Day 41...163 days left in country

Day 41 16May03


163 days left
Today I did absolutely nothing. Finished my NCOER and gave it to LT. Looks like I won’t be getting a new LT ‘til we get home. That…is a good thing. We have an ass load of change of commands…across battalion. Nothing but new guys coming in. Hopefully the new BC will be better and give us the freedom to train and develop our Joes. So far Kifri isn’t bad. Guess the Kurds have it down. Talked to “O” a few days ago. LRS from the 173rd had a lil scrap with the BADR Corp. The BRT was sent to assist them. So it would seem that he’s doing ok. I don’t feel we are as good as friends as we used to be. Back when we were Joes…man we were tight.
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We had only known Michelle for a little while but she was pretty cool. She had three cute lil girls and I personally took a liking to the middle one. She had told me and Olvera that a friend of hers liked Carlos. She was cute Mexican girl whose name I can not recall. I do remember the story Michelle told us about how she didn’t know she was pregnant and kinda had the baby in the bathroom not really knowing what was going on. Kind of an amazing story so I’m not really sure how much of it was actually true. Well me and Carlos ended up at another friend of Michelle’s. The girl was over there so I went with him. Carlos was making out with the Mexican chick. I was simply along for the ride. Well when me and Carlos left to go back to the barracks we discovered it was snowing. It was no big deal to me growing up on the east coast and Germany, I was used to snow. Carlos on the other hand, had never even seen snow, except on TV. So it was pretty funny as we walked to the car and he was making a big deal about it. That was when I realized, “Wait a minute!” I said. “You’ve never seen snow before.” “No I haven’t”, he said. As we laughed and got into my car. We drove drove south down Academy Blvd towards post. As I drove, we had light conversation about how the night had transpired. We were driving over the bridge when my car started to slide sideways. Without stopping the conversation I cranked down on the wheel hard to the left to counter act the slide. All the while still talking to Carlos. As the car slide the opposite direction, I quickly cranked the wheel back to the right. It seemed as though time had slowed down as we slide across the bridge. It was pretty late so no one was on the road but us at that time. It took me the entire length of the bridge to get my car going straight again. Me, I was having a goodtime, Carlos…I wasn’t sure. I remember the winter days when I worked at OMS 25 for the NJ National Guard. We were the few individuals on the post so at lunch time, me and Marc would get in my car and just slide all over the post. Practicing emergency brake slides, 360s…you name it, we did it when snow was on the ground. So here is this guy who has never seen snow much less driven in it and we are sliding sideways across a bridge at 2 o’clock in the morning. It was funny. After we were across the bridge and my car was under control I casually looked over at him sitting there in the passenger seat…as calm as could be. I had expected some sort of noise or nervous chatter coming from him after our brief ordeal but there was none. As we drove up towards Pike Peak Community College, I asked him, “Hey man you all right.” “Yeah man I’m good” he said. “Well you sat there pretty cool for a guy who’s never been in snow or a skidding car before.” “Well,” he said “I know you are from New Jersey so I figured you had driven in snow and stuff so I knew you knew what you were doing.” We laughed and drove onto the barracks. This would not be the last time Carlos and I would be making those long trips back to post from a night out in the Springs.

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He has grown into a damn fine NCO. I wonder how things would have turned out if I had pushed to get into the BRT. I like my platoon…for the most part. It’s just my NCOs don’t have that same drive and focus as I did when I was a Staff. They need to do more, get more involved with their Soldiers and junior NCOs. But then again, the SGTs don’t seem to really want to go anywhere, except Clark. I think he could go far. He has…or what seems to me like a pretty strong wife.

Well at 1900 we’ll be tasked back out to the CTCP, UMCP and the TOC. Delta went to the BSA. I’ll probably end up at the CTCP…convince…that’s all. Man they can get on your nerves with all the complaining they are doing. So I’m pushing to get section internal nets. Senior man will monitor the platoon and section net while his wingman will monitor the section and battalion net. We’ll have to get with commo to see if we can do it. There used to be a Delta Company and their old freqs are free so I’ll see if I can make it happen. If not, there is always the Scout’s alt freq…267. The Optempo seems to wearing folks as well as our equipment down. I wonder when it or if it will ever slow down. I finished up 2 NCOERs and now I have one to go.