AT 09--Day 4

Windmills at sunset

Have I mentioned all the windmills around here now? Wierd. They're huge. You'll be driving, and they will seem to hop up out of the trees from nowhere. Today we got to play bad guys all day. We wore Arabic 'man-dresses' (no one seems to know what these robes are actually called) and played ';hadji,'; which is the (probably deragatory) term Army folks use to refer to Arabs. In my day we called them 'ragheads.' I don't know where 'hadji' comes from, but it's just the same as calling the Germans 'Jerry' or the Vietnamese 'Charlie' except that those words referred mainly to combatants, but 'hadji' refers to any Iraqi or Afghani, presumably because you never really know who the bad guys are over there, and there's a lot of interaction with civilians.

Twitter

Oh, I forgot to mention--I'm posting frequent updates to my Twitter feed. I'll put a link to it here at some point, but for now I'm Calion on Twitter.com. The Twitter feed should be updated even when I don't have time or energy to post to this blog. Besides, the network connectivity out here sucks, so tweets might go through when blog posts might not.

AT 09--day 3

Sitting in a culvert

Yesterday was a classroom day. We sat in a large tent in the FOB that stayed hot even when the air outside was cool and breezy, and learned about IEDs. IEDs are what the media calls 'roadside bombs'--Improvised Explosive Devices. They account for more than a third of the fatalities in theater, outstripping even accidents, which surprised me. The can be pretty scary; easily emplaced, hard to detect, and deadly. They've even got armor-piercing versions of them now, called EFPs--Explosively Formed Projectiles. That's new. Previously, some good armor pretty much made you immune, unless you got hit on your vehicle's soft underbelly or something. These new weapons are amazing--cheap, fairly easy to make in a machine shop, and make use of some cool physics. You take some metal--copper is good, because it melts easily--pack it in a cylinder over some explosive, and form the surface into a concave lens shape. When it's fired, it forms itself into a liquid metal bullet

AT 09--Day 3 continued

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AT 09--Day 2 continued

My fuel tank

My accident was minor. I was going around a serpentine obstacle (concrete barricades offset so you have to snake around them, in order to slow down traffic and prevent vehicles from rushing onto the base (remember Beirut?)) into the Forward Operating Base (FOB) (where everyone will be staying during the firld portion of our stay), and it was a tight fit with an MTV tractor and a 30-foot trailer. I had enough room on the left , and I asked my A-driver (passenger), an experienced truck driver, if I had enough room on the right. He said I had plenty of room, and a couple of seconds later I heard the concrete scraping the truck. The furlough tank was damag, but not punctured, so it's still driveable. I'm sanguine about this, because it wasn't my fault at all; I trusted my A-driver, which you're supposed to do. If I'd been by myself, I probably would not have wrecked, because

AT 09--Day 2

Windmills from the motor pool

Well, yesterday was pretty interesting. The company had a total of three accidents yesterday, one of them mine. The first was pulling out of East St. Louis, when a female soldier hit an electric pole with her trailer when turning. The second was on the Interstate. A truck blew a tire and pulled over. The wrecker pulled in behind them to assist. Possibly because they were trying to pass one of our trucks that was in the left lane (to avoid the vehicles on the margin), a car sideswiped another car right into the wrecker. This apparently involved a couple of other cars as well. Reportedly, the car was totaled, and the wrecker has some scratched paint. The good thing about this is that we did nothing wrong; this wreck was in no way our fault. The bad thing is that the lady in the car had was injured and evacuated to a hospital.

Annual Training 2009--Day 1 continued 2

Well, apparently we were observed, because I got pulled aside later and asked, "are you a swinger?" When I said no (swinging and polyamory are NOT the same thing), he said "two?" and I said, "yeah, I've got two girlfriends." He said "I didn't know you had game like that. Why haven't you been bragging about it?" I told him the reasons I gave above, and he said that he couldn't think of any rules I was breaking. So maybe I had nothing to worry about after all, or maybe it's because he's cooler than most. Interesting, anyway.

Stupid trick of the day: I had to copy someone's military ID, then when I went to give it back I couldn't find it. I checked the copier, retraced my steps four times, and asked everybody if they'd seen it. I was worried, and very confused. Turns out the First Sergeant had used the copier and snagged it in the two minutes before I came back to look for it. Arg.

Annual Training 2009--Day 1 continued

I don't know if I'll need it, but it's nice to know I can use my phone's cool mapping feature if needed. We had some difficulty binding down the commo huts; not enough chains and binders. This is frustrating, for one thing because it's actually not our job to provide tie-down materials. It's the shipping unit's job. But no one ever remembers that, so we have to provide them, and we often don't have enough. My girlfriends dropped by during this to say goodbye. Yes, I said girlfriends. Yes, they know about each other. No, I am not going to explain the details of polyamory right now. The point is that this arrangement has been going on for about two years. I've not exactly been hiding this from the military, but I haven't flaunted it, either. I figured, "don't ask, don't tell." I thought it might get me looked at askance, especially if I were to become an officer, something I've long wanted.

Annual Training 2009--Day 1

I'm trying something new: attaching two pictures at once. Let's see how that works. The second one is of my son. So: Three posts in one day. This is my last National Guard summer camp; I'm retiring. So expect these entries to be a lot more candid than my previous ones. I'm still not going to criticize people by name, though. If I have problems, they're with the institution, not with individual members. We left Cairo this morning, went to Carbondale, picked up some commo huts (to be delivered to an undisclosed location; OPSEC is always good practice, even stateside), and came to East St. Louis. I drove an MTV, Medium Tactical Vehicle, one of the Army's newer trucks. It's a lot nicer, though they still don't have air conditioning. I don't understand that, given we're fighting in the hottest parts of the world. Oh, well, 2/60 AC still works. Luckily, it has a cigarette lighter, so I'll be able to charge my phone on the road. This is useful, as my phone has GPS.

Inland Hurricane--wrap up: Continued

Wups! The previous post got sent too soon. As I was saying, what we had been calling an inland hurricane was apparently officially a 'derecho.' You'll have to look that up; I can't provide links from here (I'm posting from my phone). Secondly, there's to be no talk of this being a result of global warming (as I saw on democracynow.com). This is the second one of these the region has seen in thirty years. So unless you're going to say that the effects of global warming were in full swing in 1980, leave climate change out of this. Big storms happen occasionally. Thirdly, lessons learned. An obvious one is: have backups. We had a hand-powered emergency radio--that the kids had hidden somewhere. So we had no input from the outside world for several days. Do go over your disaster plan and supplies regularly; batteries corrode, lamp oil runs out, and during an emergency is no time to discover this. Also, don't eat MREs that are over ten years old. Yech.

Inland Hurricane--wrap up

Well, everything's pretty much back to normal around here. All power is back on, Internet and other utilities seem to be working, most of the brush and debris has been removed, and the local radio stations have long since returned to normal programming after having 24-hour disaster talk radio while the power was out. But some signs still remain. Walmart is ridiculously overstocked on C batteries, having gotten tons in to cope with the shortage; several houses are still damaged, some severely so; tree-cutting and disaster service trucks can still sometimes be seen; many billboards and business signs are still damaged (McDonalds signs seem to be particularly vulnerable to having the plastic blown out of them); and many signs still display things like "we have phone chargers," "Chainsaws in stock," and "Chainsaw Sharpening." So this seemed like a good time for some parting thoughts. First, although I and others have been calling it an inland hurricane, apparently it was actually

Inland Hurricane--Day 7

Power came on last night, about 10:30 p.m. It was kind of sad, but it was certainly nice to have a working stove and fans and refrigerator. Life can get back to normal now, I suppose, although the cable/Internet is still out. And like I was saying, I realize we really do depend on electricity for a lot of important things--food storage, temperature control, communication--but it was nice to get out of our lighted caves for a while, feel a part of the community around us, and slow down for a while. However, there's a storm, hail, wind, tornado and flood advisory for tonight, so we'll see.

Illinois Hurricane--Day 6

Electricity is starting to come back on. We don't have any yet, but I expect that to change sometime today. I saw more and more streetlights outside my window every time I woke up. It's kind of sad, actually. We get to go back to the same old everyday existence we're used to. It's amazing how dependent on electricity we actually are: that is, not as much as we presume. After three or four days, you get into a routine. Sure, continually cooking on a grill gets old, and we've had to find innovative ways to charge our cell phones, but it's amazing what you can live without if it comes down to it. Yes, I understand that if there were no electricity or fuel, our methods of food packaging and delivery, our transportation, communication, heating and cooling (we're very lucky the weather has been mild) and construction would not work. Our society would grind to a halt and we'd have to revert to older, less efficient methods. More later; my phone limits text sizes.

Inland Hurricane

Okay, I've used this blog to record my military adventures in the past, but I don't see anything wrong with using it to record my adventures in general as well as updating folks about events in my life. On that theme, we've had a hurricane! Yes, in Southern Illinois. This is the second one of these I've lived through. The first one was 29 years ago, in March 1980, right after we first moved to Herrin. I'm not sure which one was worse, as I was 9 at the time of the first one, and didn't get to see as much of the damage. Our power was out for about a week, though, so it was probably similar. But this was certainly a hurricane. I saw the Katrina damage, and although that was certainly much worse, this is definitely of the same order. It hit on Friday afternoon, and we've been without power--the entire region has been without power--since then. I've responded to disasters, but I've never been a disaster ~victim~ before. That's all for now, other than to relate that everybody's ok

AT08--Day 5

Me in a truck

Okay, first off I am going to do something I should have done several days ago: give my mailing address for Summer Camp that I got when we arrived. So if you want to send me (or another soldier down here) mail, here's how!

Rank Last Name, First Name
1344th Transportation Company
Building 1440
Fort Chaffee MTC, AR 72905

Today I ran my first mission of this camp: a mission we got fairly late last night (when we KNEW they knew they were going to need it yesterday morning! Grrr) to haul some more ammo from the ASP to the AHA (often when someone mentions the AHA, which is pronounced aha, someone will return 'aaah haaaa'. Why? 'Cause the name sounds funny).

--
Okay, that was like a week ago. I never finished it, and I have mostly forgotten what happened that day or many of the days after.

I've realized that after things get rolling at AT, I really don't have the time or energy to write every day. After you've gotten five hours of sleep a night for three nights in a row, when the choice on the fourth night is blog or sleep, guess which is going to win? Add that to the fact that after a day or two of this I've fallen behind on the blogging and feel I have to do two posts a day on things that happened a day or two ago, and it's no longer fun. Add to THAT the fact that I promised myself that I would use this camp to think and work out some problems I've been having (if you're a close friend, details are on my LiveJournal blog—and that's another thing; this isn't the only place I'm blogging), when downtime is never too plentiful in the first place—we're here to work, after all; this is no 9 to 5 job—plus the email I'm writing, all adds up to precious little time for blogging. So I've decided to give up trying to blog every day, and I'm definitely not going to try to go back and make up for missed days. Instead, I'm going to blog as I feel like it and have time, conveying what anecdotes, thoughts and happenings I feel like relaying at the time. This should keep it less work and more fun for me, and will keep up the posts (and possibly make them more interesting) for you.

AT08--Day 4

Barracks at Ft. Chaffee

The big event today was picking up a bunch of ammo on several tractor trailers and hauling it about a mile. We went out to the motor pool at 0520 (wakeup was at 0500, but I was smart and set my alarm for 0450 so I could have a little time to wake up before I had to get going), PMCSed, did 626 inspections, then drove to the ASP checkpoint to get our trucks inspected. They also inspected all of our paperwork: our military IDs, civilian driver's licenses, military driver's licenses, and HAZMAT (Hazardous Materials) certification cards. A couple of people had military licenses that, even though they had been issued the night before, were expired. All our military licenses were issued in a rush last night to put the Hazmat certification on them for today's mission, but then the inspectors said that all we needed was the certification card. Oops.

I was tasked to check each and every fire extinguisher to make sure each truck had two good ones. I sent one back because it was very slightly overcharged...no big deal, only an eagle-eyed inspector would have rejected it. But one truck didn't even HAVE two extinguishers! How does that work? You're told that the inspections are rigorous, that one failed item means you can't load ammo on your truck, given time to check over the trucks, a form that tells you what to check, told several times that each truck needs two 10:BC extinguishers, and you don't actually bother to check to see if you have them! How does that happen? And it wasn't enen two green privates; one was an E-5 Sergeant. I jus don't understand the motivation behind that kind of sloppiness.

Anyway, the problems were fixed, and we drove into the actual Ammo Supply Point proper. It's a fairly new, very secure set of bunkers with grass growing on top of them, set close together (this is a little odd; usually they are set far apart to reduce the risk of sympathetic explosions. I guess they've found a better way. The Army doesn't screw around with explosives safety, on that level at least; it's been burned too many times before). I would post a picture here, but I didn't take one as I presume it would be a no-no; don't want to provide intel to someone who might want to break in and steal some ammo.

Anyway, it took forever to coordinate with the people who knew what we needed and start loading, but once it started it went fairly steadily. They would forklift pallets of ammo of various kinds onto our trailer, and we had to strap them down and then placard the vehicle with the proper warning labels for the most dangerous class of explosives on the truck. My assistant driver (A-driver) amused herself (and impressed a couple of people) by figuring out, from the codes on the boxes and the book we got from our hazmat class, what the class and compatibility codes for each type of ammo (bullets, blanks, flares, smpke, etc.) was. You can't just throw ammo on a truck; for various safety reasons, certain types can't be loaded with certain other types. She didn't need to, as the ASP guys knew all that, but she wanted the practice.

Once we finally all loaded and strapped, we drove to the AHA to drop off the trailers, which was about a mile or less from the ASP. The whole process took about eight hours. So, as I told Jenn, we drove a mile in eight hours.

AT08--Day 3

A-10 Warthog overhead

Early wakeup tomorrow; I should really already be asleep, so I'll try to keep this short.

Hot night last night; took a while to get to sleep, tho' not as long as the night before. We theoretically had A/C, as I think I said, but it just trickled out. The blower was out; fuse blown or something. They fixed it today, and while it's not exactly cold tonight, it's a lot better.

Today we rearranged our motor pool, moving trucks and trailers around, did PMCS, and a few of us went on a mission to haul MREs out to the FOBs (Forward Operating Bases, where the combat troops will be oerating out of, set up as in Iraq or Afghanistan. The word is that the air conditioning in their huge circus-tent-looking things is better than ours). It was a little wierd...I got told I was going on a mission, and to continue working on the truck until the mission briefing. Then later I got told I had better get going, the other trucks are rolling out. In fact I lost them and had to have help finding where to go. Not sure what happened with the briefing; some wires crossed there.

While on the mission waiting for another truck to be unloaded (by our own guys; something went wrong there too--we're truck drivers, not stevedores. I hope we're not going to be expected to load and unload all this stuff ourselves; that's the supported unit's job) I saw two A-10 warthog attack airplanes droping flares and firing their Vulcan cannon (2000 rounds a minute, IIRC). Cool. I tried to post a video of one above; we'll see if it works.

When we got back we did 626 inspections of our trucks, which are safety inspections for hauling ammo. If, for instance, a single reflector is cracked, or a wiper blade doesn't work, the ASP (Ammunition Supply Point) won't let you load the ammo, and you can't do your mission. So we make sure the trucks are good to go before we get there. Unfortunately, the only one of us who has done this before is me, and it's been seven years, and they've changed the form in the meantime, so I'm sure we won't get right the first time. We'll learn tomorrow.

Well, that's all for today; I need sleep. The only silly story I have today involves obscene material, so I won't be relating it here.

AT08--Day 2

My rack last night

We're down in Chaffee now, which so far (in contonment anyway) looks a lot like Ft. McCoy, except not as nice. And hotter. We're staying in double-story WWII barracks identical to those at McCoy. At least these have walls between the toilets (but no doors on the stalls). And two, count them two, shower heads per 40-man floor. I think I'll forgo showering in the morning. The air conditioning doesn't work very well; it sort of trickles out. But at least there IS air conditioning. The rest of garrison so far looks like Ft. McCoy 20 years ago with a new paint job. McCoy's been modernized with a new PX, refurbished barracks, a NICE club, etc. Not so here. The barracks do have these neat closet deals that two people can share but lock separately. Much better than the usual footlockers, especially for 3 weeks.

The bus ride down here took maybe 9-10 hours. It was alright; it was a charter bus, so it was more comfortable than the Army school bus I was afraid we'd be in. The only bad thing about it is that it has video screens for in-flight movies. Sounds great, only I'd usually rather listen to music and read, and the guys turn it up too loud for either one to be feasable. Oh, well, I got to watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith and most of Transformers again. Besides, my CD player (yes, CD player...my iPod died, the headphone jack on my smartphone is busted, and so I'm back to the 20th century. Hopefully by next year I'll have an iPhone and my problems will be over) kept quitting on me; I felt like throwing it through a window until I realized that it was a battery issue; it uses about half the battery capacity and quits. New batteries made it all better, but still, annoying.

After we got here, we inprocessed by getting our ID cards swiped (it's getting a little creepy how everything you have to do in the Army nowadays is starting to require putting your ID card into a computer) and watching a little movie of big brass from Illinois talking to deploying soldiers (which we're not, but everybody else here is). I recognized one General as a guy I drove around Ft. McCoy one year to the club and other places, many Summer Camps ago. He gave me a mug which he signed and I have since broken. Then we ate; I had forgotten how bad Army chow was; having no cooks, all our meals are catered nowadays. But not here. Then we went to the barracks and got settled in until tomorrow.

I realized I didn't mention what we actually did yesterday: not much. The major highlight of the day, besides drawing new uniforms and making sure everyone was packed, was going to Scott AFB to get new ID cards and go to the BX. I didn't need either, but I was sent along to ride herd. Well, we sat for 3 hours at the ID card office and got exactly 2 (out of 10) cards done. Computer problems, apparently (damned Air Force ;-). We watched Disney's Tarzan while we waited, which prompted me to download the original novel to my Treo and start reading it. It's actually surrisingly interesting and readable.

Last night was HOT. I took forever getting to sleep--not til 1 or 2, I would guess, with an 0500 wakeup. Some horrible rotten person had closed the bay doors, so there was no fresh air on the drill floor, I didn't dare reopen them for fear they were closed by 1SG for security or something. The overhead fans were inoperative, and the single exhaust fan I could find was also broken. Ugh. Fortunately all we had the next day (today) was a long bus ride, so I slept on the bus.

Stupid trick of the day: apparently I didn't screw the top of my laundry detergent on tightly enough, and it came open during the trip. Fortunately, it only came open a little, and the worst damage it did was to wet the corner of my copy of The Federalist Papers. I'm lucky; it could have been a LOTworse.

AT08--Day 1

Baggage waiting to be loaded

Here we are...another Summer Camp. I'll try not to crap out again before the end like I did last year (and at Katrina, for that matter, but I claim extenuating circumstances for that). You missed hearing about some good stuff, too, like me firing a sniper rifle and hearing artillery shells flying over my head. Well, maybe I'll get bored sometime and fill in the missing bits.

Anyway, this year we'll be at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas, which apparently used to be the home of JRTC (hopefully I'll come back later and add links to confusing words and initials--check back after Camp), a big Regular Army training center, but that moved to Ft. Polk, LA during BRAC, and now it's a Reserve training post. I hear it's hot and primitive, but at least it's not Ft. McCoy again! It'll be refreshing to go somewhere new for once.

We're going for about 3 weeks this time, which is also new. Usually it's 15 days, but this time we're supporting a huge training maneuver for an Illinois BCT that's on the road to war. We aren't going to be involved in the training--our mission is only to support them by hauling their troops, supplies and ammo so they can focus on training. We're not going to be doing any training ourselves that I'm aware of. But hauling ammo is something few of us have much experience with (I did it once for a couple of weeks in 2001), so that part should be a good learning experience for those of us in the ammo platoon. The training (it's called an XCTC for some reason) is actually going on all month, but another unit is going to take over for us on the last week.

Silly story of the day: I was at lunch, and I asked a soldier if she had gotten her boots taken care of. However, my mouth was half full at the time, and the commander, who was sitting next to me, thought that instead of "boots," I had said...something else. It was both awfully embarrasing and really funny. I turned pink, I'm sure.

Also...somebody was nice and got us all extra nametags for our new uniforms. Mine, however, read "Sysler." Anybody named "Sysler" out there that wants two new ACU nametags?

Currently listening: Seal, ~Human Being~

Chinook Flight

I had promised that I would post the pictures and videos I took from our Chinook flight. Well, I’ve finally done so. The pictures and videos are at http://zarquon.staticcling.org/1344/Drill/Chinook/. If anybody has additional pictures, please email them to me.

I’m hoping to pretty up the website these are on, add titles and descriptions to the photos, and make a blog post on that drill, but don’t hold your breath.