The CA Command Comes Through...Maybe.

Good afternoon, everyone, and a happy day-before-independence-day to you all.

I just got out of a brief with some Civil Affairs folks from Fort Bragg, and it would appear that our long, national no-information nightmare is over.

I'll leave out of Fort Jackson on a bus sometime on Saturday. We'll head to Fort Bragg, where my fellow officers and I will be dropped off with the CA command up there (CAPOC). We're to take a 9 week course of Army training on how to be Civil Affairs officers--so to everyone who has asked me about what the hell a CA guy does, ask me again on or around the 12th of September. Hopefully I'll have it figured out by then.

From there, I'll be assigned/attached to the unit with which I'll go down range to Iraq (99.99%) or Afghanistan (0.01%). Hard to say when I'll know the details on that assignment, but depending on the timing of it all, I could be overseas as early as mid-September, or as late as...well, it could potentially drag on if I get attached to a unit that isn't deploying until this winter. We'll see.

But for now, the good (great, grand!) news is that I'll be at Fort Bragg, NC from Saturday until at least 12 September. Fort Bragg is about 4 hours from home and Lauren and my parents and everything else. And while I don't know how much time I'll have off, or whether I'll get weekends free or run of the post, at the very least I'll be a short drive away for anyone who wants to come down and visit.

There have been some horror stories about the living conditions at Bragg (and about how long you're stuck there post-course, pre-deployment) but they swear up and down that conditions have been recently improved. I've heard that one before, but again--we'll see.

Come to think of it, based on the number of "we'll see's" I've included in this email, I still don't really know a whole lot about the what/when/how/where/why's of my next many months in the Army.

But hey, a little bit of knowledge is infinitely more than the ignorance I was wallowing in before, so for now I'm happy. Will I stay that way in the long term? We'll see...