Josh Hallam

Team Leader

Joining the Army

I wanted to join the Army ever since I was in elementary school, probably from growing up watching GI Joe. I wanted to be an Airborne Infantryman once I read A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan when I was in high school. I joined the Army right after I graduated high school. As far as I know, I was the first of my class to enlist and I got made fun of quite a bit for enlisting. This was a couple years after 9/11 and the same year as the invasion of Iraq. Thanks to pressure from my recruiter, I originally joined as a Special Forces Candidate. My recruiter always wanted to be SF and was never accepted into Selection, so he tried to live vicariously through me.

Basic Training

When I joined, Infantry basic training was 14 weeks long. It was rough. I was 17 and this was my first time away from my parents longer than a couple of weeks when I went on a trip with my grandparents. Drill Sergeants yelled and screamed a lot and there was A LOT of exercise and not a lot of food, or chow, as we called it. There were only two foods that I was never hungry enough to eat and that was steamed squash and collard greens.

Airborne School

After Basic Training was Airborne School. I had read a lot about the school before I joined the Army. Everything I read about it said Airborne School is three weeks of hell and that you run literally everywhere. I knew that 2nd part couldn't be true. How do you run everywhere? I was wrong. Airborne School is not physically hard if you do it right after Basic Training. But we DID run everywhere. The field where we exercised was 1 1/2 miles or 2 miles away from us. We ran there, did our exercise, and then ran back to the barracks to change into our camouflage uniform. We ran to the chow hall. We ran to formation. We ran back to that field to learn how to jump out of airplanes. We ran back for lunch. We literally ran everywhere, but since it was only a couple of miles at a time, it wasn't hard. It was in our boots, camouflage uniform, and our helmets, though. Like I said, it isn't hard right after Basic Training. I had extreme luck, and 1 of my 4 roommates was a friend from my hometown who had joined the Army 1 day before me, and another was a guy from my platoon in Basic Training.

SOPC

After I graduated from Airborne School, I took a bus from Ft. Benning (now Ft. Moore), GA up to Ft. Bragg (now Ft. Liberty), NC. Everyone that graduated Airborne School as a Special Forces Candidate was on that bus. We wound up in some old barracks built during World War II. There was no hot water, and it was mid-November. The showers were also in a line and to get to the back it was almost impossible not to touch the person in front. This was where I started, what we called, the Special Operations Preparation Course (officially called Special Forces Qualification Course Phase 1A), which is a course to prepare us for the Assessment and Selection (Phase 1). It's a month-long course to teach land navigation and test your endurance to the limit, so the Selection course is easy. The first week was just almost non-stop exercise. We would do hundreds of sit ups, dozens, and dozens of push-ups. We did log PT where a group of..., maybe eight of us, would run with a heavy log, lift it up over our heads, curl it. It was the most strenuous exercise I had ever done, and by the end, I had to use two hands to lift my canteen to drink.

I quit after that first week. Not because it was too hard, but because it wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an Airborne Infantryman and fight a large group of people being part of a large group of people, romanticizing the stories from A Bridge Too Far. If I had known what Iraq would be like, I would have stayed and tried to get my Green Beret.

The 82nd Airborne

2nd Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment

After a couple months of waiting for orders, I got my orders to the famed 82nd Airborne Division. My two best friends from SOPC got orders at the same time I did. One went to Alaska to form a new brigade and one came with me to the 82nd. He actually got to the reception battalion, where you in-process, a week before I did, but with dumb luck, he was still there when I started in-processing. We both got send to the 2nd battalion of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, which made me ecstatic. But, after the got to the battalion, he went to A Company, and I went to B Company.

My battalion was deployed when I showed up, and they just sent reinforcements the month before. They were coming home in two more months, so myself and the other new guys formed the Rear-Detachment (Rear-D). By random chance, one of the guys in my assigned platoon was a buddy from my platoon in Basic Training and SOPC, who had got orders a month before me. We got to spend our entire enlistment together.

One question I have a hard time answering is "What is a normal day like in the Army?" There is no such thing as a normal day, but you can't say that as an answer. So, instead, a training cycle is like a normal day. They last months, but each training cycle is similar. While you are "in garrison," meaning, you sleep in the barracks and go to the CP (I'm not sure what that stands for) for work. We had old, Cold War era barracks where the company worked and slept in the same building. We woke up at 0600 to do PT at 0630. PT lasts until 0800 and we had an hour to shower and eat breakfast for a work call at 0900. What is work in garrison? Depends on your leadership. When I first got to the 82nd, I had to read and memorize a "Privates Need to Know" list and a "Weapon's Squad Need to Know" list. The veterans, the guys that had deployed already, they got to just sit around and talk. The area where we got together as a company was outside and didn't have a common room for everyone in the company, so we were actually sitting in the barracks rooms. Guys that had TVs could watch them. Guys that had video games could play them. Guys with books could read them. You get the picture. But the other new guys and I had to read our "Privates Need to Know" lists. Later on in my enlistment, I had leaders that made us do remedial training, which I compared to math teachers practicing arithmetic.

If we were going to the field to train, we sometimes did PT and sometimes we got to skip it, depends on what time we left. Drawing weapons at the armory took a few hours for the whole company. Then we had to take LMTV trucks to the field. There are a few points that every training cycle covers:

Individual Training

This is where each individual zeros their weapon, and practices individual tasks like fixing a malfunction, and practicing their individual role's responsibilities.

Team Training

Now that each member knows what to do and is ready, team training is when a fire team will train together. A fire team consists of the Team Leader, and 3 soldiers underneath. The teams practice patrolling, reacting to contact, and bounding, to name a few.

Squad Training

This is just like team training, but a squad has a Squad Leader and two fire teams.

Platoon Training

This is the training that everyone thinks of when they think of military training and takes up the most time. A platoon has a Platoon Leader, Platoon Sergeant, A radio operator (RTO), a forward observer (FO), and a medic, plus three rifle squads and a weapons squad (with two machine gun teams instead of fire teams). Overall, it's around 40 soldiers. A platoon is the unit you live with in the barracks, and work with in the field and on deployments. They become your family. In Iraq, it was very rare to patrol with just a squad. And, while the entire platoon usually doesn't go out all at once, platoon training is the real training you need for deployments. This is when we finally leave the firing ranges and actually do missions with blank ammo and train like we are at war.

Company Training

They pull out the big guns for company training. Literally. The company has a mortar platoon, so this is the first time rifle infantry get to train with live mortars falling on the objective. Usually, we march for miles to get near a large enemy camp, and then the whole company attacks it. But, even though it is a company attack, you work with your platoon so it really doesn't feel different than platoon training except for the extra safety briefings because of the live ammo and mortars being shot near maneuvering platoons. This training is pretty exhausting because you march for hours to get to the objective, then you assault with no ammo, then you assault again with blanks, then you assault again with live ammo, then you do all three iterations again at nighttime. In the morning, you usually go back to the company, but sometimes you will get some sort of follow-up mission (with blanks) and have to go march and assault again.

Battalion Training (JFEX)

In the 82nd Airborne, this is the big training event. The entire battalion works together for a week in one large airborne assault. We start on a Monday morning, like 0400 to get our weapons drawn and our rucksacks checked. We eat and go to the airfield where we get a mandatory pre-jump class, meaning a couple hour long condensation of the three weeks of airborne school. Chow is brought to us, and we eat and get checked off the jump manifest, and have our dog tags and ID cards inspected. At nighttime, around 2000 (8:00 PM) we put on our parachutes and get them inspected. We then wait until it's time to load the planes. This is always different, but we usually jump between 2200 and 0300 (10:00 Pm to 3:00 AM) and the flight can be half an hour or a couple hours, depending on the Air Force training requirements, since them flying us to the drop zone is their training. We load the planes and then spend the flight being super nervous about jumping.

Usually, the whole battalion jumps onto the same DZ (drop zone), but sometimes we jump different ones and meet up later in the night. The DZ is crazy. People are literally falling out of the sky, while you are trying to walk with a full rucksack and your parachute you have to carry with you to the parachute recovery point, and from there you have to find your company rendezvous spot. This always takes place in the middle of the night, and a lot of times with low visibility.

Once you find your company though, this turns out just like any other platoon training. We march and march through the night and usually get to the objective at dawn. Different companies are assigned different areas to secure and attack, and it's just the luck of the draw if you attack or pull security all day. Even after the attack, you usually pull security, waiting for a possible (but never seen in my five years) counterattack.

I have this email saved from my first JFEX that explains the mission a little bit.

Iraq

I deployed suddenly, as part of the DRF 1, in 2005 to Tal Afar to help secure the 2nd elections held in the country.

In 2006, I went to Camp Spiecher near Tikrit to help set up for a future mission for my brigade.

I was recalled from Christmas leave in 2006 to deploy in January 2007, as the 2nd battalion to arrive in Baghdad for The Surge. Our deployment was extended twice, and we spent 15 months there. We left in March 2008.