31 May 2021 Barracks #436 with Bravo G2, 29th ID, North Fort Hood, Texas (Memorial Day)
1 Clinch Letter Number 1
Hello my family and loved ones! I decided that I will write some personalized letters that will reflect my thoughts and feelings while deployed, but I will send these missives more securely and then they might be published more publicly for later, after the time and circumstances have passed, thus accounting for what we in the Army and the intelligence community call operations security. As you know, it is not good to spread the word about specifics of what I am doing or where I am doing it, or how many others are doing these things with me. For example, I am going to the Middle East with the U.S. Army. I will be there for a better part of a year, but we do not inform people what months, places, and all those details. Some day I and we can share those things openly, and gladly.
I wish to recount a few of the happenings of this past month, 31 days in. Again, many of these things are for those close to me and do not have to be shared with others, but probably later after I have returned it can be made known to most everyone, I hope. Make sense? Most of you were with me when you dropped me off at Fort Belvoir, right by the field and building where I attended National Guard Drill. That was a sunny Saturday morning, it was a bit confusing finding the right place, but one bonus was that I found an extra reflector belt by the track and now it is of good use to me.
Upon finding out where my company was gathering our bags, I was able to talk to some nice soldiers right away. They were all helpful and friendly, and it felt good that there were not “hard nose” types who yell or use manners of intimidation to communicate. This often happens in the Army, both back in basic training, advanced individual training, and in the weekend and annual training exercises and jobs that I have been a part of for the last 14 years. That gets old, so nice people in uniform is always a refreshing plus.
I stored my bags on a truck and my bus: two duffels, a ruck sack, and my assault pack (Army back pack) after taping them with pink markers. We then took a rather comfy bus drive down to Fort A.P. Hill, which most of you were able to visit and see when I was close to leaving two weeks later. We were assigned barracks where I become neighbors with assorted soldiers, most of whom were pretty cool and became friends of mine. For the next two weeks we did perfunctory tasks and duties that would qualify us for deploying, or mobilizing. One of the onerous things to work on were 22 different online certificates that some soldiers had been working on since last July, as in summer of 2020. I did not know that I was supposed to do this list until May 4 th or so, three days after arriving. For the first few days I thought that I had only 3 to complete; one of the three I had done the previous December. I had spent many hours in a military cyber café trying to finish those. However, then I found out there were many more hours to go. I started borrowing other soldiers’ laptops and the occasional attempt at the café, which was only good usually for accessing my military emails and my site with my official documents.
So, I figured out how to set up a make shift office outside my barracks with my little stool, a tough box to lay my borrowed lap tops on, plugging in my military ID to the reader, eventually using my ear phones to do some Arabic and other required courses. Some days I was able to do many, other days barely one. And then, the real time and resource save was meeting Sergeant Lan-dorf, who had been quarantined and isolated, and them graciously allowed me to use his computer to knock out the majority of my other courses. I managed to finish these some 30-50 hours of certs in about 10 days. This was important to me in Texas as of yesterday (30 May), in order to have permissions to access other systems related to my job as a collector.
31 May 2021 Barracks #436 with Bravo G2, 29 th ID, North Fort Hood, Texas (Memorial Day)
2
We had to do other physical and personally attended classes, many of which I observed from afar or avoided altogether. Why? Because I did not have my orders in hand. Therefore, as a late augmentee to my division mission, (a last minute addition), I was trying to catch up in many ways, some of them preventing me from qualifying on things like shooting my weapon in Virginia. This made it harder on my time when I would be in Texas. More on that later.
But overall, the two weeks in A.P. Hill were productive and not bad. I met and spoke to and got to know a lot of people, I felt accepted and encouraged, and I thought that the people that I was going to go overseas with were pretty decent. Then we flew to Texas on a Sunday morning, the day after I said my goodbyes to my dear family, minus Madhya, who was already in Texas. We did speak on the phone, though.
Fort Hood, North Fort Hood
Getting on base took a while due to the distance to arrive from the airport, which was in a remote location. We deboarded outside. The flight was nice and they fed us well. I watched a movie while flying, it was good. The Arrival. Pretty interesting. PG-13 for a couple words, mostly.
So far here at Fort Hood (North) it has been all right. We were quarantined at first, which kept us at kitchen and gym tents near our segregated barracks, where we are now divided by the destinations that we will go to in the Middle East. I have new bunk mates, one sleeping above. He is a nice young private, one of the few people that I outrank. I am used to being old and lower rank in the Army, and people are generally surprised by my advanced age, which means I usually look younger than 50. That is good to look young, but sometimes it is a little embarrassing, but I normally just keep on being myself and people accept me. There are a lot of quality soldiers around me, and in my case I have a crew of three teachers instructing me in very good ways, and it is fun. What has proven hard is that I have to make up the time that I did not shoot at the range in Virginia, which takes me away from the class where I am the main student, and it causes a lot of headaches at multiple levels.
Fortunately, I did shoot my rifle at the range on Wednesday, qualified with an ACOG (special optic site), and made it back in time to still learn at my class where my senior leader, a Warrant Officer that I will call Chief H., and the three other instructors were waiting for me. From there this past week I learned a few key components of the work that I do, and briefed it back to many higher officers and leaders, both those who already have deployed to where we are going, and others that are going with me. They all complimented me on how I delivered the brief and I felt good about it, rating myself an A-.
I have enjoyed talking to all of you on the phone and the occasional video chat. I am glad that you have been able to work on good things to make this school year less awful, even though many aspects of it has been so hard and trying. I think that each of you have come through it pretty well and that makes me happy. COVID has made life complicated. We get tested a lot, inconveniently in the early mornings, to ensure that we are not infected.
As I have explained before, doing this mobilization seems like a good opportunity for me; I believe that I can add my talents and knowledge to the overall mission, serve my country, develop personally, and improve my overall skills and career. I think of this opportunity as a chance to add to real world activities, but it is an investment in the future as well.
31 May 2021 Barracks #436 with Bravo G2, 29 th ID, North Fort Hood, Texas (Memorial Day)
3
I have done some pleasure reading, and some blogging, and I use my cell phone to access a few free books, so far by some authors that I have known of before, like Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, and Shaara. Time goes slow and fast, we wake up early many times per week, we eat pretty well, we joke and share fun stories, we grow as soldiers and units and teams, we help each other succeed and achieve out personal and collective goals. It is a good time overall, and so far, so good. I hope to make a difference and scratch off the list a few things that I had intended to do before now. I now have the chance to accomplish the cool things that so many others have done, yet it is still an elite group of American and other military who deploy and serve abroad to render their service to our nation and to the nations where they serve and at times risk a lot.
Today is Memorial Day; I mentioned a soldier that I knew of to a couple others who died when I was overseas in Afghanistan. Allow me to share. In my office in Camp Marmal my group would look at reports regarding the enemy. These reports would lead to actions taken by our troops in order to conduct operations to stop the enemy. In October 2012 some of our soldiers went after a guy that was important to our forces and the Afghan government; he was successfully captured. Sadly, a soldier who went on that mission died. His name was Daniel; he was from Arizona. It just so happened that my roommate in my German barracks room knew him, he went to school with his daughter.
We do what we can to do the right thing. We try to serve ourselves, serve others, make the world a better place. I hope that in the course of my life that I can do my part to contribute to the betterment of myself, my family, my community, my nation, my planet. I want to help accomplish these goals. I want to please the Lord in whom I posit my faith and hopes, I wish to serve Him. He will not let me down or abandon me. I have this faith and it comforts me.
I also hold faith in the laws and standards of my country, the best power that we have on earth. I hope to be a part of it, doing its missions to protect and serve others. My time away may seem like a hardship, and it can be, especially for those at home, but this is something that allows me to join many others that have done it, but in the end is an elite group of people who go out to be part of a bigger piece of the answers to the puzzles that we find ourselves in the world.
Thanks for being there to support me and let me do what I feel I should to make things better, to go where I am allowed to go, do what I am supposed to do, and be who I want to be. We are doing this together. Love you.
Signed,
Me, dad, your husband, your friend, an American soldier.
10:40 PM Central Time
