Out Early and Another Article

We were finished with medical processing at 2pm on Thursday. We had a roll call formation at 330pm, dinner from 5pm to 630pm and that was it for the day. I got to spend another night in an open bay barracks, but there was nothing left to do but clean the barracks. We got up at 5am and cleared our stuff out of the barracks. By 630 we were back from breakfast and cleaning the barracks. At 745 I was on my way to work in Philadelphia, just over 100 miles away. Someone else answered for me in final roll call so I could go back to work.

Also, I got a PDF file of an article that I wrote for a monthly magazine called TACTICS, published by the Public Relations Society of America (I am a member). I was writing for other people in my profession about why I would enlist. Click on the story to make it bigger.

Non-Deployable (for now)

Today we went through another round of medical screening. We got more shots and another dental x-ray. For most of us, the visit with the doctor took about two minutes. Mine was longer. I had to explain the surgery, the rehab and my projected time for recovery. The doctor marked my processing folder "No Go" and sent me down the hill to my "Non-Deployable Soldier" counselor. She went through all the steps I need to get myself declared fit for deployment and gave me the form my surgeon will have to fill out to say I am healthy again. Given the rehab schedule, it looks like I will be very close to my deployment date when the surgeon says yes or no.

I think I'll skip breakfast tomorrow. Eating Army--today it was eggs, sausage, pancakes, and cereal--is make my UnderArmor feel tighter across my stomach.

Paperwork Processing Complete

Today we went through a pre-deployment paperwork review. When critics crab about the inefficiency of government, they could use pre-deployment processing as an example. There were 11 stations which we could complete in any order, except station 11 where we signed out. So it would that the smart move to get through quickly would be to get as many stations as possible completed. But that would be wrong. The first people out of the building and on their way to lunch or the barracks were those who followed the whispered tip of going to station 7 first. Station 7 is ID card processing. Last May when we went through the same processing in a different building, the story was the same: go to station 7 first, get done up to an hour faster.

In May station 7 had four technicians at four computers with four cameras. Two of them worked. Today, there were four technicians, with four cameras and, you guessed it, two of them worked--at least for the first hour. The complaints were exactly the same--the camera interface was unstable and if something went wrong the whole system needed to be rebooted. A for-profit business with a bottleneck and competitors would straighten the bottleneck.

When we get to our pre-deployment training station and do all of this paperwork again, I will go to station 7 first.

Travel Day

In the Army accountability is everything. It is one of the reasons the Army will never be a "flat" organization in the modern sense. Every leader needs to be able to tell someone above that he knows where his people are. So each team leader (in charge of 3 or 4 soldiers) can tell the squad leader (with 10) where his people are. Three squad leaders tell the platoon sergeant where their squads are. The platoon sergeants know the whereabouts of their 40 soldiers. Several platoons make a company (100 to 200) and then a battalion (600), a brigade (2000) a division (6000 to 10,000) and so on.

So we arrived today at 2pm to sign in. We had a roll call formation at 3pm. We had dinner at 5pm. And that was our day--except those who did not mark their duffel bags. They reported in the morning to mark their baggage.

This whole day was devoted to: "All present and accounted for."

Short Day Getting Ready to Go

We were done just after 3pm today. We had a short day of marking bags and footlockers and filling out paperwork. At least I did. Many went out to the range for qualification, but i still am not allowed to lift anything heavier than a coffee cup. And it was a tough day to shoot--30mph winds and a temperature that just reached freezing. And we will all be back Tuesday to once more go through paperwork and medical checks to be sure we are healthy enough to go to Iraq.

Getting Ready to Pack Up the Motor Pool

Today I finished the electronic inventory of our Conex (8 by 8 by 12 foot container) box full of special tools for maintaining Army vehicles. Sometime in January we will be packing all of our equipment for Iraq, this weekend we are finishing paperwork and putting things in places ready to be packed. The thousands of tools I am responsible for are now in my Mac and on a backup drive. They will also be on a PC in the motor pool and in my house, and on a thumb drive before the weekend is over.

I also started doing my post-accident exercise program from last year. I was not allowed to lift more than five pounds then. Now I am not supposed to life more than a coffee cup. So I did ten reps on every machine in the F&M gym tonight, but with no weight at all. I did that for a month last year. It's weird, but it kept me flexible until I was ready to actually lift weights.

Pre-Deployment Processing Again

Next week from Tuesday to Friday I have yet another round of pre-deployment paperwork and medical processing. I thought this round would be something different but it is the same thing as the last round. The bad thing for me is that I hoped the next time I would see an Army doctor would be after we began pre-deployment training in February. That way my shoulder would be healed up ior at least far enough along that I could pass a PT test. That way when they asked about the shoulder I could offer to take and pass a PT test on the spot. I can't do that next week. Hopefully I will have until mid-January to get enough rehab to do 21 pushups (the minimum to pass at my age) and I could show up and pass a PT test. I now have official Stop-Loss orders and deployment orders. I don't want to get stuck here on a paperwork technicality at this point.