So I haven't exactly been blogging much over the past month if you can’t tell. That's because I've been here in Kuwait for exactly one month busting my butt learning my, and my units new job.
Shortly after my last post, myself and about 50 of my fellow cavalrymen boarded a charter jet at Ft Hood to fly to Kuwait. Along with about 200 other soldiers from the 37th Brigade Combat Team, we were the Advanced Party for our unit. Our job was to get to Kuwait, tie in with the unit we're replacing and set the conditions for success for the main body of the Brigade as they followed up 10 days later.
Life here in Kuwait over the last month has been interesting. On my first day here the thermometer reached 112 degrees, in March. Ouch. One of the first things I did as soon as I got settled into my own quarters (3 of us Captains shared a room for 2 weeks) was to go buy some rugs to liven the place up. Really all they do is serve as a dust/dirt collectors. An interesting fact about life here, no vacuums. I haven't seen one yet. Except for the one in the motor pool for cleaning out the trucks. But something tells me that one isn't used much.
So we had about 10 days here before the other 500 some odd people in our unit caught up to us. Honestly, it was kind of nice having the place to ourselves. But its nice having the rest of the unit here too. (It also means we're that much closer to going home).
One of the things I did before the rest of the unit got here, was go on
a convoy up into Iraq. You might
think that's not a very safe thing to
do since I'm living life down here in nice cozy Kuwait. But you're
wrong. It's the right thing to do. oh, maybe I haven't put this out
there yet, my soldiers will be escorting convoys into Iraq. So that's
why I went. So i could see the dangers they'd be facing. That's what
leaders do. It's a military thing.
I'm gonna apologize now. This post is skipping all over the place. I've had lots of thoughts in my head over the last month. Many of which don't really go together well.
There is one truism about when Army unit pick up and move somewhere. Somebody is going to loose their rucksack. I don''t care how well marked it is. It'll get tossed into the wrong truck, the tag will come off or some Private will carry it off because he thought it was his. Hey, they are all camouflaged you know.
So we've had a crap-ton of sandstorms while I've been here. It's been
really bad. The unit we're replacing (1st battalion 160th Infantry from
the CA National Guard) said they never had sandstorms this bad until we
got here. Hell, last week it even rained on us. The 1-160th guys said
it hadn't really done that while they were here either. Looks like this
could be a fun tour.
One of my fellow Officers is blogging now too. Read here ( http://networker2000.blogspot.com/ ) on what its like to be a Second Lieutenant in the Army. This site also gives you a good idea of what it takes to make new Lieutenants in the Army today. And he posts more often than me.
CM, Micah
