Pat's back on ship!

Here is the latest from Pat on their time in the Philippines; I'm sure there will be more interesting stories to come, but for now:

"So….the Philippines…first off pulling into our position, one of our vehicles got stuck in a rice paddy. To get it out we had to bring in other, bigger vehicles and in turn [mess] up the rice paddy more. Because of this we had to pay this farmer 5000 pesos for the damage. It only amounted to like 100 dollars and we got some good pictures with a sign saying “Golf Btry property/paid in full” so it was all kinda funny. Also, we hit some low hanging power lines and took out the power to like 4 village homes and had to pay them 1700 pesos.

Overall, the actual shooting portion went pretty well. (Weather was absolutely miserable….poured every day, lots of bugs, and humid as hell) We actually did something no other battery has ever done….Imagine one gun shooting two rounds that land at the same time (the first round shot at a really high angle with a long time of flight and before that round lands you load another and shoot it low angle) It was pretty crazy bc we proved that a six gun battery can actually have 12 rounds hit a target at the same time. I know this sounds kind of artillery nerdy, but It was pretty cool and we have video.

At the end of the whole exercise they threw us a little party. This country has absolutely no money (like the regimental commander’s bathroom doesn’t flush/you have to pour water on your crap and use gravity to flush it) but they threw us a little party with some cool food and lots of beer. And get this….they hired escorts for us! Don’t worry, no body (not even our single guys) got near those nasties. It was just funny cause I couldn’t imagine US Marines throwing a party for the military of another country and hiring hookers for them!"

I think the word you're looking for is "wow", the phrase might be, "Oh, my!". Hahaha, some deployment, right?