Slow day

We finished off our Combat Lifesaver training today.  That was actually a quality class, which we made sure we communicated to all involved.

 

"The part where you had instructors with recent combat experience in the subject they were teaching?  That was great."

 

We stayed a little late so our PFC, who is a nervous little dude, could do one more live stick on a sergeant we now call "Mr. Giant Veins."  The PFC is a great kid, but he's the second junior man in the company, eager to please and, as is to be expected, prone to tripping over himself in his eagerness to do good.

 

Immediately following the conclusion of that evolution, we returned to the barracks just slightly ahead of the outer rain bands from Tropical Storm Hannah.  A quick evaluation of the weather convinced us that it was a perfect afternoon to conduct practical exercises in rack ops.  I am pleased to report that with the sole exception of a specialist who's assigned as Overworked Headquarters Slave, all the Soldiers received a "GO."  Seeing as rehearsals are key to success in any battle drill, we may still have to conduct more rack ops in the near future.

Info request

Ok, this is an odd one.  I know that at some point I saw a picture of an AR-15/M-4 on which someone had mounted a cupholder.  I'm not kidding - a rail-mounted cupholder.

 

They gave us rails. 

 

And so now I want the cupholder.  No, no, no.  Not for any sort of real-life use.  But it's a long year, and at some point, I think my whole team will probably need a laugh. 

 

So if any of you happen to know where to find such a thing, or, really, any other TRULY RIDICULOUS rail-mounted accessory, drop me a line in a comments or with the email button.

Commence Scam Operations...

Time - now.

That's what we've got going on this afternoon, after we all successfully made it through the "live stick" portion of CLS. I'd never done it before, so I was mildly concerned about damaging one of my soldiers, but I hit a nice vein on the first try and all was well.

This evening promises to be a hoot, with another fascinating COIN (that's COunter INsurgency, for anyone who isn't aware) brief on the schedule. The Army has decided to renounce all its prior religions and affiliations, it seems, and offer our total devotion to the philosophy of General Petraeus. The Army has decided to wholeheartedly embrace COIN with an enthusiasm not seen since they embraced Velcro.

Which is fine, really. I mean, hey - it seems to be working better than whatever we called our prior strategy.

But really - the briefs. Now, remember, all our predeployment training is run by a specific organization that exists strictly to mobilize and demobilize soldiers. A lot of the folks who hang out in that specific organzation...well, they've been hanging out there for a while, and have no actual deployed experience. And there doesn't seem to be any...umm...any requirement as far as an area of expertise.

I would say that 80% of the Civil Affairs folks here have at least one deployment to either Iraq or Afghanistan. I'd venture to guess at least 50% have two.

So I'll stipulate that there is some population of deploying soldiers that really benefits from having a series of briefs wherein a random soldier with a random background reads verbatim from a set of slides boiling our national counterinsurgency philosophy down to a few easily digested phrases. I'm sure that helps some people. Really.

But...having stipulated that these briefs are very valuable in their own right, I would think that we could enhance their value to deploying civil affairs soldiers significantly. Since we're required to have several phases of COIN briefs, it would be vastly more useful if we had someone who had recently worked in CA, PSYOPS or SF in the theater of operations come down here and discuss how the Army change in philosophy is effecting the way we (CA) "support U. S. national objectives by assisting the government of a host or occupied area to meet its peoples’ needs and maintain a stable and democratic civil administration."

But that's just one gal talking. Since I doubt my proposed solution will be adopted in the next several hours, I'm going to cease and desist bitching. My immediate priorities include a nap and a little PT.

Awkward AND Annoying!

The past 18 hours have pretty much revolved around people peering at my crotch. The day started with a 0445 pee test, continued into a CLS class in a hot building, and was broken up only by the mandatory pre-deployment PAP smear and GYN checkup.

I escaped that room as quickly as possible, and found my sergeant (who'd driven the truck over) racked out. Apparently, he adopted this particular napping posture to express his solidarity with his fearless leader.



[sigh]

The bright side is that I fully expect to be allowed - in fact, encouraged - to keep my trousers firmly pulled up and in place for the remainder of this mobilization.

The party just never ends

I haven't had much for y'all the past couple of days. We were on the range with our trusty M4s and shiny new M68 CCOs over the weekend. Tell you what - only the Army could make new toys, free ammo, sunshine and range time suck.

Got my team qualified without any major drama, although one needed a couple of tries and the other one will have to return to the zero range once they get him a front sight post that's, like, you know, straight up and down.

We did something today, but it was such an irrelevent check-the-box evolution that I've already forgotten what it was. Something with a sign-in roster.

The fun part after that was the retrieval and dragging upstairs of our unit's Big Black Boxes.



That's the ever-popular Stanley Mobile Job Box. The trusty old-school wheeled Contico is also popular. These make a fabulous sound when you drag empty ones up three flights of barracks stairs. We did have to call the entire operation to a halt so we could rustle up the officers who'd packed theirs full of crap, as we are not dedicated enough to schlep field-grade officer knick-knackery any further than required.

I have no idea why anyone would have packed one of those full coming here, since we'll probably need the space to pack all the not-really-necessary crap out of the piles of gear they keep issuing.

Highlights of this week are anticipated to include Combat Lifesaver training, the issue of more crap, and plenty of last-minute changes. Hilarity may well follow.

The upper body workout of Satan

The Interceptor Body Armor is good stuff. I've got a couple of wicked chunks of shrapnel at home on a shelf I pulled out of mine last tour. I am a believer. There's always word of something newer and better out there, but this stuff is nothing to turn up one's nose at.

However...in the ongoing attempt to make even combat as safe as is physically possible, and, in fact, to let nobody ever die for a lack of equipment, the Army has added, by my count, six pieces of additional crap to the IBA since the last time I had one. And, since they are new to us, and since this is a training environment, we are staring out by wearing every single piece of the system.

Ugh.

When I last did this, we wore the vest, plates, collar and throat pieces (well, gunner wore the throats). There was some other arm stuff I wore when riding in the turret, but most of our guys opted for mobility and skipped that when they were dismounted. And pretty much nobody ever wore the much-maligned "pecker protector."

It's a fine line between protection and agility, and it gets sorted out as time goes on. But as for the first day back in this system, attaching all available bits and pieces had us all grumbling this morning. Well, wearing all available pieces had us grumbling this morning. Attaching all the pieces had us grumbling last night.



"How the Hell does this..."

"What in the fuck is the supposed to be for?"

"How many damn pieces are there here?"

[sigh]

A bitching Soldier, they say, is a happy Soldier.

Free Stuff!

Okay - that might not be entirely accurate. Crap the Army gives me is not, I suppose, technically "free." You've paid for it, and, with only a one-year exception, so have I.

But I got a big bag of cool stuff, and I didn't have to fork over any cash, so that's good enough for me. We call it RFI - Rapid Fielding Initiative.

The long and short of it is - all the cool stuff that's out there that hasn't had time to filter through the Army's procurement and distribution process is simply handed to us during mobilization.

We kicked the old ALICE pack and frame to the curb, and got this adorable pair.



Aren't they cute? On the right we have the Great Big MOLLE Rucksack. Beats the heck out of the old metaland-pipe frame on the ALICE packs we were using. It's also supposedly a big improvement on the briefly-attempted plastic ALICE frame that seems to have crashed and burned shortly after release. One the left we have the companion assault pack, which can be attached to Giant Ruck or carried separately.

For carrying stuff one might want faster access to, they really hooked us by providing this year's premiere ensemble - the MOLLE Rifleman's Kit.



Although I'm not sure entirely why we were issued eight zillion rifle magazine pouches, it's a nice setup. However, experience in an M1114 teaches valuable lessons, and so the interesting part is minimizing the "pieces of flair" to keep one's sides and back more or less clear. I have a much easier time envisioning a requirement to unass my truck at a high rate of speed without hanging up than I do envisioning a situation in which I need 360 rounds and can't get to a fellow soldier or my vehicle.

We also have a Giant Pile of Extreme Cold Weather clothing, but that picture didn't turn out very well, and who wants to look at a giant heap of long underoos?

My personal highlight was the part where we chicks each got four desert tan Patagonia sports bras. That's one item we know the supply sergeant won't want back when we come home!

This is a dramatic improvement in issued gear over what I received when I did this in 2005. If we didn't want to use woodland ALICE gear clipped awkwardly to our DCU IBA that time, we had to go out and buy our own stuff. That sucked, and I'm glad we're not doing it any more. They're giving us what we need, at the beginning of the process so we can train with it, and everything matches.

Of course, there are more supply issue evolutions ahead of us, so we'll see how much crap we finally end up with. But if it continues to progress as well as the RFI did, I am prepared to be happily impressed.

All fun

all the time.

I've executed another move, and am back at the Groundhog Capital of the Eastern Seaboard.

We've made the jump from pre-mobilization to actual mobilization. Which means that things are about as annoying and confusing as can be imagined. They will remain annoying as long as we're here, but the confusion should ease in a day or so.

I got another anthrax shot today, narrowly passed a hearing test (I was sitting next to some LTC with a very active digestive tract, which didn't help me trying to catch the tones), and listened to several excruciating briefings.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. However, it's not all dreary from that perspective. In my next post, I'll tell you about RFI - Rapid Fielding Initiative - in which process we receive a giant bag of really cool stuff.

Thanks

for all the kind words. It sucks the big one that the furry critters in our lives have such short lifespans in comparison to ours. But dog people (and, yes, cat people too), know that going in.

The saving grace of this happening right now is that things are very busy, so I haven't had too much down time.

Again, thanks for your support in this crappy time.

Sad day

We lost Casey today.

After a period of decline and a couple of scary days, she finally reached the point where mercy was the only option.

So I drove home from the Reserve Center (crying), and up to the vet (crying). Fortunately, the Mister handled the drive back (crying).

I've not had to do that myself, and it is truly one of the godawful things about being a grownup.

I've always been a fan of the idea that if there is any kind of Heaven, it involves our dogs, and that they are probably waiting for us in some sunny field, chasing squirrels and rolling in the grass. I did have to modify that a little for Casey, since her heaven would, based on her criminal record, probably feature black children on bicycles, riding slowly enough to catch.



Good dog. Good dog.

All this much fun

and a paycheck, too!

After a most enjoyable respite that largely involved nudity and good food, it's back to the grind. It's a sleeping-in-my-own-bed grind for a few more days, though, so that's nice.

Now...somehow, between three days ago and this morning, my belt has disappeared. My spare belt is packed up, but I remember seeing my primary one just last night.

[sigh]

The Mister has got to be counting the seconds until I get out of here for the duration, and his life is again free of giant heaps of foliage green crap strewn around the house.

Home

for a couple of days.

Have I mentioned lately how much I adore air conditioning, beer and yes, even hysterical dogs?

Escaped!

Not from the greater San Antonio area (yet), but I did get away from lovely Camp Rustic by throwing myself into a 15-passenger van that was headed to Gandalf AFB and pretending I had some pressing business here.

Lord knows that as we wind down, I have no pressing business there.

I thought I'd share with y'all a couple of shots of our lovely quarters. They're really not too bad, as little hut-things go.



Occupancy is 12 - six per side on cots. That's a little tight, but not awful. We have two female huts, and so we've got a little more space than that to stretch out. Concrete floors, little heaters, fan system.



There's a big long line of 'em - 17 in our row. I thought about taking a picture of the interior, but decided we can all do without that shot.

A plumbing problem in their latrine building has forced the men to share ours (we managed to get our own building after much lobbying). Normally, when we have to share a latrine, we designate and hour in the morning and an hour in the evening as "female shower time." It normally works out so we have a good hour on one end of the day, and a less desirable one on the other end.

But now...we are a little giddy with power, because, as our time here is short, a powerful ally sided with us and the men have the designated times.

Overheard yesterday from a male: You mean if I'm busy between 2000 and 2130, I don't get a shower?

Female soldier with shit-eating grin: That's about how it works! You get another block of time in the morning, though!
It truly is the little things in life that keep one going.

(an aside - it would be truly difficult to maintain this schedule for long. Not because of the shower issues, but because of the washing machine access. There are two washers and two dryers in each latrine, and it's very difficult to get your laundry done in a latrine you can't be in most of the day. We'd have to give the men the greater share of the day if we were going to be using the arrangement for very long)

Adventures in land nav

Actually, it wasn't that exciting. My team lacked a lieutenant or a private, usually the source for great land nav tales. We did learn, however, that when someone needs to crawl though thick brush with a compass, that someone ends up being me - not either of the very large gentlemen on my team.

As land nav courses went, this one lacked the usual fun parts. You know, the point signs that have fallen over, concealed coils of old concertina wire, giant ditches. It did have UXO, though, which always adds a little something.

We've continued with our relentless online-class-taking. We've also added a new activity in which a soldier is given two copies of his or her orders and then, over the course of the next several days, is asked for six or seven. Since we have no copiers, we are trying to figure this one out.

More fun

Just as we were starting to feel ahead of the power curve, it was decreed that we needed to complete more...[can you guess it? I bet you can!]...online training.

[sigh]

I'm also getting a little traffic from a news story about the heat issue.

I've got to admit to being a little uncomfortable with drawing any attention, but this is no fun if we're not pointing out the silly stuff and laughing about it.

That aside, I think we're about done with these journeys to the Land of Internet, so a little silence from here for a while should not be a cause for a alarm. We're not far from the end of this phase of our journey, so there's a light (and good A/C) at the end of the tunnel.

But in exciting news - tomorrow is LAND NAV! The potential hilarity level is high.

Looking silly

Yesterday, when I discovered I had to spend some quality time on the internet, I borrowed my team leader's car so I could drive to the Land of Internet.

My team leader, somewhat oddly, drives a VW bug. One of the newer ones.

Upon hearing that I was heading to Civilization, one of our captains volunteered to ride along with me. So we loaded up in the VW and prepared to take off. It was then that I first looked down. The Bug is a stick-shift. Not a problem, thougt Abby, so is the Jeep.

But the R...well, it was on the left of the 1. Not way over to the right, after the high end like I'm used to.

But the letters on the knob are like a guide, right? You put the knob in the appropriate pictured spot, and there you are. Right?

Wrong. I tried a couple of times and couldn't get the thing into reverse. So I pulled slowly forward out of the parking space, and all was well. The captain and I reached the land of the Internet, did our respective things, then took off. Or tried to take off.

The car would still not go into reverse. Finally running out of patience, the captain gave in to his Inner Guy and tried to find reverse while I stood on the clutch. Nada.

There was a curb in front of us, which precluded the creeping forward approach. So we opened our doors, extended the outboard legs, and rolled it far enough back to be able to pull out.

A repeat performance at a fast food place where we stopped, and we made it back to Camp Rustic without further drama. I caught up to my team leader later in the evening at a company meeting.

Sir, I asked, does your car have reverse?

He looked at me as though he had just realized he was going to be trapped with a retarded team sergeant for a year.

Umm...yeah. He paused. You know you have to push it down to get into reverse, don't you?

No, sir, I replied. But that explains it.

He paused, since we were having this conversation quietly while the first sergeant expounded at length about something or other. Suddenly, the picture in his head made him look back at me.

Hey, [Abby], he whispered. How did you guys back up then?

I glanced at him, extended my left leg, and made a pushing motion.

My team leader dissolved in giggles. The first sergeant shot him the Look of Death, and I did my best to sit and look appropriately innocent of any part in the loss of military bearing. You learn something new every day - I had never heard of such a thing. Down to get into reverse. How 'bout that?

Another Day

And I am almost finished with the Online Security Form From Hell. I actually shouldn't complain - I have some friends who have the really high-speed security clearances, and I know their process for granting/refreshing/renewing those is truly the Eigth Ring of Hell.

I'm managing to accomplish this while hanging out at a place that sounds like Gandalf Air Force Base. I'm still not sure what thought process led our leaders to do pre-mobilzation training that largely consists of administrative requirements at a camp with zero internet access, but it does give us an excuse to drive over here, where there's coffee, A/C and a good PX.

We keep picking up more soldiers, since we've had some at Civil Affairs school and other locations getting qualified to do a wide variety of things. We just picked up a company supply dude who is a PFC straight out of school. The poor guy showed up without his military ID card, so that adds just one more thing to wrestle with. [sigh] He has no idea how tortured he's going to be once we bring him online.

For the amount of actual stuff we accomplish on a daily basis, we're abnormally busy. That's both a characteristic of the Army, though, and a particular characteristic of the mobilization process. With people wandering in and out, here and there, it can take an amazing amount of time to get everyone to fill out a one-page form correctly. Then, when we get word that it isn't the correct edition of said form, it can take another day and a half to redo it.

Last time I did this, we came to the conclusion that the entire process is set up so that once you've been good and thoroughly mobilized, you're so annoyed you're begging to get on a plane headed overseas.

Too much fun

The day started out silly, when I signed out a range so we could truck the entire company out to fire four - count 'em, four - rounds from our new-to-us M4 carbines. We acomplished the mission, though, which was to ensure, simply, that the rifles work.

(We could, and I swear this is the truth, get our hands only 120 rounds. Hence the 4-per thing)

The fun part ended, and now I am wrestling with that Mother Of All Nightmares - the online security clearance tool. Yep - Higher finally came back with a response to my request for some sort of written substantiation of this clearance they keep saying I have. Their response - what clearance?

[insert sound of head hitting desk here - repeat]

You know, the one that's a prerequisite for my job, which I've been doing for the last five years???

In typical Army fashion, though, since the whole situation is apparently quite confusing, I am now filling out the whole form again. Because, you know, that's what I do when I go the field - I take a list of everyplace I have lived and worked, along with points of contact at each.

So, I'm off to hate some more and wrestle with that ^%%^$*(& online application.

Every day a holiday,

every meal a feast. Or something like that.

We continue to sweat, and conduct a very small amount of actual training combined with a shocking amount of administrative goatfuckery. This would be more disturbing if it wasn't one of the constant parts of this process.

We have a muckety-muck type of guy on the ground here today, so we're all hiding or looking busy. I, for instance, am doing this entry in the background while completing some online risk management course.

Have I mentioned how much I hate online courses? I think I have.

I sat through a truly asinine class yesterday on a piece of software designed to assist us in cataloging infrastructure assessments. This might have been useful if the software was actually being fielded, but it's not, so it was more like sitting through an eight-hour timeshare sales pitch.

There's been some drama down here as a result of a formal complaint another unit lodged alleging horrible living conditions that subjected them to "grotesque heat." It is hot, but it's not grotesque. The unit in question, however, was moved from our current location to a hotel so that they may sleep in comfort. I won't name them, but I will say that I hope they're not around if I'm ever bleeding in the desert, since they probably wouldn't bring me a pressure dressing if it's above 85 degrees.

There's not much else to add from here. In addition to hiding, I have to go ensure my soldiers are packing their rucks with enough crap to give them a suitably heavy load for our practice ruckmarch this evening.

[sigh]

I can't believe they actually pay me to have this much fun.

Too much fun

[ugh]

Has anyone noticed how much fun South Central Texas is this time of year? Especially without a/c?

The bad news is, the days are really hot. The good news is, it cools off enough at night to sleep comfortably.

I've been only semi-busy, engaging in all the fun stuff - re-entering the exact same info into multiple databases and onto multiple DA forms, getting a gas mask fitting, and taking mandatory classes. I'm two days through an "IED Defeat Trainer" class. That's consisted largely of looking at slides featuring photos of dirt and being asked, "can you spot the IED?"

Well, partner, if we could spot them, they wouldn't be such a problem, would they?

In more entertaining news, I was trapped in a porta-jon for a brief period of time by one of the colony of skunks here. Said skunks seemed to find it amusing to hang out in front of the porta-jon and watch me try to figure out if I dared to walk out right next to it. I didn't dare, but then again, I didn't get sprayed, either.

More updates as time passes, now that I've found a fellow Soldier with one of those nifty Verizon internet cards.