The Office

My office composition is unlike any other office I've worked in before. All my other offices have consisted entirely of Air Force Officers, Enlisted and civilians. The Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command (CFSOCC) which is just the SOCCENT forward, is composed of Air Force and Navy Officers and enlisted. But, the SOCCENT rear (located in Tampa Florida) is composed almost entirely of Army Officers and Enlisted. We are essentially the same office, working out of two different locations. People travel between both locations constantly and our leadership puts a big emphasis on being as forward as possible.

With the different services, career fields and locations it makes for an interesting dynamic. Without getting into details, lets just say that one branch doesn't meld together with the other as easily. Some of it is personality driven, but I believe that some of it stems from what that service thinks is important in its officers and senior enlisted. For example, if my boss at Ramstein held a meeting and said the F-word more then 10 times, we'd likely hear about a formal complaint. It's just not something you'd see in the Air Force. That's obviously not the case with the other services.

Summer Camp

I was walking home from the gym, aka; fitness center, yesterday and I started to think how Al Udeid was sort of like summer camp. The similarities are endless. In summer camp, everything was always better at the start; the food, sleeping on the ground, and bathing in the lake. The experience of eating 'camping food' is always good the first couple of nights, but by the third or fourth night, you really just want a table, napkin and a glass with ice. Same goes for sleeping and bathing. After a few days, you just want civilization. It's the same here. The food is good enough and there is enough variety, that at the beginning it seems pretty good. But after 6 weeks of taco's on Monday, I'll be ready to poke my eye out with a taco shell.

At summer camp, there are always stories about the girls camp across the lake or some crazy story about one of the parents along for the trip. Basically we have the same thing here with rumors amongst the people in the office or the host nation.

Plus, it's hot and dirty.

New room and a beard update

Today I moved into the 'BPC' portion of Al Udeid. Big upgrade from my last home. I get my own room and share a bathroom/eating area with a suite-mate. Much better then sharing a bathroom with 50+ strangers. It's easily nicer then some of the hotels I've stayed in.

Not much to report in the way of the beard growing. It's pretty itchy and I sort of wish I could shave it off, but I guess its coming in well enough. Today I was asked by someone if I was 'in the military'. Generally I look like a poster boy for the Air Force, so that came as a surprise.

I have the day off tomorrow, so I'm going to get up early, watch some UFC, clean my room and maybe go play some video games.

BNP for the FNG

The only thing the military likes more than hookah-pipes, subway sandwiches, tattoos and cash advances are acronyms. We have acronyms for everything and we use them as easily as you use words like ‘mall’, ‘grocery store’, and ‘high school’. But like most things, acronyms don’t cross over between services. The simplest example is BX and PX. The Air Force has ‘Base Exchanges’ and the Army has ‘Post Exchanges’. Trust me, there are a million more of them and they get exponentially harder to decipher and remember all the while they are constantly changing.

So I’ve spent the last 6 days trying to learn a whole bunch of Special Operations acronyms. And today, I learned a new one; BNP (beer and pizza).

Hooka pipes and fake watches

Does a stereotype stop being a stereotype when it is proven to be true? For example, I think that near every Air Force base, there is a tattoo parlor, pawn shop, pay-day loan store and subway. Is that a stereo type of all bases if those are located right out the front gate of every base in America?

In the Middle East, things don't really change much. If you put up a new base tomorrow in Iran, within a few hours, we'd have guys selling knock off watches, Persian rugs, fake purses and hookah-pipes.

I'm not sure what it is, but we flock to these things. We somehow can't get enough hookah-pipes, subway sandwiches, fake watches and tattoo's.

Being Special

I'm assigned to the Special Operations Command Central AKA SOCCENT and for all intensive purposes, they are special. They don't do anything like the AF I work for. I've been there less then a week, working in the logistics division's operations branch and I haven't seen anything that resembles a plan. The people I work with spend their days trying to piece together the next couple of days by scrambling to pull the needed pieces together to support the operators in the field. Everyday is basically a new game of pick up basketball. And thankfully for us, we have MJ, Lebron, Kobe, Magic, Bird and a ton of money on our team.

I've been in other places that operated similarly, but the leadership always pushed change it, by adding more 'process' to the operation. Here, they embrace it. They understand that the teams they are supporting can't always account for every variable and their location can completely change in a split second. While its sort of refreshing to not be inhibited for continually having to validate your process, it is also a because constant crisis reaction that occurs on an hourly basis.

Aside from a complete disdain for planning and sticking to a process, they are also very self contained. We have our own vehicles, vehicles support, medical staff, and even a very nice gym.

Losing weight at the Deid

One of the additional duties I had while stationed at Incirlik was to by the unit physical fitness monitor/physical training leader. If I were to list teh 100 jobs I've had in the Air Force, this one would rank near the bottom, right next to sweeping coal dust at a power plant and working the concession stand at the air show. Part of my job was to give 'PT' tests to people. In the AF, there were 4 main portions to the test; push ups, sit-ups, 1 1/2 mile run and a abdominal circumference/BMI test.

After doing this job for a few months, I began to notice that the guys and gals coming back from their deployments where generally doing worse then people who'd been at Incirlik. Up until now, I never understood why. My general assumption was that you'd have more time to work out and thus you'd be in better shape.

You only need to be here a minute before you realize that junk food is everywhere and atop of that, it's free. You can walk into the for lunch, eat a double cheese burger with fries, 2 cans of soda, a bag of Doritos, cookies, ice cream and take a cliff bar for a snack. All at no cost to you. I now see why these guys were coming back with 15 lbs of extra baggage.

Don't worry though, my diet has been good, with the exception being a few Tagalongs someone brought into the office today.

Growing a beard

I've now reached uncharted waters in terms of growing my beard. I've been in the Air Force since before I was shaving so I've never gone longer then a week without shaving. Usually after a day or two of leave, I'll give in a shave. But for this deployment, they are having me grow a beard.

I have just enough hair on my face now that I find myself constantly fidgeting with it, but not enough to make it even look like a beard. Take a look for yourself.

What does it take to be a General?

My first day of work consisted of 10 hours of briefings to Commanding General of Special Operations Command Central Command. It's really amazing the amount of areas that SOCCENT is involved in and I'd love to share more, but I sort of need my job and the info is classified. As far as first days of work go, it was just about the perfect start. I was great to go over every single one of the bosses priorities right from the start so that you know just where he stands. Yeah, it was long and some of the info was way out of my league, but overall it was interesting stuff that is focused on very important missions.

I'm just a lowly captain, plus I haven't shaved in a week, so I had to sit in an overflow room. For those who've never been to a high level briefing, the overflow room is for the lower ranking attendees who aren't allowed to speak at the briefing. Well as the brief went on, I imagine I got up 10 or so times. Sometimes to get a drink others to go the bathroom to include the 2-20 minute breaks they took. So how many times do you think the General got up? Twice. Once fore each break. Either he's got a catheter, or a bladder the size of Texas. But he sat in the same chair from 1100-2100 and only used the restroom twice.

Well, if that's what it takes to become a GO, I don't have what it takes.

What, no cable???

There is an old joke that went something like this:

An Army grunt stands in the rain with a 15 kg. pack on his back,5 kg. weapon in hand, after having marched 15 km, and says, "This sucks."
An Army Airborne Ranger stands waist deep in the rain with a 25 kg. pack on his back, weapon in hand, after having jumped from an airplane and marched 30 km, and says with a smile, "This sucks just fine!"

A Special Forces soldier lies in the mud, 40 kg pack on his back, weapon in hand, after swimming 10 km to shore, crawling through a swamp and marching 40 km at night past the enemy positions, says with a grin, while biting the head of a snake "This really sucks, I wish it could suck more....."

An Air Force officer sits in an easy chair in his air conditioned, carpeted room and says to his friend, "Man.. Cable's out! This sucks!"

This pretty much sums up Al Udeid air base for me so far. My room is pretty much lousy, but it's a room none the less and I'm the only guy sleeping in it. The latrine is only 20 yards away, I have a tv (a few channels even have sound) and a fridge. Of course they were kind enough to take the adapters, but that gave me a reason to find the local bx. I guess the one I went to was the small one, but it was easily as big as the shoppette in Incirlik. Plus I walked by a Subway, BK and Pizza Hut.

I'll refrain from complaining today. I have a feeling the opportunity to complain will present itself again.

Where to start

So I've had a blog for some time now (socialist gambler), which has focused primarily on my thoughts on gambling, sports, politics and some stories from the past. But as I prepare to deploy to Qatar and Pakistan in the next couple of day, I've decided that I'd like to keep a running diary (or blog) of my experiences from my deployment. For obvious reasons (GO 1), I'll keep gambling and drinking out of this particular blog. Instead, I'll focus on what I'm doing from day to day, and what I'm experiencing as an Air Force Logistics Readiness Officer deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

So let me start by explaining where I've come from. As a Air , Force Logistics Readiness Officer (from here on referred to as an LRO), I've been responsible for deploying people to Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 3 1/2 years. Bluntly, I've been a hard ass about it. I've made tough calls, telling people that they should enjoy Thanksgiving, because they'll be having Christmas at a chow hall in the desert or telling a 3-star General that his LRO is more important to US Central Command then it is to US Africa Command. I pride myself in always being by the book and making decisions based on merit and not by personal issues.

Yet, my current job allows me to influence the type and location of my deployment, most assume that I played some part in choosing my current deployment. And by influence, I mean choose which deployment I want. From that, I understand how people come to that assumption that I've hand selected this deployment. But, in all honesty , I didn't do anything to get this deployment. It just fell into my lap, just like the average LRO.

Why wouldn't I influence my deployment location you ask? As Wild Bill once said, "My hypocrisy only goes so far". How can I be a hard ass to some people and work a deployment to Gitmo for me? I just can't do it.

So now I'm reaping what I've sown. I'm looking down the barrel of a deployment that doesn't have a solid start or end date and my wife is pregnant living in a foreign country. We are hoping I'm back by Oct, but Thanksgiving looks like a better target date. The unknown is always the worst.