Good Work

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is exactly what it sounds like - an organization dedicated to the folks who've participated in the wars we're fighting now. Far be it from me to pass judgement on any of the veterans' organizations out there, but I do think each conflict is different enough that perhaps an organization dedicated to veterans of one particular period of conflict might be valuable.

Anyway - these folks have been putting out some public service announcements, and they've got a new good one now.



Recognizing that many of our war veterans now are Guardsmen and Reservists, or Active Duty folks who might leave the military, I think it's particularly important to educate friends and family members about our care and feeding. The only harder thing, I'd say, than coming home and trying to readjust, can be coming home without your support network of comrades in arms.

There's a ton of good information there not only for vets, but for people who love vets. Worth a visit if you're in that position.

Harumph

A severe case of the Iraq has set in among the team here. For no apparent reason, we've all got a case of the OIF grumpies. We've likened it to a combination of athlete's foot, poorly-fitted underwear and a toothache.

So let's talk about something else, shall we? Look at what Mom found while I was in Michigan on leave:



Yeah - that's a chocolate bacon bar. It's a chocolate bar, but with little pieces of bacon in it.

I ate it, of course. But I'm still reserving judgement. Chocolate = fabulous, and bacon = awesome, but chocolate + bacon = kinda weird.

Arts and Crafts

This place is like the summer camp from Hell, really. Less singing, and no canoes, but other than that...

To kill time as things have slowed down, we've started to make things with our own little grubby paws. It started when we ordered some pewter skull beads just for kicks, and it's gone downhill from there.



Because, of course, if you start with pewter skull beads, then you start to wonder what other skull beads might be out there.

Then, after you string some beads, you start to feel mighty crafty. You notice you have some 550 cord, and that there are other, cooler colors available. If you're shockingly uninclined to figure out how to do arts and crafts on your own, there are websites out there to help you. And eventually you end up having days that produce this:



I'm learning. The watchband was strictly an academic exercise, but I'm thinking of making a new pistol belt based on the concept...

The Bossman came over yesterday and discovered his NCOs sitting around playing with 550 cord and debating color combinations. He looked for a second like he might make fun of us, then gathered his courage and asked, instead, "you think I might get some of that bright cord, if you've got some extra? I could make my daughters some bracelets..."

It's probably fortunate none of us knows how to quilt. Then again, I bet there are instructions for that on the internet as well...

Home, such as it is

I finally escaped Big Base and made it back here. The trip was the usual goatrope of oh-you-needed-to-go-to-FOB-McLazy-you-should-have-told-us-we-went-there-yesterday that always happens when you're trying to get somewhere around here.

I hitched a ride in the last free seat on a convoy, and it was only marginally free. I ended up riding with a significant amount of "Class 1 Supplies" (that is, snacks and drinks). My view for the ride looked something like this:



They'd used almost every bit of webbing, rope and bungee cord in Iraq, but had run out at the top of the heap. If the world had ended on my ride home, I may have met Saint Peter covered in blue Gatorade and grapes. Everyone's gotta go some way or another, I suppose.

But that wasn't the only thing aboard. There were some boxes... We had time to kill, so we opened them up. And what had the Tax Dollar Fairy brought for the grubby little Soldiers?



Tricked-out M14s! Your tax dollars at work, folks.

The platoon sergeant and I spent the entire ride back debating how to work the hand receipts so that the gaining unit got six M14s, he got one, and the Civil Affairs team sergeant signed for the other...

Credit where it's due

I'm chilling with Higher on the Big Base, waiting for a ride home to FOB McSleepy. It cannot come soon enough.

Like any decent NCO, Higher annoys the bejesus out of me. Silly requests, weird preoccupations with suspenses imposed by battalion, etc etc. But once in a while, they do something very clever and I must, alas, give them their due.

The Higher compound has, of course, porta-jons.



They are always very nice, due to the fact that we don't have many soldiers and none of them are inclined to act like savages in the green closets. But the truly wonderful thing about these porta-jons is up on top. Look closely. No, I'm not talking about the shade (although that's nice).



That's a light bar. They flip it on at dusk, and so one's nighttime trip to the closet is never dark and scary. No flashlight needed, no godawful surprises.

It's simply brilliant. One of the little things that takes a porta-john from godawful to not bad at all.

Book reports

Remember a while back when I asked you all for some reading recommendations? I did follow up, and ordered a couple off the list.

I read Young Rissa, and while I enjoyed it quite a bit, it was a long wait for a short read, and I haven't bothered ordering the next in the series yet. Cool character, though. I'll get around to the others at some point.

The one I really ended up diving into was the 1632/Ring of Fire series. These are a fun read, dense and meaty. Recurring characters, and overarching plot...good stuff. Fabulous travel reads, since one probably isn't going to get through one on a single plane ride.

And of course that series reminded me of Harry Turtledove. I'd read the Pearl Harbor pair, then a buddy over here reminded me about him and recommended The Guns of the South. I found that to be a pretty interesting read (mostly what came after the war), and so picked up the first couple in the Great War series while was home.

I'm going to keep working on the list, this next time with a focus on some of the cop and detective stuff I saw there.

Why I'm not a morning person

I woke up at 0530 after what passed for the best night's sleep since I got to Camp Waitin' Around. Hmm, I thought, what I need right now is a big scoop of powdered eggs and some Army coffee.

So that's what I did. Fortunately, the chowhall here is one of those places you can go wearing PT gear, since I've sworn off long pants for the duration of the waiting around phase here.

I ate, had a smoke, then realized I had time before our next organized standing-around and trooped over to the internet point. The internet point is, of course, a trailer. With the requisite slightly beaten-down wooden pallet in front of the door. I stepped on it to step up, and my right foot went through between two semi-broken slats.

We can see where this is going, right?

My foot would not come out.

It's hard to look dignified trying to free your foot from a pallet without toppling over. A nice young sergeant came to my rescue and offered me a shoulder so I could get good yanking leverage. Foot came out, shoe did't, but I managed to extract it.

Fortunately, folks, Your Author is not abnormally attached to her sense of dignity. If this is a sign about how today is going to go, I'm not sure exactly what it means. We'll see.

Killing time

So of course, as I was in the DFW airport, waiting to leave, I fired up my laptop. Except it didn't exactly fire up. In fact, I got a snarky little message about how it had failed to start.

[sigh]

The problem seemed to fix itself rather rapidly. But still - I'm a mobile modern gal - my life is on my laptop. So - backup time!

I hit the PX in search of a protable hard drive. They had one, so I bought it and took it to my tent. Where I realized it had that godawful clamshell packaging and that I, like a good soldier, had left EVERY SINGLE ONE of my myriad knives in Iraq, rather than deal with customs.

I had a key. Which did not cut the proverbial mustard.

I sat. I fumed. Then I remember - Uncle D, one of the recovering Marines in my life, had sent one of his Ka-Bars from his Med float days.

Clamshell Packaging Of Satan, meet Old Combat Knife.



Heh. Win.

I felt even MORE victorius when I realized that the hard drive fit perfectly into my trusty old little Otter Box.



It's the little things, folks. Now if I could just get out of this country.

Camp Sittin' Around

You know, there are some people who spend their entire tours in
Kuwait. I occasionally wonder if those are Soldiers who were ASSIGNED
to this country, or whose travel just got delayed long enough that the
Army put them to work here.

I'm actually not suffering any sort of maltreatment or major delay,
but once one arrives here, one is shuffled into a process of
twice-daily formations to be told if one has a time at which to
report, with all gear, for a flight.

We all assembled this morning, lined up behind blue and white signs
with major destinations printed on them. Our group was approached
first.

The troop handler (who had a soft, high, mumbling voice that increases
my suspicion she was not selected for the job so much as randomly
given it when someone noticed she'd been hanging out here for two
weeks) read off the last four of each of our social security numbers.

"Here!" we replied in turn, fairly enthusiastic. Perhaps, we hoped,
we were being called first because we have a TIME.

"You all come back in twelve hours. No gear necessary."

[sigh]

Suckitude

The flight back to theater from leave is worse than the original flight to the deployment.  No matter who you are, how much you like your job, you really, really don´t want to be on that plane.  It gets better each leg, but that first jump out from leave...well, it´s a quiet damn bird.

 

On a good note, my leave fell late enough in the deployment that it is all downhill from here.

I am

drinking a LOT of cold beer. And eating yummy food.

Further posting when leave runs out.

Additional Travel Observation

If you back up to your hotel room and offload a Bugout Bag, Pelican laptop case, six-pack of beer and a yorkshire terrier, then return to the vehicle with the yorkie and pull out a gun case that fits a Mossberg 500 and carry that into your room as well...

You can't really act surprised that the guys at the other end of the hotel with the motorcycle trailers seem to be taking an abnormal interest in your moving-in process. Not a creepy vibe, just...intrigued.

On the road again (again)

Anyone who may have had a close call today in northern Indiana with a tan Wrangler sporting a semi-scraped McCain 2008 bumpersticker...sorry about that.

It's a long drive from Michigan to Texas, so I let my little buddy drive while I caught a quick catnap (pardon the term).



I took back over when we crossed through Indianapolis, of course, as he's not so strong on shifting.

Tomorrow - look out, northern Arkansas!

A big Bravo Zulu

to our brothers from the Big Blue Team, who took the field, played smartly and finished off the game with a very nice score of Navy 3, Pirates 0.

We also tip our Bad Dog hat to CAPT Richard Phelps, who it certainly appears behaved himself with honor, dignity and courage.

Catch-up picture post!

So we got off the airplane in Dallas. You all know how godawful and long that trip is (and if you don't, imagine...well, don't imagine it). Anyway, we got off the plane shortly after 0700, trudged through immigration and customs, walked out, and...people were there. Nice people. People who were simply there to welcome us home.

How cool is that? But as cool as it was, the people were not the coolest thing.



That's Boomer, and Boomer was there just to say hi to Soldiers. Pretty cool, huh?

The only other really interesting thing I saw was decidedly less wholesome, but pretty amusing. Along I-80 going around Chicago, I was sorely tempted to pull over.



Then I realized it was probably some sort of strip club and not a summer camp for grownups. Rats.

Leave = ROAD TRIP

I survived crossing Oklahoma last night, so that leaves me with just...Missouri to Michigan. Ugh.

Have you ever, late at night and desperately in need of gas, on an Oklahoma toll road, pulled off when you see a gas station? Only to encounter one of those "pay with exact coins only" little automated toll things? When you have plenty of folding money, but not two coins to rub together? How would you handle that? I know how I handled that, but I'm always interested in public input.

This means something

but I'm not sure what it is.



I scratched my head over that one for a minute at the local CVS, then shrugged it off and got back to driving around, eating ham sandwiches and hurrying home to beer.

I [heart] leave.

Note to self

The next time I fly ANYWHERE, I have got to remember some sort of decongestant.  Because, apparently, I am now incapable of getting within 100 yards of a fixed-wing aircraft without developing a massive wad of mucus in my head.  I feel almost as sorry for the poor dude sitting next to me as I do for myself.

 

Interestingly, did you know that German keyboards (at least some of them) reverse the position of the Y and Z keys?  And hide the question mark?  Who'd'a thunk it?

Progress

And then the Air Force says, "hold on, there IS a plane!" And there
is much scrambling, and much waiting, and....eventually...

One reaches another place to wait.

But this one has a 24-hour coffee place.

Head, Wall, Repeat

So...our soldier trying to go on leave encountered the great "canceled flight." Poor soldier, filled with rage, is wandering aimlessly around Higher, trying to find another flight, and becoming such a pain in the ass that perhaps Higher will even help find a flight.

I love this job.