Almost Time

Wow, Where to start?? It has been a very hectic month here at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. My internet connection is crappy at best. The Morale Welfare and Recreation people charge $24.95 a week.......yes you read right! $24 Freshing dollars and 95 cents a week and the service has gone down once already since I started typing this.

The training here at Camp Atterbury has been very good. Some of the best I have been through. Seems the Army has finally figured out how to condense the training to what we need in the shortest possible time frame. My first train up in 2004 was 6 months at Fort Hood. My friends who went back to Iraq in 2007 did 3 months at Camp Shelby, Mississippi and this trip in 2009 is 25 or so days at Camp Atterbury.

Our advanced party is already on the ground in Afghanistan. Some have made it to the FOB (Forward Operating Base) where we will live for the next year or so. I recieved word that in true Texas fashion the unit we are replacing, also Texas National Guard, are in the process of moving into the transient tents so that we can move into the rooms that they have for us on the FOB. I am told that each senior NCO gets a 8' by 10' plywood room inside a hardened building. The lower enlisted get 8' bt 8' rooms. As small as that sounds just any area with a door that you can call your own is an amazing thing. We have been living in what we call "Open Bay" barracks here which means we have about 12 guys to one big room and we all share the showers and latrines with three other 12 man bays. The best way to describe it is imagine that you work all day with all your co-workers, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with them, see them on the toliet, in the shower and brushing their teeth every day!! Makes even that 8' by 8' with a door seem like a mansion of privacy.

The next few days will be filled MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle training for our drivers and mechanics. We are basically just waiting for our fly date to get underway to Afghanistan, seems like we need to get there already.............