Years ago, when Bosnia was the only thing going for the military [officially!], my national guard unit was sent there to act as a brigade headquarters in Slavonski Brod, Croatia. Various regular army, reserve and national guard units fell under our command, and we had the glorious name of Task Force Pershing.

In truth, we were little more than a glorified truck stop, but were a very good truck stop. The various sections were pro-active and kept the LSAs liveable. The Brown & Root head cook did a bang up job on the food, the best I have ever had on a deployment; the British Navy cooks beat the US Army guys hands down. The locally supplied fresh, bakery bread was just the icing on the cake.

Into this little slice of heaven some rain had to fall. The unit that “owned” Bosnia – 1st Infantry – was going home to Germany, and their replacement – 1st Armored – was driving on down through Austria and Hungary. Some of us were tasked to man the catch teams – the guys that would link up the various convoys and guide them in, or to man the various filling stations.

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I don’t know everything about raising kids, but through the years I have learned a few things. My Dad never passed anything on to me or my brother about raising kids, he’s really old school: beat your kids, don’t ever hug them, tell them they stink. Most of what we know we had to learn the hard way. I do have some brothers-in-law that are very smart, and were kind enough to pass on very important information from time to time too. I like to think that I’m a nice guy too, so I’ll pass some on to Skippy and anyone else needing guidance.

Disclaimer: These will not work if your wife reads this.

(Note from Skippy: You are aware that she knows about this site, right?)

First, a fact, just in case you didn’t know:

As long as your wife is breast feeding, baby poop really doesn’t stink.

This is important, because this is your window to rack up a lot points. Change as many poopy diapers as you can during this phase. Change as many diapers as you can regardless during this phase.

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Around the time we were fighting in Vietnam, the Army decided that officers and senior NCOs needed to spend time in staff jobs to get a better understanding of the system works, and to help them become more professional. Whether you believe it or not, that’s the official word. In short, to get promoted, you have to get your ticket punched.

One problem was in the lack of training of staff officers, etc. Anyone can type up a report and fill out the paperwork for training schedules, ordering toilet paper and such, but no one was getting trained on how to move the flags on the maps and how to order subordinate units around. Thus the “Warfighter” training was born, just in time for Desert Storm.

Because it is training for office workers, it was named Warfighter. That’s a little bit of an army oxymoron, like the overused “Army Intelligence,” or the ever popular “Meal Ready to Eat.” Call it what is not and maybe, just maybe the troops will believe it.

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This one is not on my list as I was not told not to do it. Back when I got “deployed” to Ft. Bragg in 2001 with the North Carolina National Guard – I have to use the quotation marks since I still can’t understand how you can be deployed in the same state that you live in – I had the opportunity to be attached to the XVIIIth Airborne Corps G-2.

Quick explanations: the XVIIIth ABC is the parent organization over the 82nd Airborne, the 101st Air Assault, 10th Mountain, 3rd Infantry and a few other smaller units. G-2 is the Intel Section.

I quickly noticed that all of the officers carried black notebooks around everywhere they went. Within a few days our officers were also carrying around the black notebooks. Being the nosy sort, I asked a few of them what the notebooks were for, thinking that maybe I should be carrying one too. I was told to mind my own business.

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When I was stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, it was a dark depressing time for me.  If I were a painter it would have been my “black period,” for I would have painted the red door black time and again.  On the advice of one of the sergeants, one of the Vietnam vets, I volunteered for service in Turkey.  This sergeant constantly sang the praises of being stationed in Turkey and was on orders to return himself.

I arrived in Turkey in late February 1981.  I was stationed on the Black Sea.  Even though it is on the north coast of Turkey, the climate is much like the coastal Carolinas with hot summers and very mild winters.

In spite of the mildness, there was a lot of rain in the winter and a lot of fog. The short winter still got everyone down, mostly because of the constant rain and fog.  It was like working in the commcenter of the living dead.

Things started to change in late March: we actually began seeing the sun from time to time.  All of the little finches and bright green birds, whatever they were, started coming back from the south.

One Sunday morning (it just happened to be my day off that week) I was awakened by a loud banging on my room door.  My roommate had PCS’ed, so I had to get up and open it.  As I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, one of the guys was all excited and blurted out, “Kelly’s hiding the beers!”

He then ran off to the next door and started banging furiously on it too.

What?  Kelly’s hiding the what?  What beer?

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Back when I was in the North Carolina National Guard, and six weeks after 9/11, we were mobilized.  We all had hopes, visions, and wet dreams about going to Afghanistan.  We went to Ft. Bragg.

Our unit was the rear command post for the XVIII Airborne Corps, so it was thought that we could augment the actual HQ while they planned on going to Afghanistan.  Of course, we were supposed to go with them.

When the time game to go, half of us were left behind as the rear detachment.  That sucked in just about every way.  They went on Operation Enduring Freedom, and I stayed back on Operation Enduring Boredom.

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My National Guard unit was sent to Croatia in support of the Bosnia mission in the summer of 1997.  Basically, we were a glorified truck stop for supply convoys heading into Bosnia until the railroad bridges over the Sava River, the northern border of Bosnia, could be replaced. All of the bridges over the river had been blown during the war.

In the fall there were riots at the Brcko bridge.  Brcko is pronounced Birchko.  That’s the secret of Serbo-Croatian, any ‘e,’ ‘i,’ or ‘u’
sound in English is left out when they spell the word, plus the ‘c in the middle of the word sounds like ‘ch,’ and at the end of the word is either ‘ch,’ or ‘ts.’

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