Standard grammar, punctuation and generl crappy story disclaimer applies

I promise to finish this some day, oh and the check is in the mail.

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I found my self 50ish, 40 lbs over weight and with time on my hands now that second son had headed off to college. I decided to look into the militia. Yes I know it could be a batch f nuckle dragging clamsmen or a bunch of whannabe geer queers but what the heck. Worst case maybe I scare up some students for the CCW classes I teach, make a few bucks that way.

They said to pack food for a full day so that week I made a pan of Logan bread. Logan bread is named for Mt Logan, dense and full of nuts and dried fruit. We used to make it for week long Boy Scout canoe and backpacking trips. My version has pumpkin in it, extra black strap molasses and dried cranberries and dried tart cherries. I vaccum sealed 4" squares. Making it brough back memories of Hudson Bay Bread. From the Boy Scouts Northern Tier High Adventure Base the traitional version was oatmeal , lots of butter , corn syrup, sugar , honey , maple flavor and slivered almonds. My version was simpler oatmeal, maple syrup, coconut oil and sliverd almonds. I made a batch, looked like a sheet cookie, and again cut into 4" squares and vaccuum sealed them.

At Walmart I grabbed a couple of the flavored tuna packets, some of those caffinated drink sticks, single serve gatoraid mixes. On the way out I spotted the little cans with the red devil on them, Underwood meat spreads. Hmmm chicken, ham , roast beef, corned beef or liverwurst which to pick. Unable to decide I get two cans of each.

I decide to pack like the Allen Gallon Challenge - each scout put his food for the day into a zip loc freezer bag. I put in two squares each of Logan and Hudson Bay Bread, a single serve peanut butter, a can of underwood liver wurst, some crackers, some hard blue mints and some caffine drink mixes. Wow that's a long list who's writting this, J.W. Rawles?


RealTree cammo was the Militia Standard but the only RealTree I owned was a set of artic bibs and coat. The OIC said in an e-mail that BDU's or whatever were fine so put on heavy green Carhart cargo pants , much better quality and less expensive than the official BSA pants, heavy blue cotton long sleeve t and a really disreputble looking plain khaki ball cap I got from Menards. The only true military stuff was my boots - USAF Green Corcorans. I got 'em for $70 at a gun show and they were the best boots I'd ever owned. The older I get the more I like good tall boots. My day pack was bought 30 years ago a thick black nylon thing, it pre-dated the MOLLE stuff and ALICE wasn't cool back then so it was just thick black nylon. It did have a padded waist strap and chest straps.

We weren't supposed to be armed at this event but that went against my personal policy of never leaving my cave without my club, hat tip Mr Mark Walters, so I figured my little Kahr MK9 in the pocket wasn't bending the rules too bad. Beside what would they do court martial me?

I got to the TA or 'training area'. It was a picnic area way back in a state park. I arrived early as is my habbit. A guy by the name, well call sign everyone uses a hadle or call sign, of Gravy greated me. He was a trim, weathered looking guy head to toe in Real Tree BDU's complete with boonie hat and trousers bloused into his vietnam style combat boots. Each collar had a blacked out captains train track, his right shoulder has black and white US flag with one blue stripe in the middle, on the left shoulder was an olive oval patch with a rust brown III. He had an old school pistol belt with two canteens and a single butt pack held up by suspenders and had the de ringur Shemag in green and black. We chatted a bit, he thanked me for comming, directed me under the picnic shelter.

I signed the muster and filled out a paper. I asked the huge lady in RealTree if I needed to fill it all in. The answer was no, fill in what I wanted but do note any medical stuff they should know about and contact info in case I got injured. By the time I was done more folks had arrived. A knot of them had formed, drinking coffee, shooting the breeze and smoking cigars. A personality flaw of mine is despising cigars. The only thing worse than cheap cigars is expensive cigars. They cost more money and are as reprehnsible as the cheap ones. I stayed upwind of the noxious cloud. There was a group of obvious newbs such as myself. They either had brand new RealTree or like me no real tree.

There were all sorts of people now in various bits of RealTree. Some with stripes or rank baadges on hats or sleeves or collars. There were all sorts of pins and patches to be found. Some guys looked like a walking patch collection. Most were serious but some humorous. One guy had one on his left shoulder that said 'Chairborne', cute. Another was a tab like a ranger tab that said,"Regular Guy". I'd find out later he thought of himself as anything but a regular guy and had the interwebbook props to prove it.

A simple flagpole had been put up. They, or is it we, formed up for 'colors'. The color guard was mismatched. The bugle playing to the colors was ragged and there was every combination of hand salutes, hands to hearts, hats on, hats off but the flag got up in the air. The CO lead the assembled masses in something that resembled an oath of enlistment. The a guy with crosses on his collar gave a blessing.


There were 21 regulars in three squads, four 'state cadre' or big shots and five newbs including myself. Morning was land nav. Most folks dug out those military lensatic compasses, I pulled out my trusty Boy Scout Silva baseplate compass. They passed out toppo maps. Gravy came by to give me a hand then reaized I was pretty good at it already. We trooped through the woods looking for rally points, each squad getting a couple newbs tacked on. My squad was friendly enough but it was clear I was along for the ride but it was cool.

Towards the end we were about about to hump up a steep hill to hump down another to then hump up a second hill to find the final point. I spoke up, "We could just follow this creek bed down and around to where the other crek bed comes in back track it to the curve then attack a bearing off that to get do." Regular Guy looked skeptical but said "Lead on Mc Gee." My rout worked rather well, not sure RG was that happy about it. We did a nice 5,000 meters or so as the crow flies so more like 6,000 or so as the militia wanders.

We broke for lunch. Lots of the establishment types broke out MRE's or the really cool dudes like RG broke out First Strike Rations. The cigar club fired up - did I mention this is nasty. I was surprised how many folks here smoked - I guess working in corporate / IT world so long. Anyway Gravy came over to say hey. He was interested in my 'Alan Bag' even tried some of the Logan Bread and was impressed.

Half way through lunch they switched to lunch and learn were we kept eating while some guys did first aid training. The had everyone toss out their med kits. A guy with a patch showing a winged angle with a sword and the word Paramedic around the edge and a name tape saying Nurse Ratchet was inspecting. He made good natured fun of some folks only having a zip-loc of bandaids. Others had full on 'downed operators' kits.

"What for ewe has two bags?" he asks me.

I explained one was a boo boo kit with bandaids, anti-biotic ointment, immodium and aleive while the other was a blow out kit with tourniquit, kerlex gauze , ace wrap and duct tape. "I like it he pronounced. Simple, effective, cheap"

Afternoon training was GPS. Again we did a lot of plodding through the woods in a straight line. While it worked didn't seem the best way to go at it.

The final exercise was a LAND NAV with first aid. The newbs were formed into a squad. The other squads charged off into the woods. I held out group up a second. To the guy holding the GPS, 'What is bearing and distance?" He gave it to me, it was off our toppo map so I had everyone walk to the big park map. The map was huge, 4' square. I found the picnic shelter on the map, luckily it had a distance scale on the botton. I applied bearing and range to the map.

"Yeh but how accurate is that map?" someone asked.

"Should be close enough, why don't we drive to this point here then use the GPS to guide in the last 300 yards, it'll save us 4,000 yards of so of bush whacking."

We piled into on guys's diesel bro-dozer pickup, this thing was huge. I wonder if he has air stairs at home, anyway we drove to a curve in the road and parked. Then used the GPS to overland out way to the designated point. The training staff hadn't even set up the 'wounded' yet!


I got home early evening, wife was heading out with friends to play some sort of chick card game. So I showered and fixed myself a small rib eye , sweet potatoe and cracked open a Sam Adams and intended to surf the web and then watch some walkng dead.

I was lurking in AR15.com. I don't post much there, after an unfortuante incident I was banned from the site. I went through a couple alternate ID's until those were detected and banned. I managed a final id that I mostly lurked with, having less than 20 posts in over a year.

Surprisingly a message box opened. Wierd it had no 'from' UserId

"Saw you at training today."
"We are Impressed."
"Keep going to training."
"Eyes open. Mouth Closed"
"Lose 30 lbs by Spring"
"Liberty or Death..."

Whut duh fuq? I tried to get into my PM's again and it was gone. How did they know my AR15.COM ID? Either spooky or a very well played joke.

Almost all men are AUTOMATICALLY in the federal militia, you have no choice.  Don't believe it, go read the federal code.  Many are also in state militias.

Self censored

BlackOps bro BlackOps.

true but this is fiction - not very good fiction at that

Tldr

Reads like ESL.

Op, you have so outed yourself.

In before the lock, ban, and follow up thread.

Previously banned member.