Ahhhh, the rest of the Army

For the past 16 years I have been sheltered from what we Green Berets call "the rest of the Army". When I got to FT Riley, that shelter was ripped away, and I have been exposed to the rest of the Army. First the dreaded black beret was forced upon my proud head, today, I ran in the 1st Infantry Division's Victory Run - - a division run. I faintly recall doing division runs when I was a pup of a lieutenant at FT Ord in the 7th Infantry Division (Light), but that sort of stuff is not done on the special side of the Army.

I was actually kind of excited to be doing the run, outside of the fact that it took up some training time, it was actually fun. I took my trusty digital camera and broke formation a few times to snap a few photos, I mean, what are they going to to do me? I am a very senior LTC, on my way to Iraq and when I get back, I will be once again sheltered from the rest of the Army by USASOC Headquarters.

The run started out for us at about 0445, when we got on the bus. The special part of the Army is not really concerned about which bus specifically, because we are confident that any bus in the parking lot at 0445 will more than likely be going to the Division Run festivities. The rest of the Army, however, is very specific about what bus you ride on. My team got on the wrong bus and we were told by the Charlie Company officer in charge of yelling at people that the bus that we were currently on was for Charlie Company, and Charlie Company only, so we needed to go find the bus that was for Delta Company, which is our training company. I commend the Charlie Company officer in charge of yelling for doing his job so well.

Once we got on the correct bus (pictured here) we settled on down for the ride to main post. Most folks in the Army have a magical ability to fall asleep on any moving vehicle, I learned that in basic training in 1983 and it has served me well. As you can see, my teammates also have that ability. The bus ride was mostly uneventful, and we arrived safely at Custer Field to assemble for the festivities. Upon arrival at Custer Field, the Battalion Command Sergeant Major put us in the proper formation and we just kind of stood around for about an hour or so until things started to happen.

Part of our training group are folks from the Air Force and Navy, they were probably kind of shocked at the early hour and concept of 5 or 6 thousand people all running in the same direction and in formation just because some general wanted us to do it. They may have a point. Navy people standing around, you can tell they are in the Navy because it says so on the back of their shirts.

One of the folks that is here at FT Riley for the training is COL Sam T, also from USASOC, you may recall COL T ran the Boston Marathon at the same time I did, just not with me. He wandered by during the standing around this morning and we had out picture taken by a very confused private in front of the Battalion Guidon (flag) which was being held by another confused private. Normally, folks don't carry cameras on these sorts of deals, but there was no way I was going to let this photo op slide by and not capture the pageantry of a Division run digitally. Well worth the extra 9 ounces or so.

Once we started running, it was a lot of stop and go sort of stuff, while all the units in the Division got in line and in the proper place. One of the fun aspects of it all is that some soldiers aren't really very good runners, so they fall out of the run. To be honest, some soldiers fall out after the first half a mile or so. Now, these soldiers fully understand that what they are doing when they fall out is not acceptable and they are going to be be harassed by every soldier that passes them up. I am a gentleman about it, I was just there for the run. One of the main points about the people falling out is that they really should fall out to the left or right of the formation behind them, if they fall out in the middle, it messes the formation up. One of the duties of the folks running up front is to make sure fall outs know where to go. This is a pic of one of my teammates gently telling a Naval fall out that he really should move to the left and fall out there:

All in all, good fun was had. The run ended up, none of my guys got lost, and I got to see the rest of the Army. I am putting a few more division run pictures on the weblinks to the right hand side of the blog, there are some good shots, especially of the sunrise and a 105mm howitzer, pretty cool shots. Please check them out.

We are in the first week of our training, focusing mostly on language and culture training, it is going ok, but I am having some problems staying awake in class. Tomorrow I will try cutting out some of the sugar in the chow hall diet and see if that helps, if not, the instructor should note my constructive criticism and work to make the classes a bit more lively.