In other equally exciting news, Colonel Longbeard came up to the Captain and myself to ask if we'd be interested in practicing skirmish by the bugle! Of course, we said, "yes." Separate from battalion drill, the Colonel brought his bugle and met us and the 20th Maine to begin our instruction in bugle deployments. This included...wait for it....bugle calls for lay down and stand up! The Colonel hopes to have a battle scenario where a field piece gets taken, turned, and fired. To accommodate this, the artillery was offering cannon training so naturally, we all ran over to practice on the mountain howitzer. So, start booking your time off for this season because you don't want to miss the event where Company D captures a cannon and fires it.
The rest of the weekend was fun and low key. We filmed some more videos, got in lots of drill, Severson had a blast playing town ball, and the Captain enjoyed displaying his hardcore officer's tent set up. We also had the strange experience of learning how to stack arms. Word on the street is Company D has more Sharps bayonets than any other Sharpshooter unit anywhere. Let alone with the future potential of having two stacks of Sharps.
With so many more possibilities available to us this year, we really hope you can all make it to Spokane Memorial Day weekend. Platoon leaders should expect to take charge of their platoons, since the Captain and I are going to be spending more effort in drilling for tactical deployments and leaving more school of the soldier training to platoon leaders.
Make sure you schedule your time off now if you haven't already and make your transportation arrangements. If you need to use the company cleaning kit, the price is a dollar a day. We'll see you at Deep Creek!