fiddler

FALL IN AND LISTEN UP!

Hey y'all! Long time no see! So I know, I've MIA for a couple of weeks, it was official business, I swear! Lemme give you the run down of whats been going on.

Right now, the US Army is going through a restructure. In the next two years, we plan to discharge some 40,000 soldiers, and let go some 15,000 civilians. But, we're not just giving the ax to a bunch of random people. We're making a stronger by 1) getting rid of some of the Soldiers who have disciplinary actions against them that should have been gone 2) retiring some Soldiers who have essentially capped out, 3) promoting Soldiers to fill the empty slots, 4) and promoting the overall welfare of the individual Soldiers through training, education, and resources.

The Army has always placed high value on taking care of a Soldier's family (at least in "recent" years). One of the things we're doing is re-vamping that effort. We're going the extra mile for Soldiers, and their families. After all, we're only as strong as our support unit is. So for the past couple of weeks, I've been to Ft. Jackson, Ft. Benning, and Ft. Sam Houston talking about the new direction the Army is moving in. And it's really exciting.

I've been talking specifically about the Family Services aspect. I've had the chance to meet so many great Soldiers from three different posts that are not my own, and I've loved every single minute of it.

Also I may have missed you guys..a little. Just a little. Don't let it go to your heads.

FALL OUT!

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Every being is intelligent. But if you measure a fish's intelligence on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live forever thinking it's stupid.

Plankton

I did my Basic at Ft Jackson, Tank Hill. We were the last unit to use the old WWII barracks and they were actually being torn down as we were having our graduation ceremony in 1987. The Army don't **** around. Also, on an unrelated note, I played disc golf with a retired Army grunt yesterday. Outstanding person, he was. Good to see the Army is taking care of their own. I'd heard about the cut-backs, but haven't kept up with what the fall-out from it would be. Pretty much a trim the fat approach from what you say. I'd be excited too, although a stricter budget would mean more MRE's I suppose. At any rate, good too see you back, soldier.

*Salute*

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See location...

fiddler

Trimming the fat is exactly what is going on. They're discharging some of the NCOs who have capped out - been in the same job for ten billion years. Getting rid of some extra sand bags.

__________________
Every being is intelligent. But if you measure a fish's intelligence on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live forever thinking it's stupid.

fiddler

Fall in and look like you know what you're doin'!

I hate closing old cases, which is basically what I spent all day doing. I wrapped up 32 old cases, some from 3+ years ago, some from 2 months ago. Most of them were marked "DECEASED" on either the victim or offender parts which essentially makes them closed cases. For instance a case that happened twenty-one years ago, the guy punched another guy in the face whilst on post. Both have since passed away, so both got a DECEASED stamp.

One case, Guy A ran a stop sign, which then Guy B t-boned Guy A. Completely Guy A's fault, and this was technically resolved 4 months ago - insurance and such. But not officially resolved. All was lacking was a singed copy of Guy B's statement literally "He ran the stop sign, I hit him in the door." Signed & dated. That's it. I had the statement, all I needed was a signature. Easy, right? Apparently not. I drove 45 minutes to Guy B's house to get him to confirm and sign his statement - he refused to talk to me! So I called my JAG, and my JAG talked to him and tried to convince him to talk to me. So he invites me into his house, and I tell him what I wanted.

He told me that I could kindly carry my stupid ass back to wherever the hell I came from, and proceeded to knock my folder of paperwork out of my hands and kick it across the room. At this point, I've had enough, and I tell him to put his hands behind his back and interlace his fingers, that he's under arrested for interfering with a Federal investigation. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? It was literally so simple as to sign a statement for a traffic incident that has already been resolved. So lesson: want to be a douchebag over something simple, sit in the brig for a while see if that changes your attitude.

Although for real though, there were some really stupid and some really interesting cases. A lot of them were simple lapses in paperwork (such as that) where it's already been resolved but is left open due to paperwork errors. For instance one guy decided to dump 300g of laxatives into the cake mix for the post commander's birthday party a few years ago. That one got a DISCHARGED stamp indicating that the offender had been discharged from the Army, and was no longer subject to court martial. One guy flung poo at a Captain six months ago, but the Captain has since relocated to Germany and is unreachable. That one got a S.O.L. EXCEEDED stamp, indicating that the Stature of Limitations had been exceeded.

Other than that, Fort Bragg's Post Commander moved on to bigger and better things, so we had a Change of Command ceremony. It wasn't overtly exciting, just more involved for us.

Alright ya lumps of laziness, move it on out.

__________________
Every being is intelligent. But if you measure a fish's intelligence on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live forever thinking it's stupid.

fiddler

Alright scaredy cats, grab some flashlights, start a camp fire, and huddle round!

So here's the skinny, on possibly the one thing that has ever totally freaked me the f*** out.

Last week, while I was on the graveyard shift, it was close 0230, something like that. Nothing was happening, as it tends to be. I was probably stuffing my face. And a call goes in across the radio that the silent alarm in one of the motor pool buildings has been triggered. Okay so I go to investigate, and I pull up, hit the spot light on the only usable door in or out of the building. So I get out, and my cruiser looses all AUX power, lights go out, engine shuts off, full deal. At this point, I can hear what I believe to be screaming coming from inside of the building. I got out my flashlight and sidearm, and unlocked the door. I shine my light in, and it's so densely dark my flashlight is having trouble even pretending to cut through the pitch black.

I put my flashlight/sidearm combo inside the door to look around, flashlight flickers and goes completely out. At this point, I call for backup from my radio, backup shows up and my cruiser suddenly just restarts like it never turned off. With both flashlights now working, we go into the building. In the main bay area - the whole building is just used for storage - there were what should have been neatly stacked items such as chairs and 55 gallon barrels slung every which a way. **** is turned over, nothing is where it should be. I mean these 55 gallon barrels are filled with oil, so they're heavy. Needless to say, we took our cue and left. Next morning we come back because daylight is better, the radios start spritzing out just a little - could be the metal in the building or whatever.

In the bay area, everything is still fucked up from the floor up. Things are turned over, it looks like a complete hurricane went through the building. There's no evidence of forced entry, none of the pad locks on the bay doors are messed with. The only door in or out, the lock was fine, not tampered with. No evidence that anybody had actually been in the building aside from us. I mean it had been raining earlier in the day, and there should have been muddy foot prints from coming in the building - there were when we came in. Other than the silent alarm going off and the stuff every where, and our footprints, you wouldn't know the building had been disturbed.

Thoughts?

FALL OUT.

__________________
Every being is intelligent. But if you measure a fish's intelligence on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live forever thinking it's stupid.

fiddler

Alright ya blobs of couch-potato lumps of nothingness, time for another report from the "field". Fall in and act like you know what a line is!

So there's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure if I've said before or whatever, but I do a lot of work with the US Army's Community Outreach Program, and it's an outstanding program. Essentially what the program is, is a community-centered initiative by the Army, powered by Soldiers and Civilians alike to educate anybody who wants to come. The program teaches some 500,000 community classes every year, and every topic from Veterans' Problems, Wounded Warrior Project, Search and Rescue Operations, to Manhunt Operations, Land Navigation (both w/ & w/o a map), firearm safety, and even more that I haven't listed. For instance if a couple of soldiers go to a high school and talk about joining the Army, the career & college opportunities and all of this, that's a part of this program.

School is pretty much back in session now, so Thursday I was actually at two local elementary schools, a local middle school, and a local high school. We had three different presentations (one for each of the different groups). For the younger kids we were talking about Army Physical Fitness, and the President's Physical Fit Challenge. Both of these are geared to provide fun ways for the kids to get active. We set up a miniature obstacle course, and were trying to show the kids that physical activity can be fun.

At the middle school we were talking about the US Army's community promise. If you haven't heard of this, the US Army pledges to build our communities by community service and other things to enrich the communities. So we were talking about projects that they could do that would help enrich their - our - community. One of the common complaints that we got from this point - we had expected this - was that when they try adults tell them no. We solved this by giving them official US Army Community Builders badges. These are just pins that one might wear on the shirt or so. We told them that if they get out there and try to do something to clean up/enrich their community, and anybody gave them trouble, to call us, we'd back them up. We had a lot of ideas flowing, and a lot of it simple stuff that they can do, but stuff that really does help the community. Such as one group came up with a group project idea to plant little trees in random corners where there's just dirt.

At the high school, of course, we had to get in a little bit of recruitment time in. We had 31 enlisted persons representing 22 US Army career fields (myself included in this) and 13 officers representing an additional 7 career fields. We were talking about our various careers, had a self defense mini-lesson, demonstrated the use of the field radio, had the Airborne parachute onto the parking lot of the school, demonstrated some stuff that we felt they should know if they encountered law enforcement, demonstrated some science experiments.

Overall I'd say all four sessions at the four different schools were very successful.

Today I was at a VFD about 45 minutes away, doing a S&R training session with Pumpkin (one of my dogs). She's trained in Search & Rescue, and is great for teaching these sessions. At first it incredibly stuffy, until one of the guys just runs off the pier into the water that we were near and started acting like he was drowning. Pumpkin's training kicked in, and in a matter of seconds she had jumped off the pier and was at the guy "drowning". Apparently these guys had never used a dog in S&R operations (to be fair it's a very small township), and were actually rather impressed by Pumpkin's response. What was more impressive to them was that she, a 70lb lab retriever dragged a 200lb man back to the shore where of course he stood up and walked out of the water.

Also tomorrow, if you're out and about in North Carolina, pay attention! You might see something incredibly cool that is pretty much a once in a life time situation. There is a retired V2 rocket arriving at the Air Force Base here on post, and it's going to the NC Museum of Aviation. It's got quite a ways to go, with MPs and State Troopers running escort. As far as I know, though, it will not be on display at the museum.

That's it! Back to lounging around.

__________________
Every being is intelligent. But if you measure a fish's intelligence on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live forever thinking it's stupid.

Chula Vista

All good stuff man!

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”