Busy Busy Busy

Work has been rather busy lately. We expected the tempo to pick up, but I didn't realize it would pick up this fast.

CH F had PRK surgery 2 weeks ago, and he is still having some rather blurry vision, so he was out for a week allowing his eyes to heal. It killed him being stuck at home and not at work with his soldiers. To top it off, we are the only chaplain and assistant on Island for our entire Brigade. They have not assigned a chaplain to our brigade headquarters yet, so we've been covering them, and the other battalion in our brigade is at NTC all month. That's the National Training Center in California, where everyone is supposed to go for a month rotation before deploying to Iraq. It's sort of a warm-up to what we do in Iraq, where we perform our mission true to life, in a desert environment. My battalion only had slots to send part of our engineer company to NTC last month, so I never had to go, but now that the other battalion chaplain are there, we are covering their rear-detachment (the guys that stayed behind).

While he was gone, the CH also had me attend the Commander's Update Brief (CUB) for the first time. This is a weekly meeting where all the Staff Sections report to the Battalion Commander (BC) on important missions, budget, etc, and each of the companies update the BC on their training schedule, and any personnel or equipment issues. Its a very formal brief, and the Chaplain as special staff has the option of attending and briefing, but it is encouraged that he attend in order to know what is going on around the battalion and plan accordingly. So he had me go since he wasn't able to attend. It was quite an experience, considering the brief is meant for staff officers (usually captains, majors, and the lieutenant colonel), and company commanders (captains) and 1st Sergeants. Others may attend in their place, but being a specialist, I was by far the lowest ranking in the room. Fun times.

This week, we had an exercise called a Staffex. All the battalion staff went out to another location and spent the entire week going through the military decision making process (MDMP). While the chaplain plays only a small role in this process, it is vital that he attend and understand what is going on with the entire unit so that he can plan religious support accordingly. The process involves the battalion being given a mission to complete (in our case, deploy to Iraq and conduct route clearance), then sitting down and considering every asset the battalion has (including personnel) and how we will employ them to complete this mission. Every staff section must consider what their own role is in the process, and develop a part of the operations plan (OPLAN) that will lead into the Operations Order (OPORD). It is a long and tedious process, and it took up most of the chaplain's time this week.

Meanwhile, I was back in the office taking care of business--searching for then writing up purchase orders for lots of books, music, and movies that we can take downrange with us and leave some here for our rear-d, getting ready for our weekly Bible Study (trying to work with S4 who still hasn't gotten the credit card straightened out to pay for our pizza), and figuring out what else we need for our deployment so it can get ordered. I love my job because it also involves talking to soldiers and being available to them if they either don't feel comfortable going straight to the chaplain or he is not available at that moment to talk with them. I got to do a lot of that this week while CH F was at the staffex. I also attending the initial meeting about our next retreat, Sept 11-12, so now registration for that is underway, and had to go to the CUB again this week, this time briefing the BC on the status of our Bible Study. That was nerve-racking, but I survived. And I'll be doing a lot more briefings coming up to practice for the briefs we have to give when we go downrange. Fun times.

Like I said: busy, busy, busy. This doesn't even include half of what we are doing, including daily PT, and all our warrior tasks training we are going through for pre-deployment prep. And its just gonna get busier.