"Starting tommorrow, we train to go to war!"

The quote is from the HBO series Band of brothers (maybe it was actually from a real person, but I am not sure). The men of the 101st reached the end of the fighting in Germany, and they received news of the war in the Pacific. Then soon received orders, while in Germany, to deploy to the Pacific War. So, while technically still in combat, they had to begin training to go to another war despite fighting for the duration of US involvement in WWII in Germany.

Now, my circumstance does not even remotely meet the gravity of their situation, but I found some parallels which made me grin during a company meeting today. Despite the unit being in Iraq for almost a year now, we seem to be starting all over again, "preparing to go to war." It has been brought on by the move to a new location, new intelligence, different enemy, etc. I completely understand why we have to undergo some refresher type training and treat this new area as if we arrived in country for the first time, but that quote just ran through my head and I just had to spill my thoughts somewhere.

FOB Falcon has been treating my platoon pretty well so far- Civilian/ professionally run Dining Facility (DFAC) has been an excellent change of pace from eating fried chicken and hot dogs everyday at JSS Ur. The Gym is also much bigger and better than the gym at JSS Ur, and of course, there is Pizza Hut, Subway, and a PX here.

For myself, I have been struggling to keep busy. We will start doing some training pretty soon, but once a PL does not have missions to conduct... there really is not much actual work for him to do.. or at least so it seems. I am trying to find my role in this type of environment, since it is different from what I have been doing for the last two months. I will keep doing the things I have been doing- talking to the men, ID issues, mitigate conflict, deal with discipline issues and all that other stuff, but a chunk of my job during deployment is temporarily on hold.

yup