Staff Duty

In the Army we have a thing called Staff Duty. As the Staff Duty Officer you sit at a desk and wait for something horrible to happen. When something does, you leap into action, and you handle it. Handling it usually entails calling and waking up other people, the people responsible for the particular situation, and they do the big-H Handling. But getting that ball rolling, whatever handling is required to make that happen, that's your job as the Staff Duty Officer.

Fortunately, horrible things rarely happen. Unfortunately, that means you stay up all night waiting for nothing to happen. Such is the state that I find myself in now. Fun fun fun.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Oh no. As the SDO, you also get to log everything that happens during the day on a good old fashioned Army Form--DA Form 1594 to be precise. But as nothing horrible usually happens, the log ends up filling up with events like "Driver goes to lunch", "Driver returns from lunch" and the always popular "Officer conducts security check of the Brigade Area."

So yeah, I get a driver, which seems like it might be cool. But his job is really just to keep me company during the day and drive to get meals at regular intervals, so it isn't as cool as it might be. And as for my security checks, it's not like I get a gun or anything. I basically just walk around in the dark and make sure doors are locked.

The picture, incidentally, is what a log looks like when lots of stuff happens. Non driver going to dinner kind of stuff, that is.