I just got back home today from completing Phase II. This phase was not as tough (physically) as the first, but it was far more demanding strategically. During this phase, we spent nearly 8 months of receiving classroom instruction on tactics, operations, strategy and basically "How to fight a war 101". My prior military experience really came in handy during this phase. I quickly became the "go to" person for the platoon and the Cadre were even surprised from time to time that I could pull out some tricks that even they didn't know about.

This past week, we spent training in the field performing a Strategic field Training eXercise or STX Lanes. There were 18 hour days, living in the field, putting 100% into each mission as we performed approx 5 to 9 missions a day depending on distance to objectives. An STX pulls in everything we've been learning in the classroom and puts it on a full speed high stress scenarios we must pass to be able to continue with the OCS process. Everything we use in an STX is carried on your back and only food, water and ammunition is brought in daily for resupply. Oh, and it was raining with Tornado and Thunderstorms for a good portion of it.

Now the good news; You're Ungulate Organizer once gain came out on top. After all the evaluations were completed, I scored the highest and performed the only near-perfect mission in this cycle. The Operation Order I received was dissected and disseminated with only one flaw, my terrain reconnaissance was better then what the evaluators could have done, and my execution of the mission had only one error made. So, I was only two errors total from a perfect run, which is something that rarely to never happens in OCS. I was pretty stoked.

With the completion of Phase II, I am now free and clear to go to Phase III and graduate this summer. I will be shipping out in late July, traveling to Ft Lewis, WA and returning the weekend prior to IFC. Then the following weekend, on the 21st of August, 2011 I will receive my commission as a Lieutenant in the US Army. It will be after a total of 18 months of training, a very long road to take for only a part-time job since I'll only stay with the IL Army National Guard at the moment. I'll report about how Ph III went later.

Dismissed!