News from the Sandbox (Sat 5/16)

News from the Sandbox
Sat May 16, 2009 8:04 am (PDT)

It's Thursday morning now. Last night and the night before we had sandstorms that were serious sandstorms with serious wind.

On Tuesday night, one of the sergeants saw the storm coming. He ran into the tent and shouted "Sandstorm!" For just a second or two longer, it was calm and then the wind seized the tents and started shaking them about and the air filled with dust as if someone were sandblasting the side of the tents. Did you see the movie, "The Mummy?" Remember the scene with the sandstorm? Apparently that's what it looked like as it rolled in. No face in it, though. just a swirling wall of flying dirt.

The rounded end-piece of the tent where I was had not been staked out yet, and the wind turned it inside out like an umbrella. I and another Soldier braced ourselves against the poles of the frame, trying to push it back into place against the wind. We didn't have much success, initially, because the wind was just too strong. While we were pushing against it, we heard one of the poles in the frame snap. After several minutes of wrestling with it, though, there was a brief reduction in wind force and we managed to push the tent back into proper shape and hold it while another Soldier staked it down.

No one was hurt, but I got some sand in my eye and was unable to get it out for quite a while - though I tried flushing it with water and also with eyedrops. Finally, I just quit messing with it and after a while, apparently, my own natural tears washed it out, because it quit bothering me. Apparently there are no scratches on my eye from the sand, as my eye is just fine today - thanks to God's grace.

Part of the command post consists of trucks with slide-out sides (we call them expando-vans) . These are much more secure in strong winds than tents are - and also don't have such large gaps to let the dust in - so many of us clustered into the vans to wait out the storm.

On Wednesday night, a second storm came. This time we had about two hour's warning. Actually, we were TOLD it was coming in an hour, but it was late. Anyway, with advanced warning, we closed all the tent flaps, to reduce the opportunity for wind to enter, and to because the structural strength of the tent is greater if the walls are "solid" (i.e. all openings closed and fastened). The force of the wind was not as great as the night before, though the storm lasted longer.

We've made significant progress in setting up the command post. Almost all the tents are up. The largest tents have a very interesting floor system. It is made of interlocking plastic squares. They have holes in them, so that water can drain through them, and they have a raised tread pattern all over. These features make them less slippery when wet. Even more interesting (to me, anyway) is that one can pull up sections of the floor to expose built-in conduits for electrical, telephone and computer wires to run under the floor. This reduces tripping hazards and the danger of pulling fragile equipment off a table while someone stumbles over a wire, and the danger of damage to the wires. Then just snap the floor sections right back into place, and the wires are safely tucked away. It's pretty cool, actually.

Not much else that's exciting is going on. Communications and computer systems are slowly becoming operational and we're getting closer to being ready for this training exercise to begin.

In case anyone is interested in seeing the kind of tents that we're using, you can check this website. Our setup is sort of similar to the Corps headquarters depicted on the web page at the link.. Sort of. because part of the point of the system is the ability to connect together as many tents as you like in lots of different configurations to meet the real or perceived needs of the headquarters, so each headquarters is going to have an idiosyncratic arrangement of tentage.

http://www.army- technology. com/contractors/ field/dhs_ 2/ (You will have to copy & paste this link_ I can't make it into a clickable link. ~Becky)

Enough rambling about tentage. I came off shift at about 5:00 am, had breakfast in the dining facility, hit the post exchange for shaving cream (I'm going through shaving cream a little faster than usual because I've returned to my "deployment" hairstyle - that is, no hair at all) and I had to wait until 9:00 for the Wataniya office to open up to buy the one-month wireless access card, so it's definitely time to toddle off to my cot. In the future I won't have to wait so long to get on-line because the one-month card I've purchased will sustain me for the rest of my stay here at this training exercise, so I'll be able to get on-line very shortly after I get off-work and get to bed earlier after my little updates.

Bye bye and God bless all y'all.

OK, now it's Saturday morning and my Thursday message wasn't sent. Which means (unless I've lost track) that this is the first message to go out in about five days. Sorry about that.

There was a little difficulty with the network connection Thursday night. I had spent so long writing the message, that the network had timed me out. Because I was tired and it was bedtime, I didn't want to take the time to log back in, so the message didn't get sent. Then on Friday my work schedule was shifting around a bit - and I had volunteered to take the midnight-to- 3:00 AM "guard" shift in the command post, so I needed to snatch sleep where I could.

So now I'm back to write some more.

About that guard shift.. No, it's not typical for a chaplain to pull guard duty - after all we don't carry weapons so we don't really have much ability to forcefully protect our guard post. Besides, it's also not typical for ANY officers to pull guard duty - except as a special event such as on Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the enlisted Soldiers can all have the whole day off. However, all the Soldiers here in the advance element were working hard on setting up the command post for several days. We haven't started 24-hour operations, but we did get the computers out and set up in their places, so SOMEONE had to stay with the computers through the night to make sure they didn't grow legs and disappear. The concern is not only for the
costliness of the equipment that could be lost or stolen, but also for the
sensitive information that is stored on the computers.

I volunteered for the midnight to 3 AM shift because it leaves the other Soldiers able to get the best sleep. If you have the first guard shift of the evening, you just go to bed later than usual, but once you go to sleep, you can sleep through 'til morning. If you have the last shift, you just get up early. But if you have the middle shift, you have to catch a nap, get up and go to work, then catch another nap afterward. It's just not as restful.
I hadn't had to work as hard - physically - as most of the other Soldiers in my area of the command post, so I took the guard shift that would leave the others the best, restful sleep.

I told the sergeant major, "They won't let me carry a firearm, but there's nothing to stop me from hitting someone with a chair, if someone tries to steal a computer."

Anyway, barring the first two days we've been here, we've had a sandstorm EVERY DAY. Last night, the storm blew up just as I started walking from the command post to my sleeping tent, after my guard shift. I literally could not see a half-a-block ahead of where I was going. I just walked toward the glow of the lights that I knew marked the sleeping tents while the wind and sand beat on me. For safety, I had goggles on to protect my eyes - which meant I did NOT have my glasses on, making it harder to see through the storm - and I had a reflective belt and a strobing flashlight to ensure I didn't get squashed by some passing vehicle whose driver was going too fast
for the visibility conditions. It was certainly an unpleasant experience, anyway, and I went to bed gritty. There was no point in showering - the walk back from the showers in the storm would make me as dirty as I was before the shower. I'll have to shake out my sleeping bag before going to bed tonight.

This morning, I started work by wiping down the tables and chairs in my work area. The tents are anything but airtight - so we have to wipe everything down a couple of times a day to keep the dust down to a tolerable level - but a thin film settles immediately on everything, within minutes of wiping it off. When we had left work for the day, we shut down all the computers and put trash bags over them to protect them from the dust. I think we'll continue to do that, even after we start 24-hour operations, if a sandstorm blows in. That's what we did last year, during this exercise, but we didn't have NEARLY so many sandstorms.

Some of the Soldiers from my directorate filled sandbags to put around the bottoms of the tents. This helps keep the wind out, slightly reduces the dust inside, and significantly reduces the likelihood of the tents being damaged by a windstorm. While they did that, I helped an officer from a different section to finish running her computer Internet cables and tagging the two ends of each cable so that - at the server end of the cable - the computer techs can identify which computer is plugged in to the other end.

Then I had an interesting conversation (with the same officer) about the possibility of her going into full-time ministry after she gets off of active duty. In the Charismatic Episcopal Church we believe that it is the responsibility of men to fulfill the functions of ordained clergy within the church, but that's not the position of her own church. This fact came up as an aside - in the context of discussing the fact that there are many ministries - opportunities for leadership and service - in the church that do not require ordination. This led to an amicable and mutually informative discussion about the differences among various denominations and the theology behind those differences.

One of the things I really enjoy about military chaplaincy is the opportunity to engage in discussion, helping people explore their own calling and spirituality without the need to press on them my own beliefs. I don't have to pretend to believe things I don't believe. When discussing matters of faith, I must avoid any appearance of using my rank or duty position to push my beliefs on others, but if there's an appropriate opening to respectfully present my convictions to a receptive person I can do that.

Lest anyone be unclear on this point - nobody in the Army has authority to tell me what to preach, teach or believe in matters of faith. Nobody in the Army has authority to tell me how to pray or how to worship. Nobody has authority to tell me I can't do pastoral counseling that's founded in the timeless truths of Holy Scripture as I and my Church interpret and apply them. I just cannot try to convert people from the beliefs and practices they've chosen for themselves, unless they invite me (explicitly or implicitly) to discuss with them my beliefs and the reasons behind them. Sometimes I can gain that invitation by listening to THEIR beliefs with
interest and respect. Anyway. I digress. mostly because there's not much that's interesting going on in the process of setting up the command post.

Soon we will begin refresher training on the equipment that we'll use during the exercise, and on the battle drills and staff processes we'll use in the command post. After that, the actual training exercise scenario will begin.

Fr. Jonathan Landon +