Where does the “hero” portion of my handle come from?  Simply put, I’m in the Army, and one day hope to be a hero to someone.  I believe the best route to doing so is to serve in some sort of combat-arms job during my first three years of active duty after I graduate.  So, during my time here in college, I completed some training to prepare myself.

I attended Army Air Assault School in the Summer of 2009.  It was, without a doubt, two of the hardest weeks of my life, yet I would gladly do it again.

The first day, wake up call was at 0300 (or 3AM), with formation 10 minutes after.  At that formation, we were addressed by our instructors for about 15 minutes on expectations of performance for the course.  All Sergeants were to be addressed as “Air Assault Sergeant” and if you failed to meet physical training standards,  pass tests as they came, or violated major safety protocols, you would be sent home that very instant.  And they set the standard high.

Immediately following the briefing on expectations, our instructors proceeded to “smoke” us.  In laymen’s terms, that is making you do insane amounts of physical exercises to the point of muscle failure and exhaustion.  Push ups, jumping jacks, sit ups, bicep curls, anything you could think of, we were doing.  Wasn’t just upper body either.  It was the legs, the abs, the entire core of the person.  This continued for 3 hours, without much break.  Then the buses came.

The bus ride lasted 5 minutes.

We got off the bus at an obstacle course.  At that point, we were permitted to stretch out and get ready to do the ten obstacles.  We had about 10 minutes to do so.  Afterward, everyone in a class of 300 students lined up to do the obstacles.  By bad luck or by chance, I was the very last person in that line.  We waited in line for about 2 more hours, and were smoked even more during the wait before we even got to the first obstacle.  At last, my time had come.

The first obstacle was to climb 15 feet on a vertical rope, without any knots in it.  My body felt weak and tired from everything I had already done.  The rope was very slick, covered with the sweat of everyone who had gone before me.  I, by some stroke of luck, managed to make it up the length of that rope to the top of the first obstacle.  The other 10 obstacles wouldn’t have been so bad, but the upper body was continually being destroyed through more push ups in the hot, sharp gravel.  It was relentless, seemingly endless.

Hands were cut up and bloody.  I hadn’t had water in 5 hours, no bathroom breaks either, and I was half way through the course.  Dust caked my face and my throat.  I was soaked in sweat.  We did more and more physical training between obstacles while we waited for the group in front of us to complete the obstacles and get out of our way.  The pressure was on; failure to complete an obstacle resulted in being sent home.  After nine hours, I finally finished the course, and was hoping for a much earned break.

It didn’t come.

We went back over to our assembly area where we were instructed to change out of our combat boots into tennis shoes, take off our combat jackets, and put on our reflective belts.  After all we had just done, it was time to go for a run.  The course was only two miles.  We were allotted 18 minutes in which to complete the distance, and failure to do so resulted in being sent home with nothing to show for your efforts but a sore, aching body.

They blew the whistle, and the time began.  Long story short, I was the first one done out of the entire class of 300 students, with a time of 11 minutes flat.  I finished and was told to do push-ups for being “too fast.”

For my performance, I was assigned as the class guidon, or flag, bearer.  I was in charge of the creation and carrying of a flag that represented my class cycle for the duration of the training.  The flag below is the flag I made out of a pillow case and mop handle, and carried proudly throughout the training.  The image on the front is an artist’s rendition of the badge worn by Air Assault qualified personnel.  The words beneath are the motto of the Army’s 101st Airborne division.

I could go on endlessly about this experience.  Short and sweet version:  I made it, and I got my wings.  Every day was just as hard if not harder than the first, and classroom instruction on helicopter operations was thrown into the mix.  It never let up.  Neither did I.

This flag is a monument to my success, effort, determination, and true dedication to any task that is laid before me.  If I know I can do it, I make it happen, and I don’t stop until it’s done.

A Monument to Accomplishment