Berets are a Big Deal

Our unit wears patrol caps, but here at school berets are the uniform of the day for everything. My classmates have showed me how to make the beret fit my head. With time off this weekend I will be "shaving" my bhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giferet so it will fit tighter on my head. Here's the official info on the beret.

Army School: Free Food or Fitness

For those of us who prefer to work out in the afternoon instead of 5 am, the Army school schedule means I have to choose between free food and fitness. We get an hour for lunch. I can go the chow hall in the van or ride for about 30 minutes and get fast food at a base concession. I have opted for fast food to take advantage of the 50-60 degree weather every day. Same thing for dinner. We are done with class by 6 pm and the gym closes at 8pm. So the last few days I have ridden or gone to the gym to work out and run, and missed the free food at the mess hall. Tonight I tried to have it all. I rode for an hour and 15 minutes, showed up at the mess hall at 1850--ten minutes before closing, left at 1910, gym at 1920, 20 minutes of upper body, 20 minutes on the treadmill and out the door at 1956. Next time I will wait until after the run to eat. Free food is not worth the feeling of running on a full stomach.

At Least They Have the SPEED Channel

It's 11:35 and I will be tired in class tomorrow because tonight is the beginning of the 2008 Formula 1 season. So even if our residence has some tendency to catch fire, they have the SPEED Channel. The F1 season is broadcast live on Speed, so that means Friday's 1pm practice in Australia airs at 11pm on Thursday on the US East Coast. For fans, Ferrari is back on top of the practice speed charts. Fernando Alonso is back at Renault and is mid pack.

My Training Unit

So who is training to be a chemical and quartermaster repairer? There are nine of us in the class from Army National Guard Units across the nation: 3 sergeants (SGT), 5 specialists (SPC) and 1 corporal (CPL). One of the SGTs is my roommate, he is from Kansas and another is from Michigan. Both of them are 50 years old. The other SGT and one SPC are brothers, both from Las Vegas. Strangely, all three of the SGTs are ex-Navy. There is an SPC from North Dakota, one from Virginia, and one from W. Virginia, besides yours truly from Pennsylvania. The CPL is from Long Island. All of the students are men, which our instructors tell us is unusual. Our instructors are both women, a sergeant from Pennsylvania and a staff sergeant from West Virginia.

Running To. . .or From

I have been writing for months about what I see and what I do. Many of the questions I get from friends and family are about what the Army is like for me. But partly they are asking what is the Army like at all. Most of my co-workers and friends don't know a serving soldier except as an acquaintance or a cousin from somewhere else.

But today when I was tired and miserable from being up late and then watching the smoke roll out of the hotel where we are sleeping, I thought, "What happens when I get deployed, and I am up all night with something more serious than a kitchen fire? Can I handle that?" I had opposing urges to let my one-year enlistment run out and leave and to see a regular Army recruiter and volunteer for a tank unit.

I am in this to both run to what I believe is my eternal future and run from the life I have been leading. I don't mean my family. I mean the guy who over the past two decades has transplanted himself from high-school-educated soldier and Teamster (four years on the dock at Yellow Freight) to "communications professional." I have a lovely family, a big house, and have made more than 40 trips overseas on business in the past decade.

To paraphrase CS Lewis, I am in the world, but more importantly, the world is in me. I do love the world in a way that I did not when the world was a big, hostile, mysterious place. I joined the Army to run away from the privilege that has become part of my life. Eventually we will say to Our Lord, "Thy Will Be Done" or He will say the same to us and we will be eternally undone. And the life I have been living is increasingly dominated by my will. But the Army is the opposite. On duty, I do what I am told by whomever is in charge. I do what they say, when they say. I eat when the chow is available, or not. But I don't choose meal times or menus.

So I am running away from my love of this life and running toward the next, but it is already difficult at one weekend per month and now a two-week school. I have enough money to skip the mess hall when I want to. So I do. I am already equivocating and I am three days in to some of the lightest duty the Army has--a school. Just two weeks of beign clean, well-fed and learning about equipment.

My long-term plan is to get the training I need, go on active duty for a year, then live a simpler life making less money. No more expensive clothes, no more expensive food whenever I want. I still think it is the right thing to do. But I have to keep running. If I stop, I will turn back.

And a Longer Night!!!!

I got to bed late Monday night. BAD Choice. At 1:45 am the fire alarms went off in the hotel where we are staying. Anyway, the kitchen caught on fire and by 2 am we were out in the parking lot watching eventually seven fire trucks arrive. No one was hurt and everybody was back in their rooms by 330 am.
It wasn't enough sleep though. I was tired all day. We got done just before 6pm. I passed my first exam, which was on the 350GPM pump, and we started on a 120,000 btu heating unit.

Long Day with a Pump

All of today and most of tomorrow we learned to maintain and operate the Army's 350 GPM Pump. This aptly named, diesel-powered, trailer-mounted device, pumps 350 gallons per minute of either water or fuels--but not both. We read schematics, did mechanical and electrical troubleshooting, and took the whole pump body apart and put it back together. If you were wondering what a 3-cylinder pump has to with chemical weapons, this course is about maintaining the equipment that helps to clean up after contamination. The various steam cleaners and field showers and laudries need water and diesel to get where they need to be and operate while on site--so we start with a pump.