My new world

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I must admit that I have been remis in my writings for a week or so. My apologies, but as we say in the world of deployments… “Life has changed” and we have been running to just keep up.

It seems like it was just yesterday when I was part of the Torch Party as the Logistics Officer the team and I were crazy busy ensuring that all the reporting units were being provided their basic life support needs. That story is still to come as “Torch Party Part 2”!

So in the big picture of things, over a thousand soldiers from at least 27 states and territories have reported for duty in support of the KFOR 12 Peacekeeping mission. Half of them (nearly 700) come from the great state of North Dakota and we will be the headquarters element that will lead the expedition. There are hundreds of military specialties that will be training amongst us and so it should prove to be an education experience for us to learn what everybody has to offer for the cause.

Not only have we welcome the inbound units but have immediately focused them to prepare for their onward movement to Europe for the next level of training. So it seems like they get off the bus, we rush them to find a bunk and then they have to pack a giant footlocker and a duffle bag that will leave for Kosovo tomorrow in connexes. Now this seems like an easy process, but even I screwed it up. I packed my gear so well that I barely left anything back here at Camp Atterbury to last me for the next month or so. Ugh.

My “life has changed” experience has taken me over like a whirlwind out in the desert. I have picked up speed and not figured out how to just slow down and rest. My new role, or should I say…my deployment position is that of the Sustainment Planner. In a nutshell, I focus on logistics and administrative planning factors when we develop plans that will affect and direct the entire Task Force. We have a small team that are trapped in a room with computers, chart boards, maps on the wall and research materials. We have speciality personnel that own the areas that focus on: operations, intelligence, information operations, communications and operational law.
If you were to join me for a day, we would attend a class for a few hours, then read about 60 pages of an order from higher headquarters and then dissect and interpret the word and meaning into a function message that can be passed down to the leaders of the individual task forces that belong to KFOR 12. In between all the reading and development we create these power point presentations that we deliver to the General and then ask for his guidance, build another step of the process and then request his concurrence on our decisions. From there we would write a humongous plan that everyone will execute.


We have made it thru our first week of exercises successfully but it was absolutely grueling hours and between that and the academic nature of the business its takes intense concentration for me to remain engaged in the process for 16 hours a day. Me, an office job…Who’d a thunk? Sitting behind a desk all day, limited interaction with people and challenging the intellectual side of myself is not exactly what I had in mind for an entire year. But so far I have mustered up a pretty good effort and tried to find the fun in it all. At moments that is the challenging side. How to find fun in my new world of army geekness?

The great part…I work in that small room with some of the smartest people I know. They combine their creativity with their professional skills and have absolutely taught me a lot about how our functional areas fuse together and become one voice. And most of all…They are super duper fun! Sometimes we are so tired that we just laugh and laugh hysterically until I nearly pee my pants! They allow me to be me and tease me all the time about my functional area not being very important in the grand scheme of things! But as most of you know that doesn’t matter much because mostly I believe that “it’s all about me” and that sustains me during the day.

The change of positions last week now allows me to snack on gummy bears, gobble peanut m&m’s and gorge on good n’ plenty’s! We make popcorn daily and drink fruit flavored water to have small breaks in the monotomy of our academic world. I can eat an entire bag of sunflower seeds in a single sitting and listen to my IPOD while I read. Does it really get any better than that? Okay, maybe giving up exercise isn’t the best thing for my girlish figure but people are used to me being a little chunky right now, so who really cares. It’s about enjoying your day!

We use toothpicks to keeps our eyes open and pinch our desk buddies to revive their energy. The former smokers have started smoking again and the smokers are obsessively puffing away. The food in the messhall has been pretty dang good but we find that when you get 10-15 minutes to eat that Tums come in handy from the guarenteed indegestion that quickly sets in.

So for now...Welcome to my new world!

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