or shiftsover their drying bathing suits. Their lightweight summer wear,colorful blouses and tee-shirts, let me view their anatomy with intense interest, and I remember peeking at the depression between one of the girl’s breasts—made visible by her wearingof a loosely-fitted shirt top—and taking peeps to take inmore of this lass sitting closest to the window on the rightside in the rear of what was, I can only guess now, a Fordautomobile. Or, was it a Chevrolet?I was fascinated by the mounds of flesh protruding fromthe chests of these girl-women. I counted ten “lumps” under the cotton clothing covering the bosoms of the five sisters.I would never have dared to make an effort to touch theseenormous, marshmallowy-like protrusions which I did noteven know incorporated—on their tips—protuberances, lactiferous ducts of the girls’ mammary glands, which openedand from which their milk would one day be drawn to nurturebaby girls and baby boys. I know not why I did not make real this cogent want. The wish to do so, however, wasembedded obsessively in my boyish desire, and in the yearsto come would torment me excruciatingly. My day wouldcome, but I had to wait for it. I sank back down into theseat of the car, into a sort of puerile puzzlement. I was toogreen indeed to murmur the smooth, silver-tongued word“Why?”Overwhelmed in the simplemindedness of my callowsingularity, there was nothing for me to do but absorb the sensory voluptuousness that spun around me lodged therein the back part of that Ford—or Chevy. Women’s breastsand pretty dresses and wavy hair were not the only impressions that landed ingratiatingly on my organ ofthought left there to commingle ultimately with a lifelongpeppering of imprecise feelings which, in toto, wouldconstitute that what I am.For instance, there were scents to get a whiff of. Suntanlotions. Lipsticks. Deodorants. Nail polishes. Makeup. The odor that swelled out from an opened handbag. Chewing gum. Hair that had been shampooed at the showersalong the beach. Perfume? I can’t remember. But I do recall,later in life, I could be strolling down a street in Caracas or Rome and if a woman passed me by, buzzing away and leaving me in the downdraft of her perfume or makeupfoundation, a precise fragrance, I could be drawn back twenty—even thirty—years to a place in time and space andto a woman I desired and loved. I could see her face andeasily summon up the surroundings of a room, a restaurantwhere we shared the joy of being together.As we traveled home to Brooklyn, a myriad of aromas werefanned about my face, from all directions. From time to time,they coalesced to create one unique trail of a pleasant air that swept through my nostrils and stimulated meinto a goofy self-satisfaction. Otherwise, one outstandingredolence, perhaps a maquillage or a sticky aerosol usedto hold hair in place, would impress me and I would download this smell into my personal cornucopia whereit rested with the many others—gleeful reminders to meof the distinctions possessed, I assumed, by whichevermember of the gentle sex.And Music!!! To this day, I possess almost perfect imagesof the radio’s speaker with a chromed grill protecting itand the two black knobs flanking it: one for tuning andthe other for volume/on/off. Under one nub there was ametal ring that could be manipulated to control the toneand vary it from high to low. The antenna was on the leftside fender of the car and through it a hodgepodge ofpopular music waved through the car to the merrimentof all of us. One girl snapped her fingers. Another kept time to the Music by tapping her foot. A couple of sisterssang. One clapped to the beat. When a song faded away,the girl in the “shotgun” seat immediately turned thetuning knob searching to come up with another hit recordfor us to sing and hum within our ecstasy which wasenclosed in the closed quarters of an automobile and not inthe open space of, for example, a dance floor. I cannotconstruct a list of the songs I heard that evening cominghome from the cool beach and then flowing happily intothe sweltering streets of Brooklyn. It surely was not therock n’ roll era. In those days Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald,Frankie Lane, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong and a host of other post-World War IImusical phenomena held sway in the recording industry.And today, when I hear the Music of these hall-of-famers,I wonder if it was their songs we had enjoyed in that carreturning to 310 Devoe Street on a sultry summer’s night.Jerking home—with the shifting of gears—to Brooklyn in thecongested beach traffic and yearning earnestly that I couldremain forever in the bosom of my five-member sisterhood—all of whom I thralled at my beck and call!–it would have been preposterous to think that Icould ever have roused in my mind the idea that Womanand Music would come to be such an integral componentof my essence and abide in my psyche for the rest ofmy life. There was no way for me to guess my forthcomingand I unquestionably could not even have rationalized,at my tender age, that I, too, would one day flourish to beas complete as were the five girls with me in the car. I wasa boy being bombarded by bevies of empirical impressionswhich I was powerless to categorize or interpret.The way home was closing the more on Williamsburg.The mademoiselles were fretting about the swelter, foreseeing doing something more tantalizing after, andtrying their best to make the time flash by faster. Naturally,I was delighted with the delay. Nothing in this world hadbeen before more pleasing to me than being now with myfive young unmarried women. I had it in my heart to stayin saecula saeculorum in this serendipitous state. I was bent upon nailing this splendid time to the wall—to keep it there.I selfishly sought to pickle myself in the juices of thisthrilling companionship trusting that it would be conservedfor my eternity.Maybe about an hour before getting to our destination—mysunburnt skin and beginning-to-growl stomach had levied onme an-end-of-the-day drowsiness and I had perched myhead on the top of the front seat—that inamorata, closestto the window (was her name Pat?), took me into her armsand laid my boyishness on the cushioning of her bosom!I limpened in the tenderness of her geniality. Her smellsenveloped me right off. I was wrapped in that field ofenergy that emanated from her flesh and blood, and astickled pink as a piglet in a pigpen, I curled up cozily andevery once in a while switched the position of my headin order to find an even softer place amongst her doughyfront or to sample the texture—to see if it was equal tothe other portions—of another part of her two breasts.Never once did the desire to quaff upon her cross my mind. I did not seek nutrients. Eating was the last thingon my mind. I craved emotional contentment. And Iwas filling myself up with barrows of it. There wasnothing that could have made me happier than thissensation of proximity to a woman. I could not doze off…There was no way a male religionist—wreaking of cigarette smoke, dressed in black, the sleeves of his cassock snowed upon with chalk dusk, his breath bringing on the smells of beer or whisky, his skin coarse—was going to come so near to me where he might attempt to entice me into joining in with him in the performance of salacious sex acts. Amen!!! Authored by Anthony St. John1 February MMXCalenzano, Italia* * *