Orders

Today I received my orders for my upcoming school. I will be gone for several months starting in the near future. I am going off to school to learn the job I will be doing once I am deployed. Several of you have asked me to lay out a time line of events, and what I will be doing over the next few months. Since I am still not sure what I can and cannot discuss here, I will be as vague as possible with still trying to get the point across.

The first step in deploying is to get MOS-Q (Military occupational specialty-qualified) that means going to a school to learn your job. I am doing that by going back east for about 3 months and getting all up to speed on my cool new job (photo-journalism).

After that comes what is often referred to as "the train up". This is where the unit goes to another installation and does all the Hollywood fun stuff. Practicing kicking doors and mounted and dismounted patrols and ambushes. Fun stuff, if you have the right people with you. The jury is still out on that one.

Once the train up is completed, and everyone is deployable, the unit will leave the U.S. and head for exotic foreign places. The time line is not really set in stone at all at this point, but the rumor mill is talking about a mid-summer leave time. We will see. Could end up being early fall, or for that matter not even come at all.

That is it in a nutshell. I am just happy that I got everything I needed to fix or prepare done in time to get to school. I am really looking forward to this whole experience. It will be a great opportunity for me to advance my military career, get myself back into good shape, help some people, serve this nation, and hopefully get me in a position where I can actually write and publish a book about the whole thing.

So, as always, feel free to leave comments. Keep me in your prayers, and I will hopefully return soon and unscathed.