Hello from the land of Black Berets

I have linked up with my team, pretty good guys so far, very senior NCOs and officers, most with experience in the box, which is a good thing. There are a couple of tankers on the team along with a Military Police officer, so there is a lot of vehicle expertise, which I think will be important. My senior NCO is an Infantry Master Sergeant from Franklin, NC - - The same town that I got off of the Appalachian Trail back in June, pretty cool.

We have spent the past two days in-processing, which is Army slang for torture. Basically you hand a very nice person your ID card, give them the same four or five bits of information (name, SSN, birthday, date you came in the Army), they punch it in the computer and start asking you questions. I probably could have put that information on a name tag and stuck it to my forehead to make it easy for them. Day one of in-processing we were all crammed into a church that had very little air conditioning. Beings how we are in FT Riley, KS, and the humidity is hovering around NC levels, we were a sweaty mess. After four hours of briefings, we were released to knock out little tasks that we had to get done. I had to get a new ID card and finish off some transportation stuff, so that was a good thing.

Day two was more inprocessing: Medical, JAG (army lawyers), Finance, Personnel Files and other bits and pieces of admin stuff that has to be done before we deploy. This was truly a miserable day. All of the people that were doing the inprocessing were great folks, good attitude and really knew their stuff, BUT, there weren’t a whole lot of them. So each station we went to we had to wait in a line for an available admin person to review our records from their area of expertise. Good example: There were about 250 of us inprocessing, there were three folks at the finance station and maybe 3 nurses to give the shots. Of course I had to get more shots, because lord knows I have not had enough of them in my 21 year Army career. Who knows what toxic mess is floating around my system now, I am very comfortable knowing that there are very few diseases that I can get.

As you can imagine, there were a few bottlenecks and a little bit of frustration boiling up (I know my morale was sinking by about 5pm). I told the team to be patient and passed on the Boston Marathon mantra: “This too shall pass.”

Yesterday was a much better day, we received all of our personal equipment and gear. It was pretty much like Christmas when you were a kid, everytime you turned around, someone was giving you something cool. Beings how I was a staff pogue for the past 6 years, I was pretty much familiar with the canteens and the poncho liner, but that was it. All of the gear we got is brand new and has gone through about 6 years of live testing in theater, so it is good stuff. When I went to Afghanistan in 2002, we had none of this. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even have body armor because the Army was so short on it. I got that in spades now: The full set from the Army, pretty cool.

The other big event yesterday was I broke down and bought a black beret. For those of you unfamiliar with Army headgear lore and legend, the black beret is about at the bottom of the pile as far as coolness goes. As a Special Forces guy, I wear a Green Beret, which in my humble opinion is the top of the heap of head gear, coveted, hard to earn and very cool. Below that are the Brown berets the Rangers wear, the Maroon berets that Airborne units wear, the venerable Patrol Cap, then the black beret (which doesn’t even rate capitalization in my book). Everyone in the Army has a black beret, alls you have to do is sign up for the Army and they give you one. No Special Forces Selection or Qualification Course, no Airborne or Ranger School, just walk up and buy one. Because the unit we are attached to is not an Airborne unit, and not a Special Forces unit, we are supposed to wear the black beret. I held out until the units Command Sergeant Major busted us out, then went out and bought a black beret. Funny thing is, tomorrow we start tactical training and will only be wearing patrol caps, so, I may have to spend a total of 2 or 3 days in my black beret. If the folks at USASOC could see me now . . . . I am sure I will survive the indignity of it all.