Henry's Web Log

We finished our deployment process Wednesday, with a security briefing in the morning. By 10:30am, we were able to get started on our Ordnance training! Finally! We joined a reserve component captains career course (CCC) which replaced the old “advanced course” I attended in 1996. Interestingly, it’s in the same classroom I was in, 12 years ago.
Our instructor was able to quickly catch us up on the latest doctrine changes for how the army maintains its fighting force, and it all started coming back to me and Tom pretty quickly. What used to be four levels of maintenance is now two, and of course its all modular to support the deployable packages of brigade-sized elements instead of entire divisions. There are still theater assets, but most of the wrench-turners are in brigade support battalions. We reviewed the “MOKSL” Mission, Organization, Key personnel, Stammis (standard army management information systems), and Location on the battlefield for the different maintenance units via 114 slides. There were also lessons on "Contractors on the Battlefield", and Site Selection for emplacing a maintenance unit. Great stuff!
There are 15 or so Captains and 1st Lieutenants in the class, all with vehicles, staying in an off-post motel. Us two Majors are hoofing it, using the LPC (leather personnel carriers, size 12). The dining hall is on the diagonally opposite end of the post, and we’re getting a couple of good walking miles in each day. Today, we followed that up with an hour and a half in the gym, then showered and got back into our ACUs for a hike over to the dining hall for dinner.
After talking to Lisa and the boys, Tom and I watched “The Bucket List.” Another great title from the post library.

We finished at Camp McCrady and received our travel orders at 6:30pm Friday. Myself and Major Tom Jadrich were to leave for Aberdeen Proving Grounds at 9am Saturday morning. We’ll both receive additional training in Ordnance, specifically regarding maintenance management. The McCrady staff scribbled a contact down for me: "Aberdeen Proven Ground, 888-555-1234" Note that they have been sending soldiers to one of only 12 training posts in the nation for the last 4 years. You'd think the specifics of making flight arangements, and spelling would have come up sometime before today.

In spite of both leaving the same place at the same time, and having the same destination, we flew into separate airports: me into Reagan, Tom into BWI. Our contact, a retired Command Sergeant Major, met me and we drove to BWI to get Tom. The odd thing is, both of our flights were less than half full. Go figure.

In the ride to Aberdeen, we learned that there will be 3 more days of SRP: Soldier Readiness Processing, the same thing we just finished at McCrady/Ft. Jackson. Why? Well, I cite the evidence above as illustration that the McCrady staff may not fully grasp their mission. By the second week, we should receive confirmation of our deployment unit. After 3 weeks at Aberdeen, we should be on our way to join a unit that is stateside and in the process of deploying to Iraq.

Aberdeen is nice- we’re in superb quarters: small apartments instead of open-bay barracks. Everything is in walking distance. Saturday I caught a live comedy show at the post theater. Sunday we went to the post chapel for a protestant service. Interestingly, the sermon tied the parable of the talents to the Army’s risk management system. You don’t get that kind of sermon just anywhere!

Tom and I went through the medical inprocessing, and sure enough, Fort Jackson missed a few things. I needed a few more shots, Tom needed glasses and shots, and we both had to receive a legal review and antiterrorist training. We finished up the day at the post gym and DFAC (dining facility). Well, not quite finished: the post library has a 3,000 volume DVD collection, so we checked out a few movies, picked up some popcorn & soda, and will watch “We Were Soldiers Once.”

Wed: training on First Aid…Combat medic techniques with lots of videos. Very detailed videos about field expedient surgical procedures. Before lunch. Later, I tried to send a package to home, but was 10 minutes late to post office…
Thursday: Communications: 9-line medevac & Call for fire. Then Convoy operations with rock drill for tomorrow.
Friday:
Today is our class’ final event: a Combat Convoy exercise, using 7 HMMWVs. Yesterday, we practiced duties and responsibilities, contingencies, and SOPs, such as we could in a limited environment. The problem for me is, that I still haven’t cleared medical. I had a low heart rate and abnormal EKG. My heart rate was 42 during the EKG, whereas my peers were 54 to 75. The soldier with 54 was flagged as low, so when they saw my heart rate, they were ready to get out the shock paddles. No, not really, but they really thought I was on heart rate medication. Lance Armstrong has something like a 32 bpm resting heart rate. My father had a low pulse, and I know Eric is also low. So part is hereditary. And then there’s the running and exercising I do. The heart’s in great shape…the belly needs a little work, but the ticker’s fine. It just took until today to get an appointment with the Internal Medicine doctor, and they couldn’t do it any other time except during our convoy.

The convoy was going to depart at 0800, but my appointment was for 0950, with a 30 minute drive. I just wouldn’t be able to do both. My solution was to elect myself photographer/videographer. I suited up in the full battle rattle and helped with the final rehearsals, last-minute logistics and getting everyone off to the line of departure (LD). Folks enjoyed having a photo of them behind a SAW (squad automatic weapon) or suited up for combat. I’ll be able to share these via thumb drives when we’re cleaning weapons later.
I hiked from the LD back to the barracks, drove to the hospital and made my appointment time with 10 minutes to spare: so I mailed my box of goodies home. Lisa, Eric and Ethan will receive a few souvenirs from Camp McCrady, like my M16 and pistol targets, an extra set of my own dog tags, an SD card full of photos, and a handwritten letter.
The doctor saw me, we talked, and he cleared me for deployment without restrictions. But I still had to visit the SRP (soldier readiness processing) and clear their medical section (“Look. Here. I passed. Sign this!”), then turn in all my paperwork. And they close for an hour and a half lunch. Well, they don’t call it lunch. It’s 1 hour for lunch and ½ hour more for internal organization time…but any non-government entity would call that an hour and a half lunch. So it wound up being a 1 hour medical appointment that took 5 hours to finalize.

When I got back to Camp McCrady, everything was wrapped up: weapons were cleaned, equipment was turned in (thanks to some buddies' help), and we were waiting for travel orders. It's been a huge pain not knowing where we're going until the day before we fly. And even then, I didn't get orders until 6pm, for a 9am departure.

The discussions over chow have almost always tied to who's going to be then next President: Oboma/Biden or McCain/Palin? The military almost universally supports McCain, and traditionally favors Republican.

I did get to share the 5-minute McCrady Convoy video with those who had a thumb drive, and we went to the small club on-post for a beer. Then it was pack up and move out!
Incidently, for a much better video of life at McCrady, see what our Navy bretheren went through. These guys were always up earlier and working later than us.

Range qualification day. First we went to the Zero range: get our M16s to fire in a nice, tight shot group, plus adjust the sights for our own zero at 25 meters. Then we fired our 9mm pistols from 4 different stances- I hit the bad guy (paper target) 37 out of 40. Maybe more, but who cares- he got the message!
For the M16 qualification, we were on a pop-up target range. Sillhouettes popped up from 25 meters to 300 meters away. In two very quick run-throughs, we shot from the prone and kneeling positions. First time was 22 out of 40 for me, second time was 32. I don't think anyone got higher than 32 out of the 16 of us in the firing order, so I was happy. But in the past, I've gotten 38 out of 40 without difficulty, so I go back to blaming the "loose" weapons mentioned last week and perhaps some range irregularities. Same message, though: lots of lethality coming from Henry if it comes down to it.

The weekend started off with our first successful two-way video call from me to home. Eric was the genius that rebooted the computer and suggested I reboot mine, then Voila, it all came together. Very nice.

A Lieutenant Colonel and I drove into Charleston on Saturday. Initially, we had understood that there would not be time off, but we're keeping up with everything, and the government doesn't like to work on Columbus Day. So we visited many of the historical sites like Fort Sumter-- Dale manages our materials database website, MatWeb, and challanged me to devise a defensive plan for Ft. Sumter! We also saw the first submarine to sink a ship in combat, the Hunley (did you know she sank twice before her final, successful voyage where she sunk the Housatonic, but sank mysteriously just after that?). The events wrapped up with a thorough walk over the grounds of historic Charles Towne Landing, the first South Carolina settlement dating to 1670. They certainly had defensive issues as well. Fortunately, the local indians befriended them, partly because this local tribe needed the new settlers guns to ward off another tribe that had allied itself with the Spanish. It's all who you know, right? Those original settlers weren't religious pilgrims so much as profiteers: they journeyed 6 weeks from England to Barbados, and stopped there to study the slave-intensive sugar farming process for a couple of months. Then, off to South Carolina...except they had heavy storms enroute, lost a ship, broke a ship, and took something like 3 months to just get from Barbados to South Carolina. But they brought a culture of slave-intensive profiteering and were mighty disappointed to find that sugar didn't grow well here. So this ties together with Fort Sumter because the slave-focused labor practices led SC to be one of the loudest advocates of slavery. Abraham Lincoln's election sealed the deal, SC seceded, other states followed suit, and Colonel Anderson moved his forces from a weak nearby fort to Sumter. Beauregard, a West Point student of Anderson, was sent to negotiate the return of Sumter but was forced to deliver an ultimatum. Which he backed up with 30 hours of artillery until SC forces captured Sumter. The Confederates held Sumter amidst the Union siege and blockades longer than any other siege. And when the Union did finally get it back, they invited Lincoln to come to the official ceremony. But he had tickets to the Ford theater and couldn't make it! Really!
So anyway, my conclusion to this tour was that South Carolina, from its roots in 1670, had a culture of greedy exploitation of slave labor, with two very separate classes of society. I also learned that Charleston is a beautiful city, with lots to do and see. And some delicious seafood!