Journal Entry

So here's my first journal entry from back at Benning. I downloaded all the software to add pictures to this thing, but I still can't figure out how that works! I really am middle-aged. I tried to add one picture to my profile, which seems to have disappeared for some reason, but it showed up, uncropped, full size in the middle of a post that was rapidly deleted. Sorry to scare any of you who might have been viewing at that moment. So if anyone can tell me how to get/find/assign URLs to all the pics I've added to my Hello and Picasa pages, chime in with comments! OK here's some journal, scoured, of course, for your (and my comrades') protection.

TUESDAY 1/4/05
OK, so we’re settled in at Ft. Benning - America’s best Army post 4 years in a row. The buildings are typical Army - ugly and old looking, but overall, it’s actually pretty nice. The weather helps a lot - 70’s and sunny during the day, cool for sleeping at night. The food's good. We haven’t started Army training yet but we have had plenty of meetings, none of which have started within a half hour of when they were supposed to so we’re getting good at standing around and waiting. Tomorrow is the big day. I'm in the Headquarters & Support “Company” and we’re first to start training. I hear that it’s classroom stuff at first, then we’ll hit the ranges and we eventually get to do some night fire.

Yeah, pretty exciting stuff, eh? Here's one more... it was actually the next one in my journal... you can see how well I kept up with it when there was still a bar available...

Sunday 2/6/05
Wow, I really should have kept up with this a little better. So much for the weather at Ft. Benning - our last day of training had us standing outside in the wind at what felt like the highest point on Ft. Benning. It was maybe 40 degrees minus about 20 for wind chill. We were out there all frickin day for about 4 total hours of Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) training. It was actually kind of fun storming into a building and being greeted by AK (blank) fire. There was a news team there looking for people to interview and my name was thrown out. She heard it and was looking for me, but it was way too close to the election aftermath for me to have a chance to speak to the masses on my feelings about this war. Thank God that whole phase is behind us. (take that as you wish - I meant training at Ft Benning) I’m now at [an undisclosed location in] Kuwait and the weather isn’t much better. After 5 or 6 days of sitting around with our thumbs up our butts, I finally got scheduled for our mandatory training before moving on. The only strange thing is, only about half of us were lucky enough to be chosen to do this mandatory training.
2/10?/05
I just got back from three days of convoy, more MOUT, and reflexive fire training. We kind of put the whole thing together during this little desert campout (the “mandatory” training only half of us did). On our convoy, we had to clear and secure our worksite - a small “village” where we were to “repair a school damaged while used as a polling place.” So we got to do an IED drill, a disabled vehicle drill, clear and secure the vehicle, and pick up and evac casualties... oh yeah, and I got to practice hauling out the “dead.” It was much more thorough and realistic than anything we did at Benning, but I have to admit that what we did at Benning made us that much more ready to soak in what we did here. Sounds like I finally get to head out tomorrow, or at least I’ll find out tomorrow when I finally get to head out. I’m sick of “infantry” training and the MONTH we’ve spent here getting about a week‘s worth of it. We’ve been on orders for almost 4 months and we’ve yet to work on a piece of equipment. It’s driving everyone nuts. I should probably fill you in on that month since my last entry, but it was so mind numbing to live through, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read about it. I dealt with it (at Ft Benning) by being drunk a lot of the time (last chance for that for a while).

That's probably enough of that for now. I think I mentioned three days of rain in my last post, and I got some great pics of the effects of that rain on soil that really isn't used to it. I haven't downloaded them from my camera yet, and I guess there's no point until I figure out how to put them here. I sure hope you are entertained by my incompetence since that's all I have to offer at this point.

Things are continuing to improve here as we settle in and gradually figure out what we need to do and how to do it. I continue to receive wonderful care packages, and have been promised that more are on the way. I can't even begin to tell you how exciting it is to go pick up the mail and find a box with my name on it. Even if I know it's only another load of old magazines, sheets, or hand sanitizer... it's like being a kid on Christmas morning. (that's not a plea for more, just an expression of gratitude and an attempt to explain how much I took for granted back home).

One last thing. Last night, as I fell asleep before the finale of Waiting for Guffman(thanks honey, what I stayed awake for was funny), there was apparently a rather loud and forceful "controlled blast." I didn't hear it, but it actually caused Todd and Daryl's door to open up! It was, according to the stories this morning, followed by a series of outgoing rounds that rattled windows until about 3 a.m. Fortunately for me, these, like my alarm clock, had no effect whatsoever on my slumber. There are, I'm told, new guns around here and they are, I'm told, much louder than the ones they replaced. I guess all those years of sleeping through my wife's snoring (and I sure do miss it, my darling wife!) have enabled me to get uninterrupted sleep through just about anything. (I really do miss your snoring, but I miss sleeping next to you even more, deary)

OK, now that I've thoroughly turned off anyone who was hoping for something exciting here, I'm quitting until I learn how to add some pics. Or until I add another installment of "I can't figure out how to load pics." Maybe I'll ask Laurie... she put one on her blog in her first week!
Type at ya later,
Luth.