So here we are, the end of the deployment. Lots of sailors have been counting down to
next Wednesday, which is the day we leave Kuwait and fly to Germany for what
the Navy calls the Warrior Transition Program Coincidentally, this operation was located here
in Kuwait right up until the point I arrived, so all previous Customs rotations
got to “decompress” in small, hot tents sitting in the desert. Sembach, Germany seems like a better deal to
me. They try to keep us on some sort of
leash, you can’t just go out and roam the German countryside, but they do have
some organized tours I am told, and we are allowed to drink 2 or 3 beers a
day. I guess they are trying to build
our tolerances back up.
If we are going to count, the important day is really the
one I get HOME, not necessarily the day I leave one place for a slightly
closer, slightly nicer place that is still pretty far away. Plus I feel a little guilty in that I really
don’t need the services as much as some of my more warrior-like colleagues who
may be coming back from difficult tours in Afghanistan or the Horn of
Africa. Sure it was dusty here, and it
was cold a few days back in January, but I am essentially returning from 6
months in a minimum security prison. In
addition, I was one of the lucky inmates that got supervised releases to travel
outside the gate pretty much whenever I wanted.
Speaking of that, in the process of training the folks who
replaced me (yes, it takes two because I was so scary good at this job…) we
just may have used the training as an excuse to visit some locations that are borderline ok to visit but are not necessarily related
to the Navy job I used to do. It is one
of the small perks of the job. A couple days
ago we stopped at a local mostly Americanized mall on the water. It was kind of neat, it had a Cinnabon and a
Dunkin’s but also a fish market and a meat market complete with hanging skinned
goats.
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| No skinned goats are visible in this pic so stop looking |
The turnover to a new group has been interesting. I was lucky coming when I got here in many
ways. When I arrived the Headquarters
group (they get supplies, do the administrative stuff and are the life support
for operations, which is where my company was) had been here for a couple
months so they had procedures and processes in place. Right now I am turning over my job and the HQ
folks are as well, so there is a lot of churn going on as the new groups get
used to new things. Complicating things
is that throughout history the outgoing group thinks the incoming one just
doesn’t get it and will screw things up and the incoming one thinks the
outgoing group was doing things all wrong and they have a lot of work to do
fixing things up. In reality none of
that is true, but it can sometimes make for bad blood. I am lucky because the two folks I turned
everything over to are pretty cool, so it all went well.
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| My pirate ship in the desert |
I also took care of a last bit of softball business. Our Navy team is known far and wide (at least
when it comes to military units in Kuwait) as the one to beat. Since December we have a pretty ridiculous
record, something like 35-3, and during that time we have won two tournaments
and one league championship while playing some really good teams. Last night we played in our last final for yet
another league championship and after a rough start pulled out a pretty
convincing win, 23-14. We walk away
never having lost any meaningful games – the three we lost were in the regular
season, and for one of those I was in Jordan – and our sexy uniforms are the
envy of the league. I have contacted
ESPN to announce my retirement from competitive desert softball.
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| Champs |
Next time I post I will likely be in Europe transitioning
back to the life of a civilian as I sip from a beer. I think my transition will go quicker if they
have fruity drinks.
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