They are here...

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Finally…Everybody and everything has arrived here in Germany! Yea!

It was quite the transportation movement event. To begin with, we only had about 100 soldiers that had traveled ahead of the masses, only 10 mini-vans and had only 24 hours available to bring in hundreds and hundreds of our KFOR 12 task force soldiers. The doctors were coming, the military police were with them, the street patrolling troops and the many other specialty soldiers would be landing here in Germany in six big planes converging on our little peaceful part Germany.

I must tell you that there wasn’t a person who wasn’t excited to have everybody all together again. We came up with the mother of all plans. It was simple. Two of us would be in charge of all activities at the airport, and all we had to do was meet the airplane on the tarmac, convince 20 soldiers per planeload to volunteer to unload all the duffle bags from the belly of the plane into big cargo trucks. While the soldiers were unloading the bags, we would brief them on the security of Germany and give them a little water and one of those nasty MRE’s for a meal. We of course would have to count the soldiers to ensure we had accountability of everyone. Sound simple. Not. Counting many soldiers should be an additional duty for someone who has nothing else to do. How hard can it be? Put them on the bus and announce, “from the back of the bus, count off.” One, two, three, four…sixteen, seventeen…and about that time some ding dong would look to the person next to them and say, “are you sure you were sixteen and not fifteen?” Needless to say, we would start all over again…and again…and again…Then it would be funny for them and I would be getting crabbier by the moment. So most of the time I just would get on the bus and count for myself. Which, as a Major you would think that I should have learned by now, and just have done it myself to begin with to shorten the task by five minutes. Before we let the buses roll we would give a couple lucky soldiers some bullets and they would be in charge of protecting the entire bus just in case something would happen. I would appoint some lucky officer to be the “bus captain”, and that didn’t win me and friends because they were now destined to remain awake for the entire ride and have to do that count thing over and over again.

As the buses and cargo trucks rolled down the road towards our training destination, the soldiers at the post were busily preparing to receive the big chunks of people. Vans would be staged to lead the buses in, rooms were being swept out so they would be as clean as we could get them, soldiers were pre-positioned to show them which direction to go once they excited the bus and then the baggage movement plan was being rehearsed on how to move hundreds of people across a half mile swath of barracks with only nine vans. Mini-vans that was.

It was like watching a three ring circus from above…The bus would roll in, the soldiers would casually get off the buses, a loud sergeant would give you your directions. “If you are in headquarters over here, medical over there, from California over by that building and if you are an officer and I call your name head off into that building over there and please try not to disrupt any of the working soldiers.” Then the buses would leave and the cargo trucks would roll in. The back would fly open and just like good troops a couple would hop into the back and many others would create long lines and they would start passing bags out and soldiers would pass the bags down the line and at the end of the line stackers would have the hundreds upon hundreds of bags stacked in nice neat rows. As soon as that was done, the vans would swoop in and start to haul people to their new homes.

Mostly it was fun just to stand back and watch everybody try to find their bags. Carefully inspecting each one for their name or special marking, hollering out that they had found their buddies and then trying to hide the look of disappointment if they couldn’t find theirs right away, starting at the beginning of the bag line to once again look at the names because they had missed theirs. Good thing for the day, over 3,200 bags sent to Germany and not one piece of lost luggage!

Over and over the planes kept rolling in, day and night and soldiers kept coming until we were on our last load. It was a great feeling of accomplishment when us 100 helpers stood on the street, smiled about our mission being complete, only to realize that in a few short weeks we would be doing this all over again, only backwards as we will be traveling next time to our final destination.

I am always amazed at how motivated soldiers can be when given a task that has purpose. They work together, come up with process improvements along the way and are always flexible. Every plane that rolled in was early by a few hours and every bus that rolled on the road seemed to always be late by an hour. As much as we had a set schedule, there was not one timeline that was met and yet when it was time to do the mission, not one soldier complained, all of them showed up for their duties and somehow they seem to laugh with one another and make fun of the most arduous jobs. It’s hard not to be proud of the spirit of a soldier. The patience, the humor and the self dedication that each of these people I am traveling with never ceases to amaze me. I am the lucky one to be surrounded by such a diversity of people from across 37+ states, from many types of units, and with a variety of backgrounds and experience and I look forward to our next leg of training so that I can experience the trials and tribulations with them all. A team of teams we are, and in the long run we all have one thing in common. Soldiering. We are in this together. This is good to have so many friends and to have the mission of peacekeeping in a foreign land that will keep us focused and always having a purpose to what we do.

Welcome to Germany…

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