Luggage Duty

Yesterday I got all my military gear that I will be taking with me to Afghanistan and it is very heavy. I spent the better part of three hours in an unconditioned warehouse getting my stuff. I think I lost 10 lbs just due to the sweating. What a day to run out of deodorant. There was consensus among everyone that if we were doing this at an Air Force base that the warehouse would be conditioned. The Air Force typically spends there money on great facilities whereas the Army doesn't.

I was given three sea bags (military jargon for big duffel bag) full of stuff to take with me. Items in my bags include my uniforms, sleeping bag, body armor, helmet, boots, etc... Needless today they are very heavy. I have always thought of myself as being pretty strong but I was struggling with these bags. Each bag weighs about 70 lbs and they will be with me until I get back here in January 2011.

I volunteered for luggage duty which basically means that when the 400 of us go to leave for Kuwait, I will be one of 10 people loading the sea bags and ruck sacks onto the plane (military jargon for big book bag). My reward for doing this is that I will be sitting in the first class section of the plane during the flight over. I thought extra space that first class affords people would be worth the couple of hours that I will have to work with the bags. A bigger seat for a 20 + hour flight is a good thing in my book.

Today I had the good fortune to sit in training for 12 hours. At least this was air conditioned. We were trained on first aide for war zones. I am now well qualified to bandage any type of wound. The mannequins that they had us practicing on were very life like and they cost $25,000 per mannequin! The picture of the mannequin is on Facebook for any of those interested.

For lunch they were giving out MRE's again and I opted to support the fundraiser that was right next to it that was selling hot dogs and hamburgers. I have successfully avoided the lovely taste of MRE's thus far but that will end on Friday for my lovely flight. They are serving nothing but MRE's. Yummy.... I saw the oddest thing today during lunch...an ice cream truck. I thought it was a rather odd place for an ice cream truck but they definitely got a lot of business today.

The last part of my training today was on IED (improvised explosive devices). We actually got to handle real IED's that were disarmed. They are amazingly simple for how dangerous they are. CRC created a mock Afghanistan environment and we got to walk through it to see if we could spot the mock IED's that they created. Lets just say that if it was a real scenario rather than training, we would not have made it out. IED's are incredibly hard to spot if you are looking for them and impossible if you are not. I learned more from this training then I did during my entire graduate school experience. I suppose it is a little different when it could be a matter of life or death. For that reason, I will be staying exclusively at Camp Leatherneck for the next 6 months....unless I can get my hands on a helicopter :)

Tomorrow will be a rather slow day as it is a make up day for all the training, medical and paperwork that people have yet to complete. I will be mailing some of my clothes home tomorrow as well as my cell phone. So if you want to call me before I depart the country I would do so by tomorrow at 3:30 pm or 15:30 for all you military folks.