The Promotion

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The spirit of the American soldier is absolutely fascinating at times. A simple promotion in rank created an opportunity for the logistics team to gather and share a few precious minutes together that many of us fought to carve out in our schedules. Our Logistics Deputy was promoted from Major to Lieutenant Colonel and not without a little fanfare to go along.

The actual ceremony was done in a lonely room here at Camp Atterbury but the efforts of smart men and technology allowed for the promotion to happen here in Indiana and simultaneously for his family to watch back home in North Dakota. Who'd a thunk ten years ago that this would be possible?

But the best part of the entire promotion was the party afterward! A military tradition would be to host a gathering and the promotee buys all the refreshments and snacks, so let the tradition continue. We are bound by what is referred to as "General Order #1", or simply put...No alcohol intake while you are on deployment. Ugh. Just another rule for us to add to the many others.

So as I arrived to the gathering of the logistics section for the promotion party I was offered a small little cigar, snacks and a non-alcoholoc beer! There were pinochle games happening at the picnic benches, stories being told about our adventures here at Camp Atterbury and laughter that was contageous.

Now if you know soldiers well, they do crazy things like try to figure out how many non-alcoholic beers does it take to get the effect of one. The answer simply put is...You will get a tummy ache before you would ever feel the effect of one single beer.

I think that everybody that is in the logistics section loves being together and working with each other. We worked very hard in the year leading up to the deployment on teambuilding activities. We are aware of each others personality preferences, who are the movie watchers and who are the socialites and what football teams we all cheer for. In army talk logistics is referred to as the "4", so we have a special greating as we pass each other or gather in a room. We make a fist, pound it on our chest and bring it away with four finger proudly presented in the air, and bellow out "4's up!". Its a team thing that most of us like and since we all believe that we have the best section, its a pride thing!

We are proud of our newly promoted officer and so in return we are happy that he invited us to his party so that we can continue to share all our experiences during this deployment as a team.

Welcome to Logistics...

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