Deployment Update, Week 8
Comments: 0 - Date: July 14th, 2008 - Categories: Deployment
In contrast to the light schedule of week 7, last week was fairly busy. It started off easily enough; Monday was a day of PT and studying, as many of the days here have been. Tuesday and Wednesday was more interesting. We had a series of briefs on Muslim culture, with focus on Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Somalia. There was a lot of good information there and even though the class wasn’t specifically for us, it was invaluable to what we’ll be doing. I suspect that I’ll pass along some of that information as it becomes pertinent in telling stories about my time actually over there. The most important bit of information for me was the specific differences between the Sunni and Shia denominations of Muslims, as well as the fact that while Sunnis are the majority denomination across the world, the Shia are the majority denomination within Iraq and Iran. In one of these updates I may go into the specific differences between them and why they’re antagonistic toward each other, but that’s an essay for another day.
Thursday was the most informative day of the week. As I mentioned, we took a little road trip to learn more about our mission. They had for us a full day of briefs regarding what we’ll be doing. Let me say for the record that I’ve never been so thrilled at some impending death by Powerpoint. Generally that sort of nonsense is insufferable, but this was the first hard data we’ve gotten from personnel who not only knew what the mission is about, but in some cases have actually performed it. I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were briefed on the new mission by some Navy brass, but they didn’t have much detail. These guys answered almost all our questions left over from that encounter.
Speaking of answering questions, I know a lot of folks reading this would like a clearer picture of what I’ll be doing. Although we’ve been briefed on a lot of the details, we still haven’t been cleared to talk about any of it. I wish I could say more but for the moment I can’t add anything from what I’ve said before. Because of the public nature of the Not A Blog™, it’s unlikely that I’ll talk about specific details.
Friday was arduous. The plan was to get signed off on a large part of the EXW book. And we did—after sitting through every brief that exists for each of the eleven core EXW subjects. These were, of course, the same briefs that we’ve spent the last three weeks studying and presenting to each other. Why he insisted we go through them again, I’m not exactly sure. Regardless, it turned out to be the antithesis of Thursday: a metaphorically genuine death by Powerpoint where exactly zero new bytes of data were acquired. At least it’s out of the way now.
In other news, it turns out that, although we’re Navy, we’re being issued ACU’s (Army Combat Uniform), because we’ll be serving under an Army command. Remember my lament about not getting the digital pattern? Well we’re getting it. We were fitted for the ACU’s today, and should be receiving them before the end of the week.
Whether or not we’ll actually be using them is still an open question. Are we going to be wearing them because we’re with a joint command headed up by the Army, or are we supposed to wear the desert camouflage that the rest of the Navy in Iraq is using? Nobody knows.
-Ted