Oh the pain/f'ing cool

I hurt in all sorts of strange places. Finger tips, bruises and stratches all over. Those aren't really a worry though, they're just a little sore. Mostly I'm just tired and assorted muscles hate me.
So I'm back from my weekend out with my unit. Our "mission" was to defend a hill out in the middle of nowhere in Puckapunyal from those damn Mazurians, who are quite sneaky buggers.

Friday Evening - Saturday Morning:
Before we left we distributed supplies and section weapons; each section had 2 GLA's, 2 F89 Minimi's, 2 Claymores, of course all our F88 Austeyrs and I think we had an illumination round for the GLA right from the start. Either that or the platoon commander had them all and handed us one at some point. We loads of other crap too but that was the cool stuff. Our claymores were pretty shit and busted looking though, not that it matters since they were full of rocks. I was just given my steyr and rations and shit while I tried to make sure all my gear was in order.
So we hopped on the bus, cammed up on the way out to puckapunyal and deployed at gate 7 to the puckapunyal military area (see map below, numeral 1)


Will continue later

Ok I'm back, a couple of days later. Turns out I actually got a lot worse, the pains and tiredness were nothing, my whole digestive system started to hate me and other weird sickness crap struck me down pretty good yesterday - I ended up lying on the couch for hours. I blame the ration packs, especially the chocolate and cheese.
Anyway I seem to be recovering now so I shall continue with my little story.

So, gate 7 is numeral 1 on my little diagram of the AO. It was dark when we arrived, as we got off the bus we went into all-round defence, taking it in turns to load up on ammo. Once we were all bombed up we headed out along the red route on the map. It was dark and the puckapunyal night is very quiet so we had to be quite stealthy, the sound of any branches snapping or anything like that carries a long way. We could have been attacked at any time after we got off the bus in theory, though the guys playing the enemy probably wouldn't bother. I imagine we're not supposed to consider such "meta-gaming" elements though :p.
The site we were to set up our defence, the knoll just north of the 265 feature (figures 3 and 2 respectively). It was only about 800m from gate 7 but it took us quite a bit longer than it should have to get there due to some poor navigation (note that the red route is excessively long (may be exaggerated). The plan was to head north along the road then due east to the position, but there were "issues"). We ended up finding the steepest route up that hill, rather a tough climb. Once there we set out to find our fighting pits, which had been marked out by our platoon commander earlier in the day. Some of them were pre dug and we just had to uncover them, but the depth section pits weren't dug at all. Fortunately my section's pits were pre dug so we didn't have to dig that night. I'm not sure if the depth section actually started that night, might have waited till morning.
So anyway, had picket in the middle of the night, that sucked as it does. Fortunately we had good weather all weekend, no rain or even wind really. Made for some cold nights though, no cloud cover to keep in the heat. We didn't bother putting up our hoochies, just slept on the ground.

Saturday Morning - Saturday Evening:
Revelli was at 6.30 I believe, possibly sooner (I didn't actually have a watch, something I'll have to fix for next time). It was just before first light in any case. Revelli actually makes a lot more sense to me now, previously I had only experienced it on annual camp with cadets and it was more just a time to get us up then. We actually went through the useful routine of revelli this time; a couple of minutes to jam away as much sleeping crap as possible and then straight into the fighting pits keeping watch over the area as the sun rose. Everyone had to stay there until the clearing patrols had made sure that no enemy soldiers had managed to sneak up on us during the night. I actually went on the clearing patrol for my section, basically three of us just formed an extended line leading away from our position and then just swept across the front of the position.
After that was general morning routine; cleaning ones weapon, quick shave, reapply cam cream, making sure the rest of the sleeping crap is packed away THEN breakfast. I never actually had time for breakfast at all. Managed to drink some hot chocolate (made from hot water and powder) on sunday morning but somebody else had made it.
After all that we pretty much got straight to the digging. Damn puckapunyal ground is hard. We spend a fair bit of the time breaking rocks with picks and our entrenching tools. In the whole weekend our holes only got 50cm deep or so max, and that's with 3 or 4 people digging for many hours. I saw several picks snapped in half and the shovel ends of several entrenching tools broken or sheared horribly.
I managed to get out of digging for a number of hours by doing LP duty (Listening Post), which basically consisted of me lying prone behind some bushes keeping forward watch over the area in front of our position. Gave me time to rest and eat breakfast too.
The other two sections were sent out on patrols throughout the day, I think they had some enemy contact but we didn't hear anything back at the main position. Actually now that I think about it I did hear some minimi fire but it wasn't for very long and didn't sound like too much of a battle. Just had other random tasks to do around the place for the rest of the day also.
Shortly before dark 3-section (my section) was sent out on standing patrol to provide early warning for the rest of the platoon should the enemy decide to attack during the night. We set up on the hill just northeast of the main position (figure 4 on the map) and took up positions looking out over the surrounding area (lying prone, having pulled some branches and the like into position for better camoflage).
So, we lay there for quite a while (I was facing pretty much north). After some time I happened to spot some guys in auscam wandering east along the road, wasn't too sure if they were ours or the enemy's. I managed to communicate what I had seen to the guy nearest me via some loud whispers and he more effectively used some field signals to try and communicate to our section commander, though I'm not sure if he actually did or not. An hour or maybe even two passed and darkness fell. I was starting to fall asleep when I heard someone yell out "BANG!" and rifle fire erupt. Later I was told that the guys on the east side of the feature (where the fighting began) had heard a whole bunch of rifles being cocked moments before being shot at, which is pretty slack of the enemy. We'd all had our rifles at action (ie with a round in the chamber, no need to cock it to fire) since we loaded up on ammo on friday, cocking your rifle in the dead of the night is extremely unstealthy.
So anyway I hadn't fired a shot by this point and was rather at a loss of what to do next, so I crawled my way over to my neighbor in search of some instructions. We crawled to the top of the hill to try and get a line of sight on the enemy. Once there we could see muzzle flashes all over the place but it was pretty freaking dark and there was zero chance of actually seeing the enemy. It was about the time that our section commander yelled out for us to withdraw, and so the rest of the section started to run back while the assault group (my group, there was also the gun group and the command group) provided cover fire. This was when I first got to actually shoot my rifle, which was fun. Was pretty much just aiming at the enemy muzzle flashes, fighting in the night is hard. I had a stoppage pretty quickly actually, that sucked but I managed to fix it after fiddling around a bit. My rifle crapped up quite a few times over the weekend actually. Stupid thing.
Anyway, we started to leapfrog our way back to the main defensive position. The enemy stopped on the hill we'd been sitting on and just shot at us from there, after a while we were far enough away to just patrol back to camp the regular way.
Back at camp we occupied the depth pits since the other two sections were in the forward postions. Basically we sat there for a while, ate some food and prepared for bed. An hour or two after we got back the enemy started probing our position, trying to find out where our guns were. A fair bit of shooting went on, not from those of us in the depth section though since that would involve shooting over the heads of our mates, and also their muzzles flashes look a lot like enemy muzzle flashes. After this stopped I headed down to the forward pits to get some of my stuff which I'd left there. I'd misunderstood one of my orders so I ended up sleeping down there for a while until the 2-section commander came and told us to stand to. I ended up in one of the pits with two other guys saying "what the crap are you doing here chook? You're meant to be in the depth pits." It took them a while to actually get into the pit though and I was there by myself for quite a while, hearing weird noises coming from the south. I felt sure I we were going to get attacked from the south with just me in the southmost pit. I'm pretty sure it was the enemy, but some of them were heading back to their camp, which was on top of the 265 feature. That wasn't the "enemy" camp though, just where they camped for convinience, so they were never actually going to attack from that direction.
We were attacked a few times during that night, it even got pretty intense a few times at which point one of the guys with a GLA would launch a lume into the sky. Those things were one of the coolest things I saw that weekend. Basically they're just big orange flares, but in the dark of the night they lit up the whole area like day, sending the enemy who'd been sneaking about on the open field scurring for cover lest they be mowed down. They pretty much withdrew shortly after the luminenscent rounds were fired. They only last about 10 seconds or so though.
Again, picket sucked, but we weren't attacked during mine. Actually the attacks stopped before midnight, I'm sure the enemy (who are actually the OR's from our unit) didn't want to stay up all night either. Keep in mind that dusk is around 6.30 or so so that's still quite a few hours of darkness and being attacked.

Ok I'm back to finish this off, a week later.

Sunday Morning - Sunday Evening:

I slept with my contact lenses in that night because it was too much of a pain putting them in fast with dirty hands. Doing that on saturday had caused me a whole lot of discomfort throughout the day, and having eventually gotten them comfortable I wasn't about to go through the whole process again.
I didn't go on the clearing patrol at revelli thar morning since I was in the depth section, so me and my pit buddy sat there in our pits for a while while the forward sections did their clearing patrols. After this was all done we packed up our crap, had a shave and managed to have some hot chocolate (made from warm water and chocolate powder) before the days duties began. I'm not too sure what we did first thing, I believe I ended up back on listening post duty for a while. Our section commander set me looking up towards the 265 feature since that's where we believed the actual enemy camp was (not just the pretend one) and he thought they might try and get someone into a position to observe us so they'd know when we were leaving, and then bring their whole section in behind us and shoot us up. He figured they'd be too lazy to actually walk all the way over to where their camp was supposed to be. I didn't see anyone though, and in the end we were attacked from a different direction.
At some point we began packing up the camp, filling in the holes we'd spent hours digging and re-burying the pre-dug pits we'd occupied. I ended up minding the minimi for a while, which was good fun, even though I wasn't actually allowed to fire it if we were attacked since I'm not qualified. When I finished that I was relieved by someone with a GLA so I got to carry that around for a while, which was cool. Actually I went pretty much straight to another pit after minding the gun and sat around behind some bushes looking out across the killing field with my GLA on hand. I remember sitting there thinking "Come out you sneaky Mazurian fuckers so I can shoot you!" or something along those lines.
During all my sitting around our section was given our orders for the withdrawal, someone had to be at each pit (We'd buried them by this time so I was just sitting next to a camoflagued pit) at all times though which is why I wasn't there. I was given the orders second hand and given a bit more of a detailed run-down on what was likely to happen, and given a bit of a crash course on finding cover and moving under fire. That was good fun.
We waited around a while because there was some issue with a radio, we didn't have one or the officers lost it or gave it to someone who hadn't come back or something. In any case the platoon eventually gathered up its gear and headed out. Oh yes, before this I'd had my turn at helping fill in the depth section pits, which gave me the opportunity to find my entrenching tool, which I'd left lying around up there someplace all night.
So, the platoon marched off to the top of the feature and then headed south along the ridge towards the 265 feature. My section was in the rear of the formation, with me at the rear of the section. As we headed down the south side of the feature I looked back and noticed a bunch of guys in auscam walking around on the top of the feature. I didn't think too much of it, they were walking fairly casually so I thought they were probably just some of the officers who'd been camping up there. I was about to tell somebody about it (difficult to do from the rear of the formation without shouting out) when they started shooting at us. In hindsight I should have checked if they were carrying weapons, I'm pretty sure the officers weren't. In a real situation the officers wouldn't have been then so I would have known instantly they were enemy, so it's a bit crap having them wandering about sometimes.
In any case I dived to the ground and found some cover and tried to return fire (It's extremely difficult to fire when lying prone with a pack on your back, I could barely lift my head to look through the scope. I need to do something to fix that a bit before next weekend).
The guy who'd been watching my back the whole weekend then came running over and took cover nearby, he pretty much told me what I needed to do and when. Quite useful that, stopped me doing anything crazy.
Next began the most intense physical work I've ever done, known as a "fighting withdrawal" I believe. It consisted of us shooting at the enemy a bit, waiting for our turn to move then jumping up, running about 3 - 5 steps while the rest of the platoon covered us then diving to the ground again behind whatever cover could be found. Repeat about 20 or maybe more times. With a 15kg or so pack on your back this takes the piss out of you extremely quickly. Especially with the aforementioned difficulty of the pack sliding up and pushing your head into the ground. Then throw in one of the shoulder straps of your pack slipping out of the buckle so you have to drag this heavy pack over one shoulder while you run. Then throw in a great big mother of a hill you have to climb up. Thankfully we'd withdrawn a fair distance by the time we reached the hill so we could kind of climb it without too much harassment. The enemy were still coming though so we took cover on top of the hill and those of us with any ammo left took a few shots at them. I had numerous stoppages throughout this battle too, several were my fault (one time I managed to jam two rounds half in the chamber, really wedged in tight. Had to take the barrel off to fix that one, and pull one of the rounds out of the chamber using the lip of another round.)
We continued up and over the hill with the enemy in pursuit. On the far side of this hill was a bit of a plain, then some trees and the main road. We took cover in the trees as the enemy descended the hill after us, they even threw a smoke grenade so we couldn't see them while they descended. We were almost entirely out of ammo by this stage so there wasn't an awful lot of shooting going on still. We withdrew along the fenceline towards the buses, making our final stand there. We took cover behind the various trees and the enemy followed, ending up rather close, within 20 metres of us. They weren't really shooting either by then, so our platoon commander ordered us to affix bayonets and charge (he actually had a bayonet (he was scolded for it later) the rest of us just pretended, except one of the gunners who pulled out his entrenching tool). We then ran screaming at the enemy and pretended to stab them, they didn't fight back because they were rather buggered also.
We were pretty much done then, walked back to the bus pickup point, did our range clearances (to make sure none of us took any ammunition or anything out of the military area) and the rest of the ammo was expended (kind of cool to watch).
Hopped back on the bus, slept, woke up near the regiment where we proceeded to clean our weapons rather thoroughly. After a while we were dismissed, around 4.30 or so I think. Headed to hungry jacks down the road for some real food.

Phew, there, thats good enough. Took so long to finish that that I have my next field weekend in a week and a half. It's a platoon attack weekend so there won't be digging, most likely a lot more walking though. We'll see how that goes.