These three, blessings:
Yes, even this hat is a blessing:
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The Blessing of Life
Just wanted to take a small break from the deployments posts to talk about blessings of life. Some of you might not call them blessings, they might be "fruit of your labor" or just plain old "hard work" or maybe even how you were raised reflect your ideas on why you have these things in your life. Let me perfectly honest with you, everything you have...every millisecond of your life, all your children, all your money, your car, your house...God allowed you to have those things. You wasn't your hard work that got you there, it wasn't spending 20 hours a day at the office (that's another issue for another time)...it was ALL God, you can't take any credit for it.
These three, blessings:
Yes, even this hat is a blessing:
These three, blessings:
Yes, even this hat is a blessing:
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Second deployment - The beginning
Ahh, so I finally arrive home and we are greeted impressively by those that had to stay back and our families. It was awesome that they did everything for us so we could just go home to our families, I always hated how the Army would make the soldiers march into a gymnasium or something and basically sit there waiting to see their families. We got off the bus, a Gunny took our rifles from us and let us go hug our loved ones. I think we got a couple days off then went in for a day or two and they let us go on leave...I believe I took 30 days or so. Went up to New York and about a week into my leave...gotta call...
Turns out, the 24MEU needed some people to go back to Iraq...I volunteered. I was going to be a team leader and lead a 6 man team in Iraq where yet again I would gain new brothers that I will love forever.
I have to say, this was the best deployment I've ever been on...I had a great time. My 6 man team was Frese, Reyes, Kauffman (Bud), Sutton and Riley. We stood up (which means we trained in the states pretty much) for about a year. Things didn't start off that great though, the senior enlisted and I didn't get along...pretty thought he was a pompous ass and it didn't help I did something stupid the first couple weeks I was with the unit. Turns out, parking in front of a dumpster and getting the entire trash contract canceled for your unit really irritates people...who knew? Eh, learned my lesson...had to pull out all the trash and put it in a HUMVEE to bring to the landfill. Better than paperwork if you ask me.
My team and I went through a lot of crap but I always stood my ground and took as much blame as I could so that it didn't land on others on my team. It became painfully clear that I would have to provide cover for the entire deployment because the leadership was more about paperwork than actually using bad situations as an educational tool (like with the dumpster thing, a Gunny not in our unit did that to me and I appreciated it later on). I realize paperwork has it's moments and occasionally it needs to be exercised...lets not overdo it though eh? We all became very close and looked forward to the day that we would be with an infantry battalion instead of with our "head shed" and all the brass (officers). I actually had more issues with the higher enlisted in the group than the officers. I probably came off as pretty cocky though but I don't intentionally disrespect people, no matter their rank, the senior enlisted did this (with all this said, I ended up having a great relationship with him at the end).
We trained in the heat, we trained in the snow, we trained in the nasty wet mudhole of Camp LeJeune for a year...it was brutal but it was FUN! I gained a lot of great insight into planning and I learned a lot about leading Marines.
Before we ended up deploying, Sutton was yanked from my team and made team leader of the MEWSS team which really hurt our team in a communicator sense...luckily, Riley and Frese really stepped up...they saved my butt quite a few times. We gained Kniskern who was not happy about the change and it was tough to see him so beat up...I immediately made sure he felt welcome...to this day I still can remember how bad I felt seeing him so hurt. It was understandable though, he had spent a year with his team and was ripped away without warning to become a part of our team.
We had planned on taking the USS Saipan and we went for a few days to "test" out our work spaces and living spaces. Ship life was old to me by then...I think I slept 20 hours a day when we were on there (come on now, I have two kids at this point...sleep is precious). Ended up, we FLEW to Kuwait...what the heck...a MEU..flying? Stupid...
I was ready for this deployment, we had been planning what we'd bring and what we could actually run off of vehicle power. Yeah, that's right, I brought an electric cooler! Do you know how awesome 60 degree pepsi is compared to 110 degree pepsi? Oh man, it's so good.
More later...
Turns out, the 24MEU needed some people to go back to Iraq...I volunteered. I was going to be a team leader and lead a 6 man team in Iraq where yet again I would gain new brothers that I will love forever.
I have to say, this was the best deployment I've ever been on...I had a great time. My 6 man team was Frese, Reyes, Kauffman (Bud), Sutton and Riley. We stood up (which means we trained in the states pretty much) for about a year. Things didn't start off that great though, the senior enlisted and I didn't get along...pretty thought he was a pompous ass and it didn't help I did something stupid the first couple weeks I was with the unit. Turns out, parking in front of a dumpster and getting the entire trash contract canceled for your unit really irritates people...who knew? Eh, learned my lesson...had to pull out all the trash and put it in a HUMVEE to bring to the landfill. Better than paperwork if you ask me.
My team and I went through a lot of crap but I always stood my ground and took as much blame as I could so that it didn't land on others on my team. It became painfully clear that I would have to provide cover for the entire deployment because the leadership was more about paperwork than actually using bad situations as an educational tool (like with the dumpster thing, a Gunny not in our unit did that to me and I appreciated it later on). I realize paperwork has it's moments and occasionally it needs to be exercised...lets not overdo it though eh? We all became very close and looked forward to the day that we would be with an infantry battalion instead of with our "head shed" and all the brass (officers). I actually had more issues with the higher enlisted in the group than the officers. I probably came off as pretty cocky though but I don't intentionally disrespect people, no matter their rank, the senior enlisted did this (with all this said, I ended up having a great relationship with him at the end).
We trained in the heat, we trained in the snow, we trained in the nasty wet mudhole of Camp LeJeune for a year...it was brutal but it was FUN! I gained a lot of great insight into planning and I learned a lot about leading Marines.
Before we ended up deploying, Sutton was yanked from my team and made team leader of the MEWSS team which really hurt our team in a communicator sense...luckily, Riley and Frese really stepped up...they saved my butt quite a few times. We gained Kniskern who was not happy about the change and it was tough to see him so beat up...I immediately made sure he felt welcome...to this day I still can remember how bad I felt seeing him so hurt. It was understandable though, he had spent a year with his team and was ripped away without warning to become a part of our team.
We had planned on taking the USS Saipan and we went for a few days to "test" out our work spaces and living spaces. Ship life was old to me by then...I think I slept 20 hours a day when we were on there (come on now, I have two kids at this point...sleep is precious). Ended up, we FLEW to Kuwait...what the heck...a MEU..flying? Stupid...
I was ready for this deployment, we had been planning what we'd bring and what we could actually run off of vehicle power. Yeah, that's right, I brought an electric cooler! Do you know how awesome 60 degree pepsi is compared to 110 degree pepsi? Oh man, it's so good.
More later...
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