Spring Training... Army Style!!!

The men of the 2nd I.D. Living History Association met for an April spring training event on Saturday, April 10th. The site of this month's training day was just northwest of Modale, Iowa on some state land near the Missouri River. In attendance were me, Big Dave, Jeff, Cody, Kevin and his son Tyler, and Darrell Canfield who is a new member. We began our training in a wooded area, but after only a few minutes we spotted several nasty little ticks on our uniforms, so we conducted the rest of the training on a gravel road and grass embankment. We drilled for hours going over both the school of the soldier without arms and the manual of arms for the rifle. We spent some time on unit hand signals as well as a quick course on field stripping the M-1 rifle. I was the acting drill instructor for the day and I thought all of the guys did really well, especially our new "replacement" Pvt. Canfield. We had fun throwing in a few "Jody calls" as we marched in cadence up and down that ole' country road. It was a beautiful day and another great training event. Our next unit event will be a 2nd Infantry Division veterans reunion in Newton, Iowa on Saturday, May 1. Looking forward to it!!! Oh and incidentally, the photo is actually from World War II and not us... I only wish we had that many guys!!!