Ok, I know that I said I would try and get posts up when I could and I hoped to get them up at least maybe weekly. Well, looks like I didn’t keep up with that now did I. There has actually been a ton of things going on over the last 2 months now since I wrote last. I’m not even really sure where to begin. I’ll start with the base itself. The new chow hall opened up on Leatherneck. It’s huge and stocked with way more food than was offered before. They now have a short order line (fast food basically; corndogs, hamburgers, fries) , a sandwich station where some cooks will make you a samich, a dessert line, a new fruit line (one of my favorite additions), and an ice cream station. It seats probably at least twice as many people, if not more like 4 times, but now feeds LSA’s 1, 2 and 3. I believe that LSA 4 still has a chow hall. They also actually do steak and seafood every Sunday night, the seafood usually being lobster tail or crab legs. Our motor pool/TOC area for the Army has tripled in size. There used to be a Marine compound to the East which we absorbed and a vacant lot to the west which we also absorbed. The laundry service went from up to 4 day turn around to next day. Work on our FASP is still not completed yet though. They just put in a huge new camera tower which I’m told can see for miles. They are approaching completion of the Army’s portion of the FASP, but I don’t think it will be completed while we are still here. They are also starting to work on the permanent buildings, 1 for the Army and 1 for the Marines, which will replace our office truck and the Marines office tents and trailers. Construction on base is an ever ongoing machine that keeps attempting to streamline and expand operations.
Work at the FASP has slowed drastically. We were told initially that we would be taking all equipment back with us that we brought over which included trucks, tools and other various equipment. So we washed everything and packed it up, only to find out that we, in fact, weren’t going to take anything with us. We even set up a tent at the FASP for us to work out of when our office truck as supposed to be taken down. We found that little nugget of intel the day before we tore down our truck. Now that all of our forklifts are washed and ready to be handed over to our replacement unit, they will stay over on Leatherneck and not be available for us to assist the Marines on the FASP. Once they saw we had no more forklifts, they somehow finally wrangled up one for themselves; funny how that works. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anyone that was licensed on that particular model and so it sat and collected dust for a couple weeks. In the mean time our command found us an extra forklift to use until our replacements show up. Unfortunately, when we got it, we discovered that it has a huge spike in the tire and has to be refilled constantly and can’t lift large loads. So, like I said, work has really slowed down around here. Even back on Leatherneck there isn’t much going on now that the end of our deployment is in sight. The woodshop pretty much shut down, we aren’t on tower guard anymore but we do still provide 3 guys a day to escort the Jingle trucks from the main ECP to the class 1 yard. Right now it’s as if our primary mission is to watch as many movies a day as possible. I, personally, am running low on things I haven’t seen. I’ve watch several TV series and I don’t even know how to start estimating how many movies I’ve seen. I started off watching everything that I hadn’t seen but had always wanted to. After that ran out it moved to anything I hadn’t seen and let me tell you, there were some doozies. One thing that I did organize was a Fantasy Football League. We had our draft on the 30th of August. We have all been having fun with that so far. I think out of the 10 of us participating, only maybe 4 of us have played before and out of the other 6 I’d be surprised if 1/3 of them could pick a football out of a lineup. But it’s been fun. It’s something that I really enjoy as it mixes two things that I enjoy; Football and spreadsheets. I tend to get carried away with tracking statistics, but it helps the time pass. I also started a Pick’em tournament with 7 Army guys and 1 Marine Major. Every week we pick every NFL game and Big XII game against the spread. I don’t really want to get into what place I am in in that however. About a week ago we had, what we like to refer to in the Army as, Mandatory Fun Night. That’s when the someone puts on a fun event and the leadership deems it mandatory for everyone to attend. Let me tell you, mandatory fun is a paradox. Someone ordering you to go somewhere you don’t want to be and have fun never works. Basically the Battalion threw a luau where they roasted a pig with a bunch of other food, had tiki torches set up, karaoke and the main event was several Soldiers doing traditional Hawaiian dances in traditional garb. On the surface, it sounds like something like that wouldn’t be all horrible, but like I said, if you get a bunch of people that don’t want to be there and make them be in uniform and carry their weapons, the majority are going to do their best to not have fun out of spite, even if it is. People tried to leave after the first hour of this 3 hour event and they said we couldn’t leave as an intruder was suspected to be on base. What perfectly coincidental timing for the only time that has happened since we have been here, and they just so happened to have 2 more hours of planned activities. I would rather have the ranking officer just come out and say “You’re not going anywhere. Get comfy.” than feed us that b.s..
Today we had our “End of Tour” award ceremony. As the Colonel was giving his little speech about how much we have accomplish over the last year and how our time is nearly up, that it finally set in that we are, in fact almost gonzo. Yesterday we started having our “Go Home” briefings. We still don’t know when the main body is leaving, but it should hopefully be by the end of the month. As for me, I was somehow volunteered for our advanced party back to Fort Sill. This means I’ll leave, with one other guy, a little before everyone else to make sure things are ready for them when they show up so we can get in, do what needs to be done, and finally go home. I can’t say what day I’m leaving, for security reason, but I can say that I do know when it is and that it is within the next 20 days. The time sort of snuck up on me and now I’m well within my last month of being here. I will probably post some things as I’m getting ready to leave and while I am traveling so watch for those in the days to come. It’s pretty exciting though to know that the end is so near. I was also tasked with doing our end of deployment slide show. I gathered up pictures from everyone and have been working on that. Some of the pictures seem like they were taken 5 years ago. We started this deployment September 2 of 08 and now here it is Oct 2 of 09. A lot has changed in that year, but I’ll get more into all that when I finally wrap this blog up in a month or so. I’ve been receiving a few care packages lately also. They have been much appreciated but I’m to the point now, where I’m happy to say, that you can all stop sending them. I’ll throw out some shout outs also for those who have sent me goodies when I wrap this up as well.
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