Sent Tuesday, Sept 16th-
Well, the training exercise is finally done. Today, there’s not much for me to do, because the Headquarters Company is going to do a complete inventory and update everyone’s hand receipts before we tear everything down. Fortunately, chaplaincy is not an equipment-intensive field of work. In some fields you find fairly junior Soldiers signing for literally millions of dollars worth of property.
I actually thought we were going to start tearing down today, so I slept a good bit of the day thinking I’d be working all night. However, the inventory is not a quick process, and I wasn’t needed to help tear down yet.Perhaps I’ll go to the movies after I download my mail and send this message – and maybe see whether Becky is on-line for chatting. Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) run a theater here that seats a maximum of 160 and is free.It keeps the Soldiers from getting too restless in their time off, I guess – like the traditional bread and circuses of Rome.
Actually, there’s a fair amount of entertainment here. I’m sitting right now at a picnic table in front of the MWR stage, where a young Soldier is trying very hard to get SOMEONE on the stage to sing. I gather it’s supposed to be Karaoke night. He’s not getting any takers, though. I’d consider volunteering but somehow I doubt they’d have much music in MY style to sing along with. Besides, I’ve been suffering from allergies all day and I don’t want to strain my throat.
This morning I woke up early, to go and take a shift of guard duty in the command post. The Commanding General wanted to close out the exercise with a command “fun run” (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) and those of us who – for medical reasons – DON’T run were asked to stay in the command post to ensure nobody made off with any classified information or expensive equipment. I generally am exempt from guard duty – since chaplains don’t carry weapons – but in this case, the point was just to have someone there.
Actually, EVERYBODY got up early, pretty much, since the formation for the run was at 4:45 AM. The objective, of course, was to complete the run before the weather began to heat up.
Anyway, when I got up, my throat was a bit sore (not too bad) and had some sniffles but it didn’t click with me until the chaplain section equipment was packed away and I went back to my tent with my “battle buddy” Chaplain Bill Sheffield. He lay down to take a nap – thinking as I did that we’d be working all night – and commented that, having taken two Benadryl, he should sleep pretty well. That’s when it finally clicked with me what was going on with me. So I went to the medics and begged some generic Claritin and throat lozenges, which should knock the allergies out in time for me to get to sleep.
I didn’t take any pictures this exercise – in fact I completely forgot to even bring a camera – but if you want to see pictures of where we are, you can go to www.arcent.army. mil. On the home page is a photo of the command post tentage (at least it was there earlier today) and if you follow the link that says “more photos” you will find some pages that will include some photos of the exercise. After the run this morning, we had a formation in front of the command post tents for a group photo of the whole command post staff, and then some photos of various sub-groups.
By then it was getting hot, and people kept trying to drift back into the air-conditioned tents but they got chased out again for a cake-cutting ceremony. The staff were not amused to discover that the only beverage provided with the cake was coffee - *hot* coffee, that is. When the temperature is already in the 80s or 90s at 9:00 AM, nobody really wants coffee. Most of the group was hoping for sweet tea, I think.
After the photo op’, and packing up the little bit of equipment that belonged to the chaplain section, I went back to my tent, and pretty much spent the rest of the morning reading. MWR also has books to read. Since most of the Soldiers here at Camp Beuhring are transients – either on their way to Iraq, or on their way back from Iraq, one doesn’t check the books out and have to return them. Many of us will take a book and not be on Camp Beuhring long enough to finish it, so we can just take them with us. Most of the books are donated by “Operation Paperback” – a group of volunteers who purchase used books cheaply, and ship them over here for deployed
servicemembers.
This is generosity which I much appreciate – being a confirmed bookworm since toddler-hood – but I must say that sometimes I have to really search to find a book that suits my tastes. The majority seem to be romances or murder mysteries. My own tastes in fiction run more to fantasy and science fiction, though I do like the occasional Agatha Christie book.
After I went to lunch, I took a nap (still thinking I’d be working all night). I got up to go to supper then to the command post, where I found out that pretty much nobody was ready to tear down, so after I drifted around and chatted with the skeleton crew, I decided to go get my laptop and send out the next “Tales from the Sandbox” message, and download my messages.
I can save a little money by using my own laptop in the Internet Café. I can write my messages off-line, then log in and send them while downloading all my accumulated messages, and then log off and review my messages off-line. I don’t save a whole lot that way, though. Last time I logged on, I had 1058 messages to download, of which 994 were spam. It look an hour and a half to download them, and I had already answered all the ones that required answers before the spam finished downloading. Unfortunately, I still have to review all the spam – even though it goes into my junk email folder – because every now and then a message from a friend or a customer sets off the spam filter and gets shunted into the junk folder.
Anyway, that’s pretty much the news from Kuwait, and the MWR guy finally recruited a couple of singers... So I think I’ll go to the Internet Café, and send this.
I’ll be home in a few days – before Sunday if all goes as planned.
Fr. Jonathan +
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