I hope I don't need

Small indicators of the "Real Deal"

I have often thought about all the little things that I have noticed that make this experience "sink in". I remember from last time things like: seeing the sights of Kuwait City from the air, feeling the extreme heat, hearing my first explosion and knowing that it was intended for me or my friends. There is also the feeling of carrying 210 live rounds a long with your M-16 in the PX and dining facility. Seeing a "dustoff" Blackhawk (medivac) flying low and of course hearing small arms fire all are powerful indicators of being in a war zone. This time around, my first experience so far was being issued my nerve agent antidote and Valium auto injectors yesterday and I'm attaching a photo for all to see. My time at Ft Lewis is extremely short at this point and my next posting will likely be from Kuwait. Thank you to all for your support and help to me as well as to Liz. I never forget the people she tells me that make this easier for her.

Jacob and his Daddy a few days before I depart for Iraq

More Internet Problems

We’ve had internet problems again. Basically, we have no internet connection where we are living but there is a small coffee shop next to one of the px’s that broadcasts a wireless connection so if you sit outside with your laptop, you can connect. With the Washington weather, you usually don’t have long before it rains. Last night we all went to the Mariners Oakland A’s game, which was a lot more fun than I expected. The Mariners won but only just. We also had about three more hours to spend in down-town Seattle. The day before, we went on a whale watching trip (emphasis on watching not finding) out off the coast of a place called Westport. We rode around in the boat for over an hour and never saw a whale. We did see a lot of ducks, seagulls, and seals and it was nice to experience the pacific northwest wind and rain once more before going to the world’s hottest place, Kuwait. It looks like there will be a few more changes to my location and assignment. I have been appointed the OIC (Officer In Charge) of all of our prevention teams, which is about half our detachment. This means that my own prevention team will be located in Ballad near the unit HQ. I’ll probably travel around to all the locations to check up on the teams and help them when needed. We’ll see if I’m up to the task.

The three of us @ the space needle

Jacob @ the Space Needle

The three of us in Seattle

Here it is, Tuesday already and I have to say goodbye to Liz and Jacob tomorrow. We've had a lot of fun and I only wish we had more time. Part of me actually wants to get on with the deployment so I will be that much closer to putting this behind us for good. Well, I guess I shouldn't say that as I remember feeling the same way in May 2005 while finishing up at Ft Carson. Over the past few days we've visited a lot of the down-town spots of Seattle and I think that Jacob has been enjoying his first vacation. One of the nights we went out to diner with some of my army buddies and Jacob was the man of the hour. Everyone wanted to hold him and he liked all the attention. Today we plan to see the space needle and then tomorrow we will see Mt Rainier and then its back to business for me. Thanks to everyone who comments or emails me, I really appreciate it.

Seattle (Pike Place fish market)

"on combat"

Yesterday’s lecture was a pretty cool experience. Dave Grossman literally spoke to us for 6 ½ hours. His ideas were interesting but it was a little too motivational/ political for me. I did buy his book so I could get it autographed. Today we have some make up classes to do and that’s about it. I see Liz and Jacob tomorrow and we plan to spend the next four days just the three of us in Seattle. Following our returning from leave we will be leaving the country very soon. The teams were finalized yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with the way mine worked out. I’m going to be leading a prevention team of five, which includes myself, two mental health specialists, an occupational therapist and his assistant. We have one fully trained and very experienced combat medic with us who we hope not to need. As soon as I arrive in theatre I’ll say more about the area we will be responsible for. It looks like we will have over 25,000 soldiers in and around our base. I’m expecting to be pretty busy.

Internet problems

Sorry to everyone who has been following my blog that I haven't posted in a while. We have had some internet problems and they are still not resolved completely. Over the past few days we have finished up all our convoy operations as well as our job specific tasks. This week we have been training each other on the various combat mental health stuff. My class was on unit climate surveys and needs assessments. Tomorrow we get about 6 hours with Dave Grossman, the author of "On killing" and "On Combat". Everyone says he is an excellent speaker so it should be time well spent. Today we met with our active-duty sister unit who will be covering the Baghdad area with us. It was a real eye opener for me to see just how broken the active duty army is. The 98th CSC is supposed to have the same numbers of people as we do but we were surprised to see that as of today they still have no licensed mental health clinicians. By contrast, we have 7. Not sure what they are going to do as we leave on the same plane. I know the day we are leaving as well as exactly where I'll be but of course I can't say. Thanks to everyone who emails.

Rock Chalk Jayhawk

We had a good time last night watching my alma mater win the national championship. Finally one of my teams won big. One of the other officers also went to KU and some of the other guys were Memphis fans so the game was pretty interesting. We ended up watching via the internet and the sound was bad but you could pretty much tell what was happening. As for military business, we are still finishing up checking all our "boxes" so to speak. Not much left to do...which tells us something. All our equipment will be flown to Iraq this time rather than going by sea. Anyone interested can follow the link for the official Rock Chalk Jayhawk chant:http://www.rockchalk.com/john/john/rock.html

My Brother from another time

Today I spent most of the day learning the Army's computer system for documenting combat casualty care. For the most part it was pretty informative and a little above my head as it was all system administrator stuff. For lunch, the seven of us decided to go over to the PX facility where they have a food court of sorts. After eating, I was walking around the main PX just looking at stuff almost as if I wasn't in the active duty Army. At some point in the electronic section, a middle age man walked up to me, stuck out his hand and said "Sir, I was with the 1st Infantry Division in Viet Nam. Welcome Home"! After shaking his hand, I said "welcome home" to him even though he has probably been home for over 35 years. It means a lot to me to be accepted by the old school vets like this and it means a lot to the Viet Nam guys to hear "welcome home" as so many of them never got that when they came home. I'm very proud to wear my 1st Infantry Division Combat Patch and I'm reminded of all the brave Big Red One soldiers from Omaha Beach to Iraq. Take a minute to watch the clip

The Real World

No matter where we go or for whatever purpose, we always have what we call “real world missions.” Ft Lewis is no exception. Today our unit assistor (the active duty guy who tells us where we need to go and what we need to do while we’re here) called to tell us that a buddy of his, who just got home from deployment needed to talk to someone. I ended up meeting this guy at the local Starbucks and talking for about 90 minutes. As it turns out, this guy is an active duty Scout Sniper who has done 4 combat tours since joining the Army, one to Afghanistan and three to Iraq. As is so often the case, his marriage is falling apart and he is having some significant anger control problems. In talking with him, I get the impression that his issues are expectable reactions to literally spending over 1000 days and nights on forward operating bases in two different combat theatres. How can we possibly say what is normal or abnormal in this situation. Can anyone even come close to understanding what that must be like? I know I’m struggling to understand. I’m glad I was able to help this guy and his friend and I plan to research options for him while I’m here. On the way back to the barracks, they told me about the Legacy Veterans motorcycle club and I think I will look into joining when I get home.

Liz and I and little "J" at the airport

Idiots

While checking out the article linked below, don't forget to scroll all the way down and read the comments from people around the country. Some of them are un-believably stupid. People who make comments like "if soldiers have mental health problems then they shouldn't be there" are the same closed minded people who have never been in a combat zone and probably get their news from "Faux Noise" (Fox). That really pisses me off!

USA Today on CPT Shea

Check out what USA Today had to say about my battle buddy CPT Shea: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-04-01-Shrinks_N.htm

His story is briefly described near the bottom of the article

Three days of Ft Lewis

The past few days have been somewhat boring. First Army is not having us repeat some of our training but we are having to go through the validation process, which is kind of like taking the test at the end of the class but not having to take the class. The past three days were spent on reacting to IED’s dismounted, mounted, and base defense. As usual, the Commander made me the Platoon Leader, which basically means that I was in charge of our detachment for these validation tasks. I guess it’s kind of rewarding but there’s a lot of stress involved. The hardest part is getting some of the officers to act like soldiers. Some of the officers do not know anything about soldier tasks but they know they don’t know anything and don’t get in the way. Worse, are the one’s that don’t know anything but think they do. So far we have done very well on our tasks and I’m starting to see how valuable our training in California was. The evaluator yesterday asked SSG Kolar our detachment Sergeant if our Commander, meaning me went to West Point. SSG Kolar told him that I’m not our commander and that I got a direct commission after finishing Social Work school. He also told the evaluator that I was prior enlisted Filed Artillery, to which the evaluator said “that explains a lot.” It’s always good to get that kind of compliment from an active duty senior NCO who is a three-time Iraq veteran himself. Tomorrow it’s back to the machine guns for us.