King of Battle: Hooah

Matthew is currently in Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in Georgia. Through a series of tests and training he will be qualified for service as a Second Lieutenant. He is about to start week seven out if twelve in his training.

The two big challenges at OCS are the American Military history test and the land navigational test. Matt took the history test last week and feels confident that he did well. He studied every day over Christmas Exodus and took detailed notes and made outlines to assist his learning. The test he took was essay question based as opposed to the previous format of a more objective test.

This week he is going into the field for his land nav test. He will be given points to find and plot on a map. It will be in woody terrain and in the dark. He will be working alone and the smallest miscount of paces or wrong landmark could throw off his entire map and cause of his points to be labeled incorrectly. He will be doing that on Tuesday.

He was given his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) on Friday. He will be in Field Artillery, which I honestly know very little about. I know he will work with cannons and other large scale weapons. He had taken a more recent interest in this field so I am not as familiar with it as some of the other branches he was interested in. He is very happy with this placement. After graduating from OCS he will attend the Basic Officer's Leadership Course (BOLC) at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. He thinks Jack and I will be able to move with him there as the training for Field Artillery is several months long.

Did I ever think I would be living in Oklahoma? No. I don't know anything about Oklahoma besides what was discussed on Friends when Chandler moved there, that there's a musical about it, and that there was a bomber. Yeah, my knowledge of that part of the country isn't what it could be. I had to google it to even know what states it bordered! It's basically in Texas, which tells me one major factor for me... It will have hot weather. I am not a huge fan of hot weather. I am a Midwestern girl through and through. I love brisk fall or winter days. But, I will learn to love Oklahoma. I will enjoy getting to go for walks with jack. It's been too cold to go out much with him in Michigan.

So... My husband will be shooting the big guns. I will probably learn all about weaponry and tanks and that side of the military. I will learn all about Oklahoma and be able to call that our first Army home. I will be in my first Army community. I will feel like an Army wife.

Hooah.