Downhill from here

I am writing this right before I head to the FOB, a mock-up of a forward operating base installed right here on Ft Dix, NJ.  It has big canvas 16-person tents, shower trailers, guard towers, everything you would want in a FOB.  However, I have to get this out before I go as there is no internet in the FOB.  Not that conditions are super Spartan or anything, the Army just didn’t pay the wifi bill.  War is hell.

 Camp Arifjan in Kuwait won’t be like that at all, it is more like a large city than a remote base so I will be sure to have access to the internet - if not in my box in the desert than certainly in the Starbucks.  We are not savages after all.

I think I have either stayed the same weight or gained a little.  The food here at Ft Dix is outstanding, far better than anything I ever had on any ship or Navy base so no matter how much I work out or run around doing Army training I think I am just treading water.  The killer is the frozen yogurt, because they also put out strawberries, peaches and other canned fruit that you can ladle all over it and then top with whipped cream.  One night both frozen yogurt machines went down, that was a tough one.  Everyone knows that when the LT gets his dessert he is a far happier man than when he goes without, so the Chiefs run recon now to make sure everything is up and running.  One night a Chief actually took the bag out of the machine and cut it open at our table, an ice chunk had stopped up the nozzle.  Navy ingenuity at its finest.

I find myself getting used to some of the Army terminology.  It is still a lot like talking to an Aussie or something, you think you have the thread of the conversation then some words get used that don’t seem to have the meaning that you are used to and you get completely lost.  For instance, “contact” in the Navy is a blip on the radar, something you have identified but you don’t necessarily know what it is.  You might say ‘I have a contact bearing 250, range 4 miles”.  In the Army, contact means something that is shooting at you.  We were playing at convoy operations, and every time one of the sailors would say something like “Contact at 3 o’clock” the Army guys would get all hyper.  We have to keep explaining that we are in the Navy, and things are different in the nautical world.  I like a lot of the phraseology, it can be very colorful.  Someone smart is high speed, the opposite is a crayon-eating bastard.  Hook and pile is Velcro, a sliding fastener is a zipper.  They are fond of saying “too easy” or “easy day” or “tracking” in response to a request.  The one I don’t like is “hooah” which can mean anything but no.  An instructor might be giving a lesson and pause every 30 seconds or so to say “hooah”, as if saying “can you see the subtle difference here?”  to which you are supposed to respond “hooah”, responding that you do in fact appreciate the finer details of defilade.  I have tried to ban our sailors from using it, but it can be so mindless that sometimes they forget.

Anyway, we will be back early next week.  After that it is straight downhill, we “validate”, have a couple days off then take about a month to fly military air to Kuwait.  I have been trying to pull a lot of info out of the folks already there, it sounds like it should be an interesting time.  I am going to be the Company Commander of Alpha Company.  It is a mission the Navy has been performing for years, so everything is pretty institutionalized.  I’ll ease on in and see what there is to see.

Holiday season

So another Thanksgiving has come and gone.  I didn't think about it until after the fact, but it was the 20^th anniversary of the first time I spent a holiday away from home - in 1992 I was somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea on the USS Kalamazoo.   I remember that we had a pretty good turkey dinner; it was good being on a supply ship because we always had a ready supply of fresh food since we in turn had to give it out to the rest of the fleet.  I remember thinking that even though it stunk to be away from home for my second-favorite holiday (Christmas obviously being in first place by several lengths) that at least I was part of something worthwhile.  This year’s meal was something else, though.  I have seen and done some pretty awesome things in my 20+ years in the Navy, but this event was like nothing I have ever been a part of.

A large part of the Cherry Hill, NJ community comes out to an event at a local hotel and cheers on a bunch of sailors, soldiers and airmen training at Ft Dix.  It started 9 years ago when a local businessman names Eric Spevak teamed up with a Jewish War Veterans post and has grown every year.  Our caravan of 4 buses was escorted by hundreds of motorcyclists down 295 and when we arrived we walked through a gauntlet of over 1000 people that turned out to see us.  I must have talked to over a hundred different people, and the number that said they have been there every year was just unbelievable.  Lots of people wanted to hug us or just touch us, it really made me want to step back and say, “Wait, you obviously have the wrong group here.  We are just heading over to Kuwait for a bit.”  It really was humbling and I wish all those on the front lines could have experienced just a little part of that.  Here is a local story on the event: http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20121123/NEWS01/311230020/Soldiers-served-Thanksgiving-feast-Cherry-Hill?odyssey=nav%7Chead

Inside we were served a feast fit for a King, feted by many local personalities (including Ms. New Jersey 2000 and 2012, see my awesome pic) and to cap it all off we got to see a former WWII Army Tech Sergeant get awarded the Bronze Star.  He landed on Omaha Beach, fought his way across Europe (including the Battle of the Bulge) and helped in the liberation of Dachau.  His paperwork was lost to history until a local news station profiled him, found his old CO and got the award pushed up the chain of command.  He is 87 now, there aren't too many of these WWII heroes left.  Then a mom got up to talk about her son, LCPL Jeremy Kane, who had died during combat in the Helmand Province.  Very moving.

When we got back Tracy and the kids were standing in the parking lot, which was awesome.  They were on their way up to northern New Jersey and timed the trip so we could get a few hours together at the base’s Rec Center.  Once we got past the dragon at the entrance we got to catch up a bit, eat candy and play some games.  I must have been asked a couple dozen times today about the visit and if it was fun.  It is sort of like asking someone to describe what their pizza was like when you are on a diet and can’t have any, I think – they were just living vicariously through me.

We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Between now and Dec 4^th we roll from training event to training event.  Land Navigation is followed by Movement Under Fire and Hand Grenades is followed by Counter IED is followed by three days and nights at a pretend Forward Operating Base, and if you are asking why I am doing any of that training you are a couple of steps ahead of a certain service that I have promised myself I will try not to malign.  Enough of that.

This usually begins my favorite time of the year.  After Thanksgiving I am allowed to play Christmas music all I want, I start to decorate the outside and pull the inside boxes down from the attic.  Is is amazing how fast the days go by between Thanksgiving and Christmas when I am home, I hope that rule holds true in Kuwait.

Arrrmmmmyyyy training, sir!

Sorry for the length and delay in posting, it has been a busy few days...

Everyone told me that this training would be crazy, but there really are no words to describe the complete disconnect between the actual job I will be doing in Kuwait (leading a group of Navy Customs folks) and the training I am getting.  Rather than create their own training center the Navy (and Air Force and Coast Guard) all send their folks to the Army for training, so anyone going to Central Command (CENTCOM, which includes Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and Kuwait) goes to one of about a dozen or more Army posts for training before flying overseas.  On the face of it that makes great sense, it should be more effective, efficient and cheaper to do it this way.  In actuality it is a huge mess.  Kuwait is a lot like Canada in that the US has a huge presence there and it is essentially a benign area (although you have to be careful in Quebec , those Quebecois are crazy).  Even though by policy the US doesn’t have any “permanent” bases in the Middle East for all intents and purposes we have many in Kuwait and the most dangerous things over there are the drivers.  I won’t need Kevlar body armor, we won’t be traveling in convoys with HMMWVs and MRAPs, and there aren’t any IEDs dotting the countryside.  However, a lot of my training relates to all of that.  The Army has one particular set of training standards and they apply them evenly and without thought across everyone, regardless of service or mission.  We don’t actually get Customs training until our last 2 days here. 

I am at this wonderful point in my career where I have more than 20 years of service, I have had a couple of commands and I can take or leave making the next rank, so I don’t have a problem telling people when I think things are wrong, and that is what I have been doing.  My opinion is that this is a huge waste of time and money and my rabble-rousing has apparently made it up to the Brigade Commander (the guy in charge of executing the training) and I have to talk to him after Thanksgiving.  In the meantime I just keep writing things down and reporting the craziness up the chain of command.  I really, really dislike the whole military culture of putting down the branch of service that isn’t your own and I try very hard not to let the sailors see what I think and feel (except the Chiefs, who occasionally have to talk me down) but this is institutionalized thinking at its worst.

It is amazing how quickly you go into a news vacuum.  I am aware that we reelected the President (or the Kenyan as some here are calling him) and that Israel is spinning things up against the Palestinians.  I am also aware that several current and former general officers have been very, very naughty.  Beyond that…I don’t know much of what is going on in the wide world.  The day is consumed with details about training and who is sick and who didn’t receive a gas mask and where is the supply van and why don’t our comms work.  Every evening we solidify the plan for the following day and tentatively set the plan for the day after that.  Then it is bedtime.  If I get up early enough I get in a workout and the cycle repeats.

I did thoroughly enjoy qualifying on the M9 pistol, even though if I have to start shooting things in Kuwait we have big problems.  I used to be a pretty good shot back in the day; I worked hard on becoming an expert with the .45 and the M16.  It is all physics and how you arrange your muscles and bones to support the weapon, so it is really something that anyone can do well with enough practice.  I haven’t shot a whole lot since, I may get to a range every couple of years for what they call familiarization fire, where they just make sure you know how to safely operate the weapon.  I wasn’t the best in the Navy class, but I was in the top grouping and that was with a malfunctioning pistol.  These uppity kids have to be kept in their place.

The group dynamics are fun to watch.  This is a little bit like Survivor in that a bunch of strangers get thrown together and have to survive various challenges.  The military hierarchy and discipline roots out a lot of the stuff you would see on a reality show, but I know for sure that there will be sickness and that sooner or later there will be a fight, probably over a female (I got some feedback on that word from my last post – that is just what the fairer sex are called here.  If one has to go into a male barracks room they call out “female on deck”).  Well, the crud is already creeping around the barracks - we have sent a couple to the ER and a couple to sick call - and I am getting wind of unrest among the troops.  Some have never had to share space with others like this before and have problems when they don’t get their way.  There is absolutely no privacy here, which can make calling home uncomfortable, particularly if there are issues at home.  And of course we have young, single males and females vying for each other’s attention.  All of that really makes for interesting leadership challenges, and Thanksgiving could really amplify the problem as it is a tangible reminder that we are all away from home and our families. 

The main part of the FEMA presence is finally leaving Ft Dix.  There are still tons of state troopers around but the lines at the galley (or DFAC [Dining Facility] as the Army insists on calling it) are going to shorten up a bit.  We have fun throwing Navy words at the Air Force (we are actually in their barracks) and the Army and they have fun throwing their super special terminology back at us.  That part of inter-service rivalry I can deal with, as long as it is in jest.  It can be an obstacle though.  There was an event on our training schedule last week called PATS – obviously an acronym for something, but what?  I was told it stands for Protection Assessment Test System.  Well then, why didn’t you say so!  Turns out it is a system to test the seal on your gas mask, they use a very nice-smelling incense in lieu of teargas, which is a plus.

I heard Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” last week, which is only the best Christmas song (and best Christmas album cover, or CD cover, or virtual cover or whatever it is called now) ever in the history of the world.  Then I remembered won’t be home to torture everyone with Christmas music this year, and that they may discover an awesome new Christmas candle scent without me, and who is going to hang all the outside lights and they don’t even know my system to put everything away so it is going to get all messed up and I won’t get my birthday lasagna this year and then she starting singing the words and pretty soon it wasn’t as fun to listen to as it usually is.  

Admin Week

The first week of my mobilization to Kuwait has been eventful and uneventful at the same time.  The pace of the workups goes something like this: one week in Norfolk to make sure I am not sick, lame or wounded either physically or mentally and to ensure that I am fully transferred from the Reserves back to active duty Navy, followed by a period of weeks of Army training at Ft. Dix to make sure I am ready to enter the CENTCOM area of responsibility, followed by a couple days of training on what the Customs battalion will actually be doing.  The training period got off to a fitful start because of Hurricane Sandy.  Although it was only a glancing blow to the Hampton Roads area it was still enough to curtail the majority of operations at the naval base for a day or so and throw a major wrench into the travel plans of dozens of sailors trying to get there.  I ended up being the senior officer for the Customs folks going through Norfolk, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It is always a privilege to be in charge of sailors and it is not something I ever take lightly.  I am fortunate because being responsible for a group of mobilized Reservists headed out on Customs duty is sort of self-selecting in that these all appear to be locked-on sailors, most have volunteered and for a large number this is not their first deployment.  In fact, at least 2 did this very mission just last year.  The flip side is that there is no skating by this week, just tracking where the heck everyone is spread around the country is a major effort.  I am extremely fortunate to have some solid Chiefs and a Senior Chief, these gentlemen (and one lady) are the folks that make the Navy run.  I get a little bit of street cred with them because I was a Chief myself before I went to the “dark side” and got commissioned (the Chief’s point of view, and there is a lot of truth to this, is that the pinnacle of Navy service is to reach the rank of Chief) but they are evaluating my performance as much as I am evaluating theirs. 

Logistics are my only major problem as I go through the week in Norfolk.  My flight to get to Norfolk was cancelled due to Sandy, so I jumped in my car and drove down.  Because personal vehicles are verboten at Ft. Dix, I had to get the car back home and get to Ft. Dix on my own while the rest of the crew took buses up.   I was able to finish up with the paperwork on Friday, turn everything over to the Senior Chief and Chiefs and head home.  It was great to be able to spend a few more hours with the family but not-so-great to have another goodbye.