MSgt Sawyer,
I have to congratulate you on your promotion to SMSgt, I can’t think of a more deserving individual. Thursday will be the half way point through our indoctrination into the Army here at Fort Dix, which is now called Combat Skills Training. The training up to this point has had nothing to do with weapons and had everything to do with HMMV and Combat Life Saving Skills (CLS). There are about 87 students here, four Lt Col’s, three Majors, about a dozen Captains and the rest enlisted from ranks of SMSgt to A1C. I am one of two Guard members here, the other is a SrA from Pennsylvania. To help with the transition to the Army, Fort Dix has split us up into Platoons and a S staff. Remember that all members of this class are nothing more than students and the positions we hold are “play” to help give the class some structure and some form of roles. There is a detachment of about 6 people here that are nothing more than a PERSCO team, they are “deployed” here to help us with our training and deployment needs.
The ranking member of the class is called the Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) and is really nothing more than a representative to the Army for our class, he has an XO (Fucking putz, but we can talk about him later), a S3 and S4. When I arrived at Fort Dix, I was one of the Captains that wasn’t tasked with a job, which made me very happy. Honestly these “play” roles that AETC loves so much do nothing for you but cause heartburn and hurt feelings. It doesn’t go on any records, it doesn’t help you in your career (especially for a Guard guy like me), it’s just is a pain in the ass. The next day the SRO and XO appointed me the “Platoon Leader” of Platoon 1. My platoon Sgt is a MSgt who is a services guy, the platoon is made up of Maintenance and Service junior enlisted troops, most of them are on their first tour. I have a couple of SSgt, and one TSgt.
The Air Force is just throwing Service troops to the Army in attempts to fill the void caused by two wars and horrible retention. These kids sign up to learn hotel management and food services and when they get in country are thrown to become a turret gunner in some Army convoy team. They bounce from job to job in some Army brigade until they are sent home, with no awards or recognition for it. They are sent as the Joint Expeditionary Taskers (JET), but are nothing more than stop gaps to fill the Army’s needs.
An old Army proverb from the inception of the Air Force goes “An Air Force without planes is untrained infantry”, which is becoming painfully obvious.
I am one of four intel officers, two have desk jobs waiting for them in Iraq being part of the transition team, the third is going to be supporting force protection using ground intelligence, again an Army slot that is being filled by an Air Force troop. The third (Capt Tuz) will be outside the wire, but has little concern because he is in a quite part (southern Iraq). He is also my roommate for the next two weeks, we have a similar sense of humors, which helps greatly in getting along and living with each other, even for only four weeks, if you hate the guy, than those four weeks can just drag on. Our “senior staff” is made up of two Colonel selects, Lt Col Perce and Lt Col Axelbank, Perce is a Communication officers that is wound too tight for Fort Dix, I can’t imagine him anywhere near a warzone, Lt Col Axelbank is a logistics officer who is the a typical staff officer, constantly dropping names, is a staff officer who made rank by moving paper from one side of his desk to other. Perce gets spun out of control over stupid shit, I mean seriously stupid AETC shit, and is at the point now where I don’t have any use for the man what so ever. He has used abusive language to point of saying “frickin’” every other time, and while he thinks that he is taking names and kicking ass, he really is just acting like a fucking moron. He is the current communications squadron commander at Yakota, but I can’t imagine him as a squadron commander, hell I have hard time believing that he is actually a Lt Col and not some guy mocking all the bad traits of LTC’s are known to have. I won’t say he is the worse Lt Col I have ever worked with, but he is up here. He is going to Afghanistan as the J6 for CTSC, they are the group in charge of building up Afghanistan’s infrastructure. Axelbank is going to Iraq as a logistic readiness officer, most likely a desk job, though he hasn’t said that explicitly.
Honestly LTC and Majors have no purpose here, they believe that the majority of the training is below them and Axelbank is constantly trying to get out of it, today we went to Pre-Marksmanship Instruction and both of them thought that they should be exempt because they were not taking their M16s into country, it’s that type of shit that just bothers me.
Soon we will start our weapons training, I am to be qualified on the M2, M240B and Mk19 next week, that is the only part of this I am looking forward to, I will try to hit you up before I take off from here, I have 10 days to after the course is over and my ALD, I get a four day pass, so I will go see Becky one last time before I head out.
Take it easy MSgt Sawyer, thanks again.
-Capt V
