Soldier

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda. Here I am at....Camp McCrady.

So... it's been a while since I've posted. A lot has been going on in the past month and I'm sure I'll fill in when I have time.

At the moment I'm here in Camp McCrady, a small little former National Guard post on the corner of Ft. Jackson. I should be here for a few weeks while I finish inprocessing into the Army and then I'll be going down to Goodfellow Air Force Base for a few more weeks of training. My uniforms were all reissued to me today, so now I am officially a soldier again.

So far it has been interesting to be here, as my inprocessing into the Army almost 7 years ago was SO different, and seeing some of these places has brought back major deja vu. I was expecting to arrive here and find hundreds of others in the same boat as I.... recalled involuntarily back for some reason or the other. Instead I find that all BUT 3 of the group of only 16 that arrived on Sunday are retirees who have volunteered to return to active duty in stateside positions for bigger retirement benefits. So of course being retirees, they are all high ranking officers... Colonels, Lt. Colonels and Majors. Of the three of us that were not retirees, one I know volunteered to come back to Active duty from the Inactive Ready Reserves, and the other I don't know about yet. I feel very out of place here, and can't help but feel like this all should be a big misunderstanding....... did I accidentally volunteer for something? I guess I just won the lottery this time? This unit must have needed a linguist, and they drew my name out of the hat?

So, my further lottery luck. Somehow I was chosen by our cadre to be the group leader to keep us all together and make sure everyone gets to where they need to be. Lovely. Normally if I had a bunch of privates I'd just raise my voice or make people sit around and wait. But how does one tell 13 high-ranking officers they can't going anywhere?