Amazing

We made the trip up to FOB/Camp Comfy to hang out with Higher for a couple of days. Our headquarters has, of course, a really nice wireless internet connection running throughout the building.

It's great. No waiting in line for timed access, no crappy community keyboards where half the consonants don't work (great fun in the Age of Complex Passwords), no tremendous slowdown from some funny-looking E3 downloading video from the mail-order brides website...

There are about ten of us visiting up here right now. You can tell which ones we are at a glance - we're the soldiers giggling with glee and crowing, "Yeah, ask me for updates NOW!"

(an aside - the whole auto-updating thing is phenomenally irritating if you have no access. Sometimes I'll be working down at FOB McLazy and one of the boxes will pop up - "you are in extreme personal danger unless you update Minesweeper immediately! Update now?" So I'll hit "update" just for kicks and laugh at my computer as it searches, and searches, and searches.)

Reading list

I'm coming to the end of some of the stuff I've been reading, and thought I'd solicit some recommendations here.

Some ground rules - I don't do a lot of heavy readiing while deployed. I sort of consider this an extended period for "airport reading." I keep it light, avoid anything too intellectual. Reading is an escape here. I did read The Arms of Krupp (loved it!) last time, but almost anything qualified as "escape" on that tour.

Anyway, I've been doing a couple of series so far on this trip - an odd combination of science fiction (which I am not normally inclined to read) and Florida murder mysteries.

I'm almost finished with John Ringo's Posleen War series, which has been pretty good and even occasionally combined man-eating alien invaders with Nazis. How much better can it get? Ringo writes good, interesting characters, and I can ignore the sci-fi silliness (really, I'm sure someone out there cares about fictional anti-matter technology, but it ain't me) if there are good characters.

That one was recommended to me by someone who noticed I was reading David Weber's Honor Harrington series during mobilization. Ringo's character are good - I think Weber's are better. Weber's vision of the societies of the future also really rung my bell. He's a throughtful writer, and I enjoyed that armload of books. And, of course, there were treecats.

I've been breaking up the aliens and invasions with some Randy Wayne White mysteries starring Doc Ford. The good news - they remind me of John MacDonald and Travis McGee, who got me through the last trip. The bad news - Doc just isn't Travis. He tries, but... well... that's the problem with reading the series that set the standard first. Everything else is a bit of a letdown. I'm also getting a little sick of all Doc's girlfriends dying at the end of each book. Travis could never hold a lady, either, but at least his damsels would run away, meet someone else, or die. Doc's ladies just get whacked.

I picked up Matthew Bracken's Enemies Foreign and Domestic recently, just to actually read what I heard a lot of the gun crowd referencing. Interesting, but it reminded me a little of Ayn Rand (remind me to tell you guys about the Ayn Rand fan and the Iraqi microloan guy some day when I'm whining about having nothing to write about) in that after 50 pages, you've got the point and the rest is just...remediation.

So. If, given that brief synopsis of what I've been reading and what I've thought about it, you have any ideas...please. Please share. Keep in mind - I have no problem knocking out the average novel in a day, so please - no 50-page wonders that won't get an afternoon past mail call. I likes 'em lengthy.

I'm really looking for some optimistic fiction, with good characters. I read a lot of cop novels out of the community library, but the overly dark ones...they don't do much for me.

I think I'm really about pegged on sci-fi stuff for a while, but I'll ponder all suggestions.

No Nicholas Sparks. Ever. Under any circumstances. I got desperate enough to read...what was it...well, one of those, recently. I would have flung it away in annoyance if it hadn't been all I had to read.

Any ideas, again, are welcome. A series would be best, so I could order several at a time.

Joy...and meat

We were sitting around this afternoon, hatin'. Nothing going on, nothing on the horizon. Then Bossman remembered the steaks he'd picked up on his last Officer Mission to one of the Big PX FOBs.

T-bones and ribeyes and charcoal - oh, my!

I dispatched New Sergeant to the chowhall to get some potatoes. You're one of like 12 chicks here, I explained. You'll get more food than the guys.

She did wonderfully, so we ate well. I scrubbed and sliced taters and, with butter, garlic and foil, put together very nice side dish for the slabs of beef Bossman cooked.

Short on forks, we ate with combat knives and hands. The sounds coming from my porch, I think, probably resembled the sound of six hyenas around a wildebeest.

We played beach music and laughed at each other and stuffed ourselves. 'Twas wonderful.

Thoughts on helicopters

The LZ (landing zone) here on FOB McSleepy is right behind our CHU. The birds come in, the birds go out. We get the Kiowas of the Scout Weapons Teams, small birds that land for fuel. We get the Blackhawks, running troops around, ferrying Them Who Be Important, doing all the miscellaneous aerial labor of a battlefield where ground travel is still problematic. And we get the CH-47 Chinooks (more affectionately called the Shithook). The ’47 is the biggest bird that flies in here (the Army does not stock any variant of the CH-53, my favorite Marine Corps bird, in its Big Army inventory), and we can tell when they come in – our quarters vibrate noticeably.

Although the birds come and go all day and all night, we still look when it’s light (my roomie, in fact, loves the helicopters and will occasionally throw on her night vision and go watch them in the dark. Strange woman). We glance up, throw the flight into a mental classification (the bird bringing the colonel to visit, the bird bringing the guys back from leave, the regular bird to Big Brigade Base, etc) and move on.

But one makes us stop and do the instant mental inventory of the Soldiers we own. The MEDEVAC bird.

We have, if my count is correct, medevac’d exactly ONE combat casualty since I’ve been down here. The day our Friendly Neighbors decided to shoot at us while we were out walking around, they got one young man in the leg with a ricochet.

We brought him back to FOB by ground, then passed him off to the medics. A couple of rifle squads went back out to look for the shooter, and we “leaf-eater” types were dropped off here. I was walking down toward the latrine when I heard a bird coming in. I looked up, saw the red cross on the side.

At that point, we knew our wounded comrade was most likely not in mortal danger. The medic on scene had not been overwhelmingly worried about him, nor had the medics here on the FOB. Most of these guys have been around the block and I trust them to tell us when it’s a appropriate to panic – they weren’t, so we didn’t.

But they were still lifting our soldier out (makes sense, why not take him to Big Brigade Base for a more thorough checkup?) and when I looked up and saw the red-cross marked Blackhawk coming in, I stood and ground my teeth and was struck by the urge to either spit or cry. I opted to do neither, they lifted him out, and he was back five days later with a Purple Heart and a bandage.

The way we’re set up, we have a slightly plused-up team (one extra CA NCO and a staff sacrifice – my roommate) supported two companies and a battalion headquarters that operate over a large area with several reasonably large towns. There are times –more than I’d like – when my soldiers are out without me. Sometimes I’m on the base, sometimes I’m on another mission elsewhere.

Once in a while, I’ll be on the FOB, and one of “the kids” will be on mission. I’ll hear a bird coming, and, although I know the dangerous town is just down the road, close enough so I’d hear an explosion, and although I know that if something terrible happened, it’s a small FOB and we’d know immediately – even though I know all those things – I still feel that clench in my gut. I look up and I squint into the sun, stock still until I’m sure there’s no painted-on red cross.

Because that, folks, I am learning, is the Big Fear. I’m afraid of lots of things here – cars that blow up, roads that blow up, potholes that look like they might blow up, so on and so forth. But the thing I’m finding really makes my blood run cold is the idea of something happening to one of my dudes, especially when I’m not with them.

Only one of my three has combat time, but I have two sergeants and a brand-new staff sergeant, so I cannot in good conscience treat them like dull-witted privates and hover over them every day. I’d like to, though. I’d like to hover over them and watch the alleys they pass and the rooms they enter, as though that is enough to prevent something awful from happening.

It doesn't work that way, though.

Not-Fun-Fridays

Friday being the Muslim Sunday, is the day when we tend to have meetings and that sort of thing. So Fridays around here are usually dull and irritating. Today was no exception, and when I sat down to try to put something thoughtful together, I realized that about a half-page in, I was finding a lot of grumpy rage.

So I though, the heck with that - I'll post a couple of pictures!

Here we have Good Dinner at the FOB. Why is is it good, you ask? Because Roommate and I cooked it ourselves, on the grill.



That's a nice slice of canned ham, some canned taters cooked in foil with garlic salt and butter, canned mushrooms and green beans. It was outstanding, which is kinda sad. But, it wasn't boiled, which put it miles ahead of chowhall food.

And the other I have to share with you today has a special importance for me. See, you all know Abby's Mom is a nurse. As are lots of the ladies I grew up around, and some of my friends.

So I think this is an important point, and I want you all to pay close attenion:



Please - when waging the Jihad, do not shoot the nurses!

Something that we can all stand to be reminded about, from time to time.

Note to Army

When you next hire contractors from a foreign country to perform a function on a base or FOB, if you intend to extend to them access to MWR facilities that will place them in close proximity to Soldiers, could you please, please require they sit through a class on the importance of occasionally showering?

That'd be great. I'd really appreciate it.

Good lord

just when you think you're pegging the suck-meter pretty hard...

It was a cold and rainy day. Perfect at home for curling up on the couch with snacks and good company, but perfect here for...well, hating.

A couple minutes after 1700 I wandered over and collected up the Boss. We grabbed Elderly Sergeant and headed over to the chowhall for what we've come to call the Evening Sadness.

We remarked upon the absence of a guard at the entrance to the chowhall. There has been a recent outbreak of vandalism targeting the display of a certain command photo right inside the door (no, no big-picture political commentary - the vandalism has been more...local). The targeted picture was absent, indicating the guard (who was awarded that position...well, let's say not randomly) was probably eating (he takes the framed picture with him when he eats).

We ingested some "beef," then collected our cardboard trays and trudged outside. Where, in the glare from the lights that illuminate the Dumpster, we saw it falling.

Snow.

Wet, nasty snow that melted as it hit the ground and lasted only a few minutes.

But snow all the same.

Kinda sad

The best news heard here recently - US troops in Iraq get to drink beer for Super Bowl.

American troops in Iraq will be allowed to drink beer without fear of court-martial for this year's Super Bowl — an exception to a strict military ban on drinking alcohol in combat zones.
[SNIP]
A copy of the waiver said the consumption of alcoholic beverages will be allowed only Feb. 1-2 and service members will be limited to two 12-ounce beers each.

OK - it's two beers, and there's always that little voice in your head that says it's unseemly for an adult to be giddy over two beers, but still..

Current popular opinion holds that will be the most heavily guarded convoy in memory. I am sure the locals will be amused.

Ahmed, the Americans they are doing their convoy with eight tanks, four Apache gunships and what looks like an AC-130. Is it the President?

No, Mohammed - it is the beer for the football game.

[scratches head]

I had a simple mission today and got back shortly after noon. I had a message from the Bossman to check my email ASAP, so I trudged over to the MWR and logged on. The email from said Boss read (and I quote), "nevermind - I found it."

Oookay. Another crisis, narrowly averted. What other email dragons needed slaying? I scrolled....an email from the first sergeant! Subject: M9s

I clicked on it and scanned. The CA battalion is having a shortage of 9mm ammo...blah blah blah...no projected resupply date...blah blah blah...don't fire up our combat loads on the range. Try to get ammo from our manuever units.

OK. Got it. I ran my team through a range a few days ago to clear out the magazines they've been carrying. I then gave them new combat loads, so we're good. I clicked on to the next email, making a note but deciding that one required no action.

Well. I was wrong! My roommate came trudging to our hooch a little later.

I just got off the phone with First Sergeant, she said. He was all fired up about ammunition -

For the nines, I cut her off. Yeah. I got his email. We shot, we have ammo, we're good, right? Or did I miss something?

She stomped her foot. No - you're right. We're fine. But he called to tell us not to have any 9mm ranges.

Like we were going to go out and shoot up our combat loads? I asked. And then stand around with empty magazines in a war, looking confused and waiting for the Ammo Fairy.

I don't know what he thought, she grumped (thoroughly irked). But you owe me for talking to him!

True 'dat, roomie. True 'dat. I guess that means that disposing of the next person who shows up at 0100 wondering if some contractor has been paid is going to be my problem.

So there I was...

in deepest, darkest Eye-Rak. Sure, some folks were worried about IEDs, suicide bombers, and random small arms fire. But I knew we were in trouble when, standing in a quiet village, I turned and saw...

one of our MRAPs being attacked by turkeys.



We survived the turkey attack. Narrowly.

It ended up being, oddly, a productive day. The high point involved digging around in the bottom of a ditch looking for a water pipe. And there's always someone helpful around with a camera when you're digging around in a trash-filled ditch.



We finally found the pipe about three klicks down the road. Because the locals tend to know these things, but they like to watch us flail around for a while first.

I love this job.

Notes

Dear World's Coolest Grandmother,

Thank you for the all the dried fruits you sent when I asked for them. It really adds something to my limited crummy Army diet. I am enjoying them very much.

Love,
Abby

****************************
Note to Self -

Even though the prunes (now called dried plums) are very yummy, eating half a large bag of them is a Very Bad Idea. Don't do that anymore.

Oh boy [hack hack]...it's 2009

[blinks away dust]

Yipee.

Here's hoping y'all are enjoying a day on the couch, recovering from much fun and watching football. Of course, I understand that Bad Dog readers are much too wise to get wild and crazy on New Year's Eve...but if you did, I hope you had one for those of us who were wishing we could!

Weirdest Catch Yet

I woke this morning as my roommate came trooping back in from a trip to the porta-jon.

I don't want to make you sad, she said. But you caught something in a trap. Not a mouse. And it was the trap up on sandbags, so it's on your chair.

MMph? I pulled my head from beneath my pillow. Did I catch a cat?

Nope. Bird, she replied.

I got up, put on a jacket, went outside.



Yep. That's a bird. In a mousetrap. You don't see that every day.

Ho Ho Ho

Merry Christmas from Abby, the whole Bad Dog pack, the World's Grumpiest CA Team, and our merry band of flies!

I was up late trying to move my soldier around, and then again up early to get him on a convoy. I went back to sleep after we loaded him up. And woke to a pounding on the door.

I stumbled out of the rack, opened the door, and...

Oh Come, all ye Faithful...joyful and triumphant...

The Boss, knowing my inclination to ignore all holidays that occur while I'm deployed, and my resulting intolerance for Christmas music, had rounded up a band of carolers (complete with Santa hats). Well aware that a long night probably meant I was still racked out, he'd decided that the best alarm clock is...singing TOC rats.

Lunch/dinner/midday meal was very nice (ham! We got ham!), and there was fruit. There was something that looked suspiciously like Army-issued eggnog in paper cups, but that did not seem like a wise choice.

In short, a pretty good Christmas in Iraq.

Here's hoping you all enjoy a wonderful day with your families and friends/

Administrative madness

Is trying to push a soldier out on emergency leave on Christmas Eve.

We live with a battalion from the 4th Infantry Division. We support them, and they have operational control over us. Administrative control (promotions, leave, awards, UCMJ actions) is retained by the CA chain.

So, we can see how, when a distraught family member initiates a Red Cross message and sends it to the soldier's mailing address instead of command address, there can be confusion.

Now, just to make things more interesting, the battalion we work for has been chopped from 4th ID to another Division (25th). But elements of 4th ID are in Iraq. So the Red Cross message got...sidetracked.

But...you know what? Nothing on God's green earth will get soldiers moving like a Red Cross message. You can call the biggest asshole in the US Army and say, "I have a soldier with a Red Cross message," and he's suddenly helpful. The lazy sprecialist napping in a corner will wake up, get on the phone and start moving heaven and earth. The lost lieutenant gets a clue.

I used every one of those folks, and few more. Got the message, got my guy a ride. We'll get him where he needs to be, as fast as is humanly possible. It's nice to see this machine work once in a while, even if it's in the service of sad news.

[grumble grumble]

I finally dragged myself out of my nice cozy rack around...oh, well, suffice it to say it wasn't early. Not even remotely.

With nothing on the horizon until a 1300 "chat," I made coffee and stood on my porch, surveying my (limited) domain.

Things appeared...hazy. I climbed up on a pile of sandbags and looked across the helopad. Quite hazy.

Things developed. The weather progressed from slightly hazy to downright dusty. It's nasty - the dust doesn't seem that bad outside until you look down and realize there's a thick coat on everything. You go indoors to escape it, and realize it's working its way around the door, in through the air conditioner, around the taped windows.

Dust sucks less here than it did living in tents, but it still suck.

To top it off, it's thinking about raining. A few drops, now and again. Yeah - rain in the dust. Mud-rain.

Love this country.

Best Army Idea - Ever

And I'm not even being sarcastic.



That, ladies and gentlemen, is SFC Boe. She is a therapy dog.

Not just any therapy, either. Combat Stress Control therapy.

Iraq can make you crazy in a zillion different ways, whether you be the guy who gets griped at about PowerPoint slides or the guy kicking down doors or the gal flying medevac birds or the kid processing 10,000 leave forms. There's plety of stress and plenty of crazy to go around.

However, somebody got smart, and now there's something nice here that soldiers can pet, maybe talk to, maybe cuddle a little, and feel normal with.

That's good. Three cheers for SFC Boe the therapy dog, and two tails wagging for the Army for finally getting something right.

A note - yes, she was being handled by a CSC captain. Somebody please, please tell me how you get that job? I even have my own black lab who would be great at being a combat stress therapist.

You miss some things

when you're hanging out here. News, for one.

Oh, I was aware that someone had thrown some shoes at President Bush.

But I wasn't really aware that it was any kind of big deal. Until I was sitting, with one other soldier, in a meeting. And suddenly noticed something other than the normal traffic sounds. Something more like...several hundred people shouting in the street outside the building (they were, incidentally, the Free The Shoe Hurler faction).

Hey, New Sergeant, I suggested as quietly as I could. Why don't you stick your head out in the hall, make contact with one of our security dudes and make sure we're cool?

Did I mention this was New Sergeant's first mission?

The shouting continued. She came back in and gave a thumbs up.

All the same, we tied the meeting up and moved out, since being one of two in a building secured by four dudes is not my favorite place to be when there are large concentrations of people worked up about anything. I am getting downright cautious in my old age.

Ramblings

We’ve reached kind of a confusing point in our involvement here. And by our I mean not only the Civil Affairs effort, but the Army in general. The Status of Forces Agreement is scheduled to go into effect 1 January. More changes will follow.

All of this basically boils down to the fact that the Iraqis are taking over running their own show in this area. Which is good. They’re pretty close to being ready, and there’s no way to find the flaws and limits of their systems without taking the training wheels off and giving it a spin.

So we find ourselves wondering…what do we do now? This has been a little confusing for us as CA since we arrived for this tour. Last time I was here, we were still at a point where the regular Army maneuver units (the infantry and armor guys who own battlespace) were killing people and breaking stuff. They were kept reasonably busy with that, and so there was a lot of room and need for people who specialize in the civil populace. We were busy, and it was the rare maneuver officer or soldier who had the time, experience or interest to get deeply involved with the “non-lethal” side of the fight.

Now, however, we’ve been in Iraq for closing in on six years. Most of the captains and majors are on their second, third or fourth tours here. They are fully engaged in the non-lethal fight (which is good, since we’re pretty much set with the large-scale killing of people and breaking of stuff). They understand the basics of relating to the local civilian populace, and of working with local leadership.

Which is, of course, a large part of what we (we as in CA) are out here to do. The days are behind us when we did humanitarian aid – we’re not dropping water and food, or bringing in medical aid. We’re not moving populations out of the path of advancing armor columns, and we’re not developing and maintaining protected target lists.

So we’re left with monitoring the tail end of the ICERP programs and engaging the persons designated as Spheres of Influence. Except that the projects only need so much monitoring, and really, all anyone has left to do at this point is engage the Spheres of Influence. Of whom there are only so many.

And, really, if the Iraqis are running Iraq, and we’re no longer empowered to go threaten people to make things happen (“start talking to the Ministry of Power representative about this issue or we’ll shoot you”), and we don’t have any money to run around handing out (“you need a road paved and can’t make your government do it? We’ll pay for it if you agree to tell people not to blow us up!”)…we’re slowly running out of things to engage people about.

There is an Iraqi way of doing things. Quite often, it is not the way we Americans would choose to do things. There is an Iraqi pace for getting things done. That pace often seems unacceptable to American military personnel. But the fact remains that the Iraqis are going to be here in three, eight, 25 years. And, as the plan currently stands, we are not.

So we’re slowly trying to figure out how to back off and let go. We have checklists for grading their local government meetings. But if they’re holding meetings, and nobody is getting shot…then who cares if they distribute minutes from the last meeting days in advance or if they print them and hand them out the day of? Or hang them on the wall? It’s a block on our checklists, but that’s really about all it is.
Since 2003, the US Army has been the Solution Fairy. Need water? We’ll get you water. Need medical attention? We gotcha. Sheik from the next tribe over picking on you? We’ll have him in to the FOB to talk about working and playing well with others.

That’s behind us now. And that’s hard for Americans, particularly Americans in uniform. Soldiers see problems and immediately look for solutions. But our solutions aren’t worth a whole lot at this point. We need the Iraqi solutions, and quite often they’re not the ones we’d have chosen.

Sometimes, the writing on the wall isn’t as nice as we’d like it to be. We’re surrounded by barely-above-subsistence-level farmers in the desert. There are lots of nice theories and bits of technology out there that would enable them to produce more, but it doesn’t seem to be a high priority for their higher levels of government, and not a lot of the farmers themselves are particularly interested either. So we have to let our American fixation with progress go by the wayside. The people don’t want to change everything about their lives and their world to become Iowa. They would like for the US government (or any government) to come by and hand them large stacks of cash. Absent that, they’d really rather just sit around and be barely-above-subsistence-level farmers in a country with a sufficient social safety net that they won’t starve in bad years.

And, at the end of the day, that’s probably about all they’re going to get. Not everybody gets to live in Iowa. Not everybody wants to. And even if you’d like to live in Iowa, you won’t get to if you don’t pack up and move your ass to Iowa. Metaphorically, of course.

It’s a hard thing to realize. Americans, at least most Americans in uniform, really dig America. We think America is super, and that everyone else in the world should be exactly like us. Then they’d be super, too. And doesn’t everybody want to be super?

Apparently not. And, as we’ve learned, it ain’t easy to become awesome. We didn’t start out half as screwed-up as Iraq, and we didn’t decide to stop being jerks about letting black folks vote until 1965 – 177 years after we ratified our Constitution.

The American drive to make this place as much like the US as we can isn’t, I don’t think, a reflection of hatred for other, different cultures. We’ve probably all read or seen interviews with Soldiers where they’ve talked about Iraqi children, how those children made them miss their own, how they came home and hugged their children and thanked God they were born in a land of endless, boundless opportunity. Well, the American soldier is softhearted, and the urge to make this country like our own comes partly from affection. You see an Iraqi kid, and he’s not starving, not sick, just hanging out in the road begging for a soccer ball, looking at a lifetime of chasing sheep around or standing at a checkpoint on a road, or guarding an oil tower. Or she’s looking at a life under a headscarf, lucky to finish sixth grade if she’s a farm girl.

And you wish everybody on earth could have been born in Afton, Wyoming or Middleville, Michigan or Tyler, Texas. You wish every town ran like Stillwater, Minnesota, with somebody happy to make a living driving a garbage truck. You wish there were systems to encourage entrepreneurs, so that one of these small cities would be the home of the Iraqi equivalent of Steelcase.

American soldiers look at Iraq and see a nation that we wish could have all the benefits and freedoms we’re accustomed to. We’re fast approaching the point, however, where we need to back off and let the people of Iraq take their nation as far as they can in the direction they want to take it.

And so we sit on the FOB, slowing down our missions, waiting on guidance from Higher about what life after the SOFA is going to look like. We know there’s more mentoring of governments and processes, and we know there are NGOs to pull into towns and situations. But we also know the end is getting closer, and that the vast majority of what the US military can and will do for Iraq has been done.

Chasing Soldiers

Time doesn't stop once you get to Iraq, and so one of the things we (and by we, I mean I) have to keep track of is my Soldiers' career progression.

As deployed Reservists, administratively controlled by our parent company (which now reports to a totally different CA battalion than the one that owns us stateside) but operationally controlled by an active-duty armor battalion, this boils down to a tremendous amount of chasing paper and generating paper and trying to transmit paper.

We're trying to get my senior buck sergeant promoted. This means we need to get a "packet" to the CA brigade conducting the "board" (packet screening and selection) somewhere else here in Iraq. My sergeant needed a current Army Physical Fitness Test.

Here's how that works.
1 - I take a thumbdrive and go to an unsecured computer so I can download DA 705 (PT card) and FM 21-20 (Army Physical Fitness handbook).
2 - I then take that thumbdrive to one of the two people on the FOB who have a printer that's connected to a computer one can plug a thumbdrive into. I print the objects.

(this is whole entire additional nightmare. Thumbdrives, which are pretty much what the modern deployed Army runs on, are now pretty much forbidden)

the order to stop using flash media was issued by U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for operating and defending the .mil and .smil domains.

That memo, directed at Washington, D.C., Air Force offices and dated Nov. 17, ordered “immediate suspension” of the use of such devices on all NIPR and SIPR networks.

You have no idea what a pain that makes everything.

3 - We measure a two-mile run course, the sergeant runs the PT test. We fill out the card.
4 - I find the only scanner on the FOB, scan the PT card, put it on my thumb drive, email it to Higher (company HQ).
5 - Higher emails it to Texas so my sergeant's 2a can be updated.
6 - Texas emails the updated 2a back so it can be printed out, put in the packet, and sent to the board.

And active Army guys (who appear, in person, before these "boards") say Reservist promotions are simpler.

All the running around notwithstanding, my sergeant looks good for the January board, if everyone else holds up their ends and his papers get updated. If not, he's a shoo-in for February.

In the best news of all, my high-speed corporal is no more. His packet made the cut last month and we promoted him to sergeant him this morning. He's a very happy camper right now.

I suppose, as a good NCO, I should ensure we get him in front of a retention NCO before the promotion afterglow fades. As I recall, we've got a couple of weeks.