Jake

Generic infantryman was my job.

Standard foot soldier you picture when you think of the army.

I was 18 when I got stationed there.

I got a piece of paper saying, you're going to Italy for two years.

I let loose.

I had a great time out there.

Verona, Venice area, northeastern Italy.

Oh, okay.

Next country, over a couple hour bus ride we took.

And kind of our mission in my unit in Italy was training with like our allied forces throughout Europe.

So it was a bunch of like joint NATO training exercises.

A lot of stuff just learning from them, them learning from us, just tactics and techniques type of stuff.

So this specific time, it was a one week trip to Slovenia we were on.

And throughout the week, we did a bunch of firing ranges, training tactics, us working with the Slovenian army.

And kind of the culminating training event took place over the last two days.

Slovenian army was pretending to defend this village in the middle of the woods.

Over a 48-hour period, we told them, you don't know when it's going to happen, but a huge US force is going to attack the village and they have to

try to prevent us from taking it.

We were going to start the mission at sunset the morning of.

There's a big leaders meeting and everything.