Anthrax

I just got thre first of many anthrax shots. They suck. Apparently some new law authorizes the government to do this.

9/11

So much has been going on in the past few weeks that I really have not had much time to write. I went from Georgia to Virginia. I am now in TBOLC. I have a lot to say about BOLC II and TBOLC, much of it is not very nice, but I'll save that for another time. There have been ups and downs but now we are getting in to a routine, and we're doing something that can be construed as learning about out actual function in the military.

But today is September 11, and to be honest, I didn't do much to commemorate it. Neither did my neck of the army.

I'll have to write some more soon when I have more time.

Jewish Services at Fort Benning

In the Army, Sunday is religion day. Regardless of your religion, you can pray on Sunday. That is when all the services are held. On Fort Benning there were various Christian services in various chapels and one Jewish Service. There was probably some Muslim service and I should assume a Bhuddist one somewhere in the neighborhood.

The Jewish service is held on Sand Hill. Sand Hill is the place on Fort Benning where all the basic training takes place. So if you are going to be in BCT in Benning, you will be spending a lot of time on Sand Hill.

I remember Jewish Services at Fort Knox when I did basic training there four years ago. There, there were usually 8-15 people. About half of them were Jewish. In basic training, most people go to some service just to get away from their barracks. Spiritual comfort is often beside the point. Basic trainees often went to their battle buddy's service, generally because it was something different to do. On Fort Knox, I remember seeing mostly privates in basic training, and one E-4 who took it upon himself to lead services while he was there and a major who spent time with the Chabad Rabbi who came by most Sundays to do part of the service.

On Fort Benning, which is a slightly larger base than Fort Knox, there were at least 75 people at each of the two services I attended. I did not have many free Sundays. I think about 70 of the 75 people were in basic training. There were about five of us who were eihter in OCS, BOLC II or some other school there. I did not meet anyone permanently stationed there.

I would guess (based on nothing more than looking at last names, general intuition, and guessing) that no more than 15 or 20 of the basic trainees there were Jewish.

Though there is a Jewish Chaplain on post, I did not see him. He was out for the two weeks I was there. People say good things about him. I sat next to some kid from Chaim Berlin on a flight who claimed to know him from Atlanta. Instead of the chaplain there were two lay leaders. One led services one week, and another led services the next week. They both did a good job, and they seemed to be very enthusiastic about it.

Though the praying was nice, I suspect that the real reason so many people choose the Jewish service was for the food. There was a nice selection of donoughts, bagles, cream cheese and OJ. If you are in Basic Training in a place like Fort Benning, these things will sound like real treats. They were to me at Fort Knox. One of the lay leaders made some joke about bagles without cream cheese being article 15 actionable.

The actual service lasted about 45 minutes. This was followed by some food, and some people who went outside and gave Hebrew lessons. They got to the first few letters. when I was there. Hebrew lessons are scheduled to follow the service.

Incidentally, I think that at least two of the cadre in my BOLC II company were Jewish. That strikes me as odd for some reason.

That was my experience with Judaism in Fort Benning.

more BOLC-II

There has been a lot going on in BOLC II. Most of the stuff we have done here is very standard training. We did combatives, as I mentioned. That is hand-to-hand combat techniques. It was uninteresting. We did basic shooting. Again, standard stuff. We had a 4 day pass, which I used to insert myself briefly in to New york, and then I left. We came back to a week in the FOB. I am now back for week 2 in the FOB.

A FOB is a Forward Operating Base. it si a mock-up of the type of thing that the US builds when it goes in to a country and sets up camp. It is a tiny little Army base. It actually sucks a lot. We had to do a land navigation exercize. I passed the first time, but it basically involved wandering around the woods a lot. A good chunk of it was in the dark. We also learned a lot of skills like how to "clear" a room (of people). There was a lot of shooting too: in rooms, from vehicles, in burms, on hills. . .

Some of the more gung-ho people here seem to love this crap. I don't. But I am doing the best I can, and putting up with this as well as anyone else, I suppose.
We have a ten-mile road march that will culminate this stay in the FOB and essentially our training for this part. We will then have a stupid week of form-filling, where we "out-process" this phase of training. I can't wait for this to be over. Then I have a few days off. Following that I am off to phase 3, which will be in Virginia.

Georgia is a very hot. The FOB in Fort Benning is even hotter. There is also a ton of humidity. The weather sucks.

Hopefully I make it through unscathed.

4th of July

This is my third military fourth of July. My first was in 2003 in Fort Knox during Basic Combat Training. We didn't do much but pass the time, and we had to watch Black Hawk Down. It was actually not a bad day. In 2004 I was in Advanced Individual Training in Fort Eustis, and I don't have any specific memories of the day, but I seem to recall it sucking. This time around I am on Fort Benning in Basic Officer Leadership Course II, and it is so far not bad. I to sleep in late, though I failed to take advantage and was up at 7:30. I went out with some of my classmates and we watched the Transformers movie, which was silly at times, but not too bad. I hope to attend a barbeque today with some friends in nearby Columbus.

So far school here is going well enough. We're still in the paperwork and briefing phase of the course. Nothing too exciting has happened yet.

I'm here

I arrived in Fort Benning today more or less intact after three days on the road. I signed in, got a room, and I am fairly left alone. have to be at formation tomorrow morning, but otherwise Not much is happening. Fort Benning is rather large and hot. The accommodations are fine. So far so good. It all starts tomorrow.

And I'm off

I am off to Fort Benning in a few moments. I do not know what to expect, but it should be fine.

I'll be back in 5 months, so goodbye to all you New Yorkers, I'll see you when I get back.

I hope to be blogging every now and then. I'll keep you posted on what goes on there.

My Very Army Purim

It has been a crazy week and I had almost no time to do anything that I needed to do. The weekend started on Friday when I spent the morning taking care of school things. Then in the Afternoon I had to pack up and head to Fort Totten and then from there to Fort Dix. As always, this was a rather lengthy process and we ended up getting in really late.

We got in and then there was some setting up and getting rooms and stuff like that. But eventually we got to sleep. Saturday was spent doing physical stuff. First the Leadership Reaction Course and then the Confidence course. The first got me kicked in the face a bit, an injury that put me out of commission for the last 20 minutes of the course and kept me in pain for the next day or so. I still have some residual sensitivity and trouble with chewing gum. But it'll pass.

The Confidence Course was just hard, but I managed, despite the pain to do all the obstacles. I am still sore. It'll take a few days to get the soreness out of my shoulders.

After dinner chow we got back to the barracks, where thanks to some weird circumstance, I had my own room. So I read the Megillah myself. I borrowed my father's. (It is a really nice one.) I am pretty out of practice, but I managed to make it through the whole thing without breaking my teeth. (That's more than I can say for the confidence course.) I was going to offer to read it for anyone who wanted, but one never knows what schedules will be like at these battle assemblies. So I thought that it was better that people do not rely on me for their megillah, and have me not show up. Besides I saw some Lubavitchers on Fort Dix on Saturday afternoon, I am sure they did the reading for the permanent party.

On Saturday night there the whole unit went out to the post bar and we had a goodbye party for our First Sergeant who was being promoted out of the unit.

On Sunday morning after a few hours of sleep we woke up at 04:30 and worked out for about an hour and a half. It was cold and painful, but it felt good at the end. We got changed, ate morning chow and then had a few ceremonies, cleaned up and left in the afternoon.

On the way back I got a ride with one of my Staff Sergeants. We stopped off on the New Jersey Turnpike for lunch. Outside of the Starbucks at the rest stop I saw this very religious-looking man waiting around for his family or for his coffee, I'm not sure. I instinctively wished him a happy Purim. and went back to my Sergeant who was picking out a good pair of polarized sunglasses.

When we got to the parking lot to be on our way, the religious-looking man was there as well with what I assume was his wife and two kids. He asked us if he can give me mishloach manot. I said that if he can do it soon, then "sure". So he went in to his car and gave us hamantashen and some orange beverage. My hispanic Sergeant was a bit puzzled by why a total stranger was giving us food in a parking lot, but he accepted it politely. I sort of explained that this was a holiday where we did this and we went along.

In the subway people were particularly polite, thanking me for my service . . . It is actually something that we appreciate, even though we may not show it.

I got to Flatbush to have the traditional Purim meal with my grandparents. I was walking through the streets (with "D") and everyone was dressed up in their Purim costumes. For the first time I really did not feel out of place in uniform in the streets. I played with my nieces and nephews till I had to go home and collapse out of sheer tiredness.

WLC

I spent the last two weeks at WLC in Fort Dix. WLC is an NCO training academy. It was tiring, but good training. I took the day to recouperate.

My day in the Army

Say you are in an organization. Say this organization is literally one of the biggest bureaucracies on the planet, on the order of two to three million people. Now imagine you are trying to do something that is not anyone’s job to do though in theory it is possible. Say there are few people throughout the organization who do know how to do this, but there is no way to find out who they are or how to get in touch with them. Further, say that this task benefits the organization as a whole, but (except for you) does not really benefit anyone else.

Good luck getting it done.

It's hard to play footsie when you're wearing combat boots

First of all, I have returned to the civilian world. I finished my Army training for this summer. Miraculously, the Army let me out about a week early. How it happened is weird, and it was a last minute thing that would not have happened if I had been informed a few hours later, but it happened. I wanted to leave a few hours early, but apparently the army does not do small favors, only big ones.

Second, I wanted to write a few things about the Army that I thought were worth mentioning. We were given a class on EO (equal opportunity) as the Army defines. I have to say I was impressed. Having spent my last ten years in universities, I have seen countless EO-type conferences, speeches, lectures, warnings, and admonitions. They were all stupid and boring, and made me want to physically harm the person who gave the talk. However, the Army has an interesting CD-Rom that was used, and I thought really made the point well. A drill instructor (hands-down the least popular one) led the discussion, and people came away with the point. It was also non-boring.

I remember last summer when I was in basic training, there was a film on the law of land warfare, and it had to be the cheesiest dumbest presentation I ever saw. It looks like it was made by soldiers-cum-actors in the early 70's when it was their duty to present it, regardless if anyone was supposed to take it seriously. Hopefully they are working on a better version of that. A few weeks ago, we had a pretty dumb class on how to deal with civilians in a combat zone. There was a powerpoint slide-show. That sucked. However, we did some actual practicing, where some of us were soldiers and others were angry Iraqis, and that part was OK.

The Army is getting a bit more practical in training soldiers. We did a few exercises that are brand new, but are designed to reflect the realities on today's battlefield. We learned about Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) which are killing people all over Iraq (what every Israeli knows as a chefetz chashud). We also learned how to deal with convoys that are being attacked - especially when we are in them.

Third, the Army had all these rules about "fraternizing" between male and female trainees. There are all sorts of rules, most of which are useless because people do it all the time anyway. But I observed that given the way things were structured it is pretty hard "play footsie in combat boots". People tend to have these short intense flings on weekends. It is an interesting kind of relationship.

Fourth, The Army has been very in to voting. In theory the Drill Sergeants are supposd to encourage you to vote, though not influence them. I do remember though at one point a Drill Sergeant almost telling us to vote for Bush, and another a few days later almsot saying to vote against Bush. So that is that.

I also read three books this summer whihc I do not have time to comment on. 1) A More Elite Soldier: Pursuing a Life of Purpose by Chuck Holton, 2)A Time of Our Choosing: America's War in Iraq by Todd S. Purdum, and 3) Philosophy of Religion by William J. Wainwright.

That is all for now. I will get back to my civilian mode, and remind myself what the real world out here is like.

Good training

My company spent most of this past week on an FTX (Field Training Exercize). It was pretty good if you don't mind not showering for a week or being eaten alive by eight different types of mosquitos, and six species of chiggers, etc. We had all sorts of classes that showed a little bit of how the Army is trying to adapt and give even us combat support troops a bit of practical training. We dealt with a lot of things that are typical of life in Iraq today. It was good. It has been a pretty good week overall. We got to play with even more heavy equiptment, and also shoot a lot of things. My squad really did well, and everyone was pleased.

A fairly good week in training

This week was a really good week of Army training. Nothing particularly annoying happened, and it culminated with me and many others going out on pass today.

The week was rather interesting. We spent the whole week doing some good hands-on training. There were also some other classes in the time usually reserved for getting chewed out.

We had a class dealing with how to treat civilians both hostile and non-hostile on the battlefield. I am not sure what anyone took out of the class, but the information was certainly put out there. We also spent some time on convoy procedures. This is another practical skill - what to do when convoys get ambushed. We have a long field exercize for most of next week. Not fun, but good training.

Post from the Army

This is something I wrote about 2 weeks ago, but never got a chance to put up.

I suppose that Army AIT (Advanced Individual Training) is different for everyone. There are so many different AITs and so many different places and people that each experience will be different. So here is an update of my AIT.

First off it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly who went where for basic training. Fort Jackson, or "relaxin' Jackson" has a reputation for being pretty laid back. Of course no basic training was that laid back, people from Jackson seem a lot less disciplined than those of us who went to Knox, Sill, Benning, or some other all male bases. Sometimes I think some of them are really just fancy girlscouts.

Secondly, I had know idea what was meant by low morale until I settled in to a routine here at my company. In Basic training AWOLs are rare. My company has had about 3 or 4 since I have been here. I hear that they are generally up. But this is a bit rediculus. My AIT lasts about 9 weeks. There are about 200 people in my company. I have heard fewer complaints in my 10 weeks of basic than I hear in your average day here. Many people really hate being here.

Our day has two parts: School and Time in the company. Everyone seems to like school and learning our jobs. People want to do that well. Everyone hates the time in the company. Everyone is on edge.

It is not even the case that all the drill seargants are bad. Most of them are really OK. But they seem to be here, and serve little purpose other than to annoy us. They do almost nothing positive for the soldiers.

I hear people talking about how they just want to get the hell out of here, and half the people here are trying to figure out how they can change to another branch of the military, they seem to dislike it in my company so much. I myself have seemed to have developed a disdain for NCOs in general, and I would worry about following one of them in to battle ever.

I hear things are much better in all the other companies on post, and most of the other AITs in general. I am certain that my company is anomolous.

But things are not really as bad as they sound. Sometimes things just get very annoying, and I have to complain. My actual school is quite fun. We do a lot of hands-on training using the equiptment that I will need to use over the course of my Army job. All of it was foreign to me when I started. It is a great change of pace.

The people I am with are generally great. A lot of people are very good soldiers. People are motivated, and want to do the right thing. They are also a good fun bunch of people. I really like being with them.

Added note: Things have picked up considerably in the past week here. There are always stupid incidents that are very annoying, but overall things are OK, though I can't wait till graduation.

In the Army

So now I am in my AIT, Advavnced Individual training. Since I got here over the weekend, things have been pretty boring. I am getting used to military life again. It is somewhat easier than basic training, it is like basic lite. Since I have not been in-processed, I have been doing a lot of "detail". That is where they have you rake the same yard for three days. It is pointless, but that is what they have you do.

Hopefully I will be able to check my email over this phase of training at least weekly, so those of you who don't have my address, send email.

I ship out tomorrow

So I got a call this morning from Sergant something-or-other at Fort Hamilton asking me where I was. I told him that I was asleep. He then informed me that I was scheduled to ship out four hours ago. I told him that "there is no way in hell I am shipping out today". So after about a million phone calls between my unit, the enlistment people, (Military Enlistment Processing Center) MEPS in Brooklyn, Administration at Fort Totten in Queens, and myself, we decided that I am shipping out tomorrow.

There was a massive screw up, and I still do not have orders. Nor do I have any idea where my instructions are actually coming from.

Mind you, I was scheduled to ship out in 10 days from now, so this is not a big surprise. I will be gone for about 2 months on training. But I would have liked more than 20 hours notice of a schedule chage.

The scene was straight out of Catch-22. "I don't know who told you it was today, but you are not leaving for another 10 days", and then "I don't know who told you you are leaing in 10 days, but you are leaving today." So no one knows who told who what, but I leave at 0500 tomorrow morning.

I have a zillion things to do that I thought I would be doing over the next 10 days. Arrrggghh.