After getting settled into the circus tent that we were going to be living for the next two weeks, the training officially began. That night since weather wasn't up to flying standards, we drove to another FOB for the commanders official briefing to begin the exercise. While all the drivers were parked outside (most of us were trying to get a little sleep while we could sleeping against our Humvee tires), at midnight the fireworks started. Since we were up on a hill, you could see the attacks begin as the simulated exercises began.
The next night was when our FOB would really get hit. We had simulated incoming mortars, so the first thing to do was get in all of our body armor and kevlar. And then... we went out and laid in a perimeter around the tents. Now given, I had never deployed before at this time and I was a brand new specialist - but this still didn't seem like the best idea. Of course, there was some of the people that had deployed before that swore this is exactly how it was going to be when we were deployed and then there were others that said this was nothing like it would be.
Either way, the next two weeks consisted of multiple drills like this, taking camp showers (about every 5-6 days) and baby wipe baths and a lot of really hot days. A few months later when deployment came around, lesson learned was that the rotation in 'the box' was so much different than what deployment was actually going to be like.
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