This past Wednesday I had the pleasure of doing some pre-deployment paperwork.  To oversimplify it, the Army Reserves has four major regional commands.  So, a week before September 11th, I was notified that everyone in the 343rd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment (MPAD) would be heading to Minnesota.  We would also get to travel on Sept 10th and fly back on Sept 11th.

Let me get the positives out of the way:

• I got to meet just about all the enlisted personnel in the unit.  I met some of them last month when I was in Atlanta.  I also knew some of them from DINFOS.  It’s going to be a real good unit.  I can tell just about everyone takes pride in their work.  We all seem to have pretty good chemistry.
• Our 1SG is not fluent in BS, he tells it like it is.
• Strong NCO Corps.  This means that soldiers needs are met and we have good strong leaders.

An SRP is a big day of waiting in line here admin specialists essentially make sure a soldiers paperwork is in order.  We play a big game of musical chairs at about nine different tables.  This SRP was nice because there couldn’t have been but 75 soldiers.  This meant it wouldn’t take us all day to get our stations completed.  These things are usually performed with hundreds of soldiers at a time and are a huge exercise in “hurry up and wait.”  I got my life insurance paperwork looked at; my personnel file reviewed; I got a Hep A, Hep B, Typhoid and Anthrax shots among other things.  The typhoid shot didn’t hurt at first, but my arm stayed annoyingly sore for a day or two.  The Anthrax shot, which is stupid, burns.  The Anthrax series takes 18-months to complete.  This means that even though I started it in September 2008, I won’t be done with it until March of 2010.  That’s if I get the other five shots on time.  You can learn alllllllll about it at http://www.anthrax.osd.mil/.  I think I’d rather take my chances with the smallpox vaccine.

I think I can speak for the group when I say that we could have done this exercise anytime.  Instead it happened after a weeks notice, one day of travel and no per diem.  If I have to take two days of vacation at work, I like to have the courtesy of a little per diem.  Bleh, I could spend plenty of time bitching about it, but I figure the next three months are going to be all hurry up and wait.  I’m trying to get my mind right.

I’ll leave you with a scene from the SRP.

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