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I recently hosted the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) at MAO. As it says in his bio, Mr. John Paul Woodley, Jr is responsible for the supervision of the Army’s Civil Works programs, including programs for conservation and development of the nation’s water and wetland resources, flood control, navigation, and shore protection. While in Mosul, I took Mr. Woodley on a helicopter tour of the Mosul Dam, the Badoosh Dam, and the Aski Mosul Drinking Water Treatment Plant. Additionally, he had the opportunity to tour the Mosul Airport Passenger Terminal which we recently renovated for the upcoming Hajj flights to Mecca. CNN recently ran a short report on this project. You can see the online video at CNN.

We also flew to Erbil and visited several other projects, including the ongoing construction at the Erbil Police Academy. This project is a joint effort between USACE and the Kurdistan Regional Government. One of the other dignitaries on the visit was Mr. Bruce Smith, the Assistant for Interagency International Affairs. Mr. Smith brought with him Flat Stanley. This Flat Stanley belongs to the great-grandchild of one of the administrative assistants in his office at the Pentagon. In the picture below, Mr. Smith is explaining Flat Stanley to one of my Project Engineers, Mo Dadkhah.

Mugs will be very happy to know that I received a coin from Mr. Woodley to add to the collection!

This past Sunday we had a day off to observe Columbus Day. In the US, Columbus Day is commemorated on the second Monday in October, but not in all states. I’m not going to get into the issues surrounding this holiday here. Maybe Michael and Howard can have a huge discussion about it in the comments!

Anyway, the CG for GRD has mandated certain holidays that USACE personnel in Iraq must observe. This is really a force protection issue. Since we work 7 days a week here, it’s too easy to never really step away and wind down at all. I’m constantly flat out like a lizard drinking, as Brad taught me to say. So about once a month, we have a day off. At least for one day, we sleep late, watch videos, and just relax.

Sarah and Glenn decided it would be a great idea to play Bingo on our day off. I actually believed them. Mugs will tell you that I’m exhibiting classic symptoms of becoming a Lieutenant Colonel. I now believe that people do enjoy mandatory fun. Fortunately, I didn’t make it mandatory! Unfortunately, we only had 1 more player join us, Jeremy. Two others stopped by for a few games, Alex and Demeril. But they didn’t last long.

In the action packed photo below, I’m presenting Glenn his prize for winning a game of Bingo, a duck-shaped bar of soap!

I have only 1 wakeup left here at Ft Benning. Tomorrow morning, I will begin my journey on a military chartered aircraft on its way to Kuwait. I’ll probably have a couple of days of processing in Kuwait before continuing on to Iraq, but we won’t know that for sure until we get there!

This morning, we had formation to draw weapons for the range at 0630. At least that’s when formation was scheduled. At about 0640, the NCOIC announced that we were waiting for the armourer to arrive to open the Arms Room. As I said before, some things in the Army never change!

We eventually got our weapons at about 0700 and then marched over (or some semblence of marching) to a training site for some more refresher training. We spent the morning doing the low crawl, high crawl, and 3 to 5 send rushes. I wish I had a video camera, but I’m also glad no one had one to record me. Just picture approximately 100 Army officers from mostly combat support and combat service support branches, such as medical, dental, transportation, and even topographic engineer officers. As the artillery simulators are detonating, we begin our 5-person team maneuvers. We had to negotiate under a barbed wire obstacle then go over a sandbag wall about 4 feet high. Finally we had to cross a linear danger area. Shouts of “Cover me while I move”, “I got you covered” and “Moving” brought back memories of Infantry Basic Training. But as we moved down the lanes, our shouts faded while the creaking of our joints increased. The movement lane was probably about 50 meters long, but it seemed to be about 100! Fortunately, after 2 hours of lane training, we moved indoors for some preliminary marksmanship instruction (PMI). Actually, while we were at the lanes for 2 hours, each individual probably spent a grand total of 10 minutes maneuvering on the lanes. But those 10 minyes were really tough, just ask me!

After PMI, we went to the M9 9mm pistol range. Once again, it reached Heat Cat V. In accordance with the Commanding General at Ft Benning, for outdoor training during Heat Cat V, we unbloused out trousers from our boots and open the cuffs of our sleeves. It was hot, and I was completely drenched by the end of the range. Needless to say, it’s going to be much hotter in Iraq. Do you think they’ll let me unblouse my boots in Iraq?