Personal Narrative: My Obstacles In The Army

During my time in the Army, I have had plenty of obstacles, one in particular would be when I was a RTO (radio tech operator) and we were attached to another battalion to go raid a village. We patrolled all night until we walked twelve miles to our location avoiding helicopters flying in the sky looking for us. Once we finally set up an OP (observation post) we had a team go out and recon the village and we established a plan on how we were going to attack the village. My squad only had about nine of us, so we were not initially part of the main element to go in and assault the village. However, as we started creeping up to the first obstacle, a fence, helicopters started patrolling for us again. The engineers blew some of the fencing and threw smoke in so we could run through the first few complexes. We split up in to two teams of four plus one squad leader. We started running in to the buildings, clearing every room and every corner looking for bad guys. …show more content…
We had played a key role in keeping the enemy at bay when our numbers were falling short. We never took credit for what happened that day, but at the end of it, we all sat around and talked about how we just went through some crazy stuff together. It may seem odd but it was fun. It is what we train day and night to do… to be able to be experts in our weapon systems and to engage and close with the enemy. I have had many other events in my Army career but that was truly some of the worst and best times. I learned a lot that day about the skills that we have been trained to utilize. It had become muscle memory, I reacted first instead of thinking, I put others around me before my own needs and most important I did my job. It truly showed me how strong an infantryman is mentally and physically. Anyone can say they want to be Infantry; however, it is a completely different thing to actually put boots on and do what we