Sarah's Award

After that, COL Burcham presented my end of tour award. It’s always humbling to stand up in front of a group of people while someone else says nice things about you. For my gift from the office, they had a printout of me in my Kurdish uniform framed. This evening everyone signed the picture. Sarah has promised to mail it home for me; it wouldn’t have fit into the footlocker anyway.

After the official business concluded, COL Burcham was treated to another Iraqi custom. Each person wanted to have his picture taken with her. Here she is with Nazar, one of one hundred separate pictures she had to pose for!

Since we arrived the day before the ceremony, I had some time to kill. This gave me the opportunity to hang out with the two other OICs in GRN. LTC Mario Trevino is the OIC for the Kirkuk Area Office, and Lt Col Pat Kelly is the OIC for the Balad Area Office. Pat is Air Force, hence the different abbreviation for Lieutenant Colonel (Lt Col vs LTC). Basically we sat around and griped to each other. Officers are just like privates; you get two or more of us together, and we gripe. I also had a chance to see Glenn. He’s filling in at the Tikrit Resident Office this month. Next month, he moves to the Baqubah Resident Office permanently.

The Change of Command ceremony on Friday was hosted by BG Dorko, the GRD Commanding General. MG Hertling, the MNF-I Commanding General also attended. The heart of the ceremony is the passing of the colors. The unit’s CSM (the senior enlisted member) hands the colors (unit flag) to the outgoing commander. The outgoing commander passes the colors to the commander of the higher unit. This symbolizes the outgoing commander relinquishing command. The higher commander then passes the colors to the ingoing commander, signifying the assumption of command. The incoming commander then returns the colors to the CSM for safe keeping. In the picture below, COL Burcham is receiving the colors from BG Dorko, while CSM Seitner observes.

COL Pfenning’s new assignment is the Executive Officer for the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. His office will be in the Pentagon, so I may run into him while I’m assigned there making coffee for all of the Colonels and Generals!