After a period of deliberation, I’ve decided to attempt to update the Not A Blog™ as regularly as I send out personal emails. Originally I wasn’t going to do this because I was assuming that those who were receiving the email would be the same people reading the blog, and it seemed mean, in a way, to update the blog but without any new news they would have gotten elsewhere. On the other hand, I know for a fact there are people reading this who aren’t on the email list, so in an effort to keep all interested parties up to date, I’ll repost the same information here.

That being said, I’ve already sent out two update emails, so I’m going to serve up some copy pasta to bring everybody up to speed. I prefer to tailor my writing for my audience but with the limited amount of time I have to write emails, everybody gets the same old gruel. I figure I will at least try it this way for now and see how it goes. I hate seeing the Not A Blog™ neglected whilst the writing continues for others.

Week 1

It has been a very interesting week. And by “interesting” I mean “completely jacked up”. This being the military, one can only expect a certain amount of that. However, as I was going through the process, I couldn’t help but think, “this place has deployed thousands of people over half a dozen years and this is the best they can do?” I mean, the military is bad, but I didn’t realize it would be quite this bad. This being my first deployment, I didn’t have anything else to compare it to, but my suspicions were confirmed by a few other people in our group, some of whom had been deployed three or four times. All of them said the same thing: they’d been through x number of deployments, but this one was, by far, the worst. The fact that they do this all the time yet still don’t have their shit together frankly boggles the mind.

Excerpts from the Journal:

Day 1 (Sunday)—Whether or not I was on any list was completely hit or miss. The guy picking us up from the airport was expecting me (but only me, when he got about nine people total). The BEQ (Bachelor Enlisted Quarters) did not have a reservation for me. I was not on the pre-medical checklist; uniform supply didn’t have a size sheet for me (which is okay because they didn’t have most sizes). The mess hall was expecting me, though, which was nice because I could just walk in and eat.

Day 2 (Monday)—I was stabbed six times: once in each arm to draw blood (I have very small veins and it almost always takes more than one try), plus four shots including typhoid, hepatitis, anthrax, and a PPD test.

Day 3 (Tuesday)—It being Memorial Day weekend, we must fly out in waves. Apparently commercial airline seating filled up quick, and the NMPS (Navy Mobilization Processing Station) didn’t bother to think ahead to schedule these flights, despite knowing for at least 45 days that we were coming, and would ultimately, in turn, need to leave.

Day 4 (Wednesday)—Today was less hectic, more organized. I took care of my dental requirements, was fitted for my gas mask, and got my will set up and executed.

Day 5 (Thursday)—Today was also a little bit better. I got all my desert camo uniforms (alas, the Navy has not yet switched over to the svelte digital camo pattern. Still with the “amorphous blob” ‘Nam style.) Also got my pay finished, and received the last vaccination I needed, which is small pox. Evidently, this festers and grows for a good two weeks before forming a scab which must be removed and disposed of by a biohazard team, lest you spread the infection all over everything and kill off half the unit.

This week was all the administrative BS one must endure before moving on to actual training. The next three weeks promise to be more of the fun stuff: Army weapons training.

Week 2
My flight out was to leave Friday morning at 6AM. Everyone was ready to leave the base at five—except one one guy who just couldn’t move his rear out of bed. His chief had to go up to his room and drag him down and get him checked out. We didn’t hit the road until 5:20, and by the time we were standing in line at the airport, they closed the flight to finish loading bags. If it weren’t for him being late, we would have made the flight on time.

As it happened, he caused six guys to miss their flights (including one officer), and never apologized once or even seemed to think he did anything wrong. He screwed up. Big time. He then proceeded to make things worse for himself by booking a taxi to an airport in another state to catch a flight there and turning off his cell phone so he couldn’t be reached. He wasn’t going to the same place I was, so I never did find out what happened to him, but from what it sounded like, he’s going to be doing some hard duty for a while.

I had my flight rebooked to Saturday morning at 6AM and this time I made it without incident. It actually worked out fine because I didn’t have to report in until noon on Sunday.

Sunday was a lot of briefing and administrative stuff. This being run by the Army, we were assigned to companies and platoons. I was assigned to be squad leader of 4th squad in our platoon—a position which sounds quite a bit more important than it really is. It’s just a matter of making sure my squad shows up and has the gear they need for the day.

The drill sergeants were careful to explain that the training was not supposed to be like boot camp. They recognized that everyone there was a military professional, already motivated to do their mission, and the drill sergeants’ goal was to give us the skills we needed to effectively support the Army in theater. There was none of the yelling, doing push-ups, or getting chewed out for not walking on the correct side of the sidewalk. The best way I can describe it is that it’s like all the awesome and fun parts of boot camp without any of the crap.

On Monday, we were issued gear: three large, green canvas bags full, including combat armor (all 30+ lbs of it), plus sundry extras like gloves, fleeces, rain gear, etc. This is in addition to the single full seabag of uniforms and boots we were issued at Gulfport.

Tuesday was slightly more exciting. I was issued my M16A2 semiautomatic rifle, and my M-9 Beretta 9mm side arm. A large part of the training is a general weapons awareness. The Army is receiving a cadre of sailors, many of whom have never touched a weapon outside of boot camp, and most of whom have certainly never touched an M16. (The Navy uses the M-9 as its standard issue side-arm, so most sailors have at least a passing familiarity with it.) In support of that training, trainees take their weapons with them everywhere: to all classes, to the mess hall, to admin, to PT. The only places you don’t take them are the head, or on liberty if you’re leaving camp. The point is, you take control of those weapons, and they become entirely your responsibility.

I took control of my weapons for five hours.

At 3:35PM on Tuesday, I was in our M16 familiarity class, reinserting the firing pin retaining pin into the bolt carrier assembly (having dropped in the firing pin first, of course), when the head drill Sergeant comes in and asks for me. I jump up and he pulls me out of class. There’s a van waiting to take me down to admin.

Five minutes later, Master Chief shuts the door to his office and and says, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but—your mission’s been canceled.”

Canceled. Done. Over. And just like that, I’m no longer authorized to touch those weapons.

MC called my point of contact on my orders, a Lieutenant Commander in an office somewhere in Virginia. Over the phone, he tells me that I have two options:

1. Demobilize. Go back to NMPS, turn in your gear, go home. Be done—for all of three months until my unit gets another call for a billet that needs to be filled, at which point I’d be deploying again, fresh goodbyes and all.

2. Transition into a new mission: one that is not only classified (as my previous one was), but so short on details, he couldn’t tell me anything about it other than the name. The training track is not yet finalized; they don’t know where certain parts of training are going to be held. They only thing he could tell me for sure was that my time in theater would be a significantly shorter period of time than my previous mobe. The difference being that this new mission requires a few extra months of training—at least according to the initial outline, which is certainly subject to change. With everything factored in, I’d still be getting home around the same time as I would have with my previous mission, and it’s less time in theater, boots-on-ground.

Considering the logistical difficulties of moving back into my own life (I sold my car, canceled my insurance, packed most of my stuff into a single closet, etc), demobilizing just doesn’t make sense, especially when I could go again just as easily in another few months. So I took the new mission.

But the details are so scant, and the planning so tentative that they do not yet have orders for me, and probably won’t for at least a few days. I’m no longer authorized to stay with everyone else in training, but I’m still on active duty. The interim, said the Commander, would simply be a period of leave. Go home and regroup. And try again.

Not to belabor the obvious, but: this sucks. You say your goodbyes and rearrange your life and get psyched to do something fundamentally different from your civilian life, only to be told “oh, wait, never mind.” It’s nice to be home but it sucks to be home for a week only to leave once more to do something which is, at the moment, completely and utterly mysterious.

They say never to volunteer for anything in the military. Yesterday I broke that rule but only because—unbelievably—the alternative is worse.

Week 3

From Wednesday of last week to today, I’ve been at home, visiting family, friends and coworkers, and saying good bye. Again. You wouldn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but I have found that it is much more difficult to say goodbye a second time. I’m not sure why this should be, except that I had been expecting to be somewhere else, separated from this life, yet within the span of 24 hours I’m removed from the military training and thrust back into the civilian world to sit and wait. The emotional toll from this back-and-forth “moving around yet never quite sure what’s next” easily makes this the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and I haven’t even really started yet.

During this week, I was waiting for an ORDMOD (military shorthand for “order modification”): the new itinerary that will define my life over the next year. It came, showing the next step being that I fly out today to report in to my new station next week. It didn’t give me much time to plan, but after making many phone calls I got everything squared away to try again.

I arrived at the airport with plenty of time. I went through extra security, no doubt because my ticket was purchased yesterday morning, and I’m sure the TSA agents were once again disappointed for not having caught a potential terrorist while going through my stuff. Aside from the typical rudeness, I passed security without incident and ended up on the plane, which taxied out to the runway and sat. And we waited. And after three updates from the pilot informing us how long it would be until the next update, we returned to the gate.

Due to bad weather at the connecting airport, the flight was ultimately canceled, and I was left to spend one more night at home.

I wish I could tell you that I’m this strong person who can run into these challenges and shrug them off and remain stoic and charge forward with nary a wrinkle on that pressed uniform I wear. I’m not. The drive home with my mother was uneventful enough. But as soon as I got home and closed my front door, I ran upstairs to my bathroom and the $5 yogurt parfait from Starbucks I had for lunch came up into the toilet.

Too much stress.

If I were the sort of person to engage in superstitious speculation, I would surmise that the cosmos were conspiring against me on this deployment. I’m not, so I won’t, but the fact remains: I’m two and a half weeks in and the deployment has been a literal embodiment of the phrase “a comedy of errors”. It’s only a comedy in the sense that other people find it funny, because on my end, “frustrating” does not begin to describe my feelings on the matter.

I can only hope that things start to look up next week as I get into training. At least I don’t have to go through the NMPS mobilization process again.

-Ted