Moving Day

Finally, after 37 days at Ft Dix the end is in sight.  

The FOB experience was not as I had anticipated and resulted in some Army deaths from verbal shrapnel.  We were out there with an Air Force class and it really seemed as if they had forgotten about us.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was when a chaplain didn’t show up on Sunday for services.  I don’t care one way or the other but I have some sailors that really rely on Sunday worship.  We had checked and re-checked just to make sure there actually would be services, but it turns out the Chaplain was in Ft Meade.  Since he didn’t wake up that morning and teleport, I had the crazy suspicion that the Army had known about this and neglected to tell our class, so I called just about everyone I could get the number for and complained, then wrote an e-mail and copied everybody I could think of, then I bitched out the training staff I could find.  After all my constructive criticism about how our training could be done better, this was the one thing that got the Army to listen.  I had a Brigade Command Sergeant Major find me the next day, a two-hour meeting on the FOB experience with the training and operations folks, and some phone calls with various Army folks once we got back.

Ultimately, listening is one thing and getting a monolithic organization to change is quite another.  Senior Chief and I went to a meeting with the two Brigade Commanders in order to validate that we had accomplished all of our training.  I had a captive audience so I let them have it in a respectful way (what can they do, send me to Kuwait?) after telling them that I held their instructor corps in very high regard.  They smiled and nodded at me like I was a crazy person, which I suppose is the way you handle an unhappy customer in any line of business.  I think they are happy we are moving on, I am told that we leave behind a legacy of extreme competence (we were always early and always prepared), that we were a fun-loving group, and that we (I) threw too many verbal hand grenades.  My Senior Chief is former Army, and he counsels me that the reason he left the Army is because it is an organization that delights in quickly marching folks 20 miles only to have them wait wherever they are for 3 days.  The Navy could never do that, there would be too many sailors asking why and trying to figure out a way around the march, and ultimately trading some tools for a van so they could drive, or looking up some obscure regulation that forbids marches of more than 15 miles on the second Thursday in March.  On the flip side, sometimes you need someone to just shut up and go take a hill, and that is where the Army excels.  It all comes down to understanding each other’s culture, I suppose.

After that everyone was free for the weekend.  Tracy and the kids came and got me and we went to Philly.  I had not been there since Tracy and I spent a weekend waaaayyy back before we got married, so last century.  It was great to see everyone, the couple hours we saw each other at Thanksgiving was just a taste and not nearly enough time.  We went and saw Christmas lights at Macy’s, historical stuff downtown and the Franklin Institute.  It was still way too short, though, and the whole good-bye for the third time really stinks.  After hearing all of the many balls Tracy has to juggle all by herself it makes my job seem extremely easy, even if it sounds like the kids are stepping up and trying to help as much as possible.  I told Tracy a story of one night at the FOB when one of the supply guys brought me back some strawberry ice cream with strawberries on top after he made a run back to the base and she told me I had better not get used to treatment like that, things will be very different come mid-June when I return.  I do like that ice cream, though.