At Long Last...Class Has Begun

"You're all about to go down range for a year or more...there's no need to practice being miserable"

Yesterday I officially started Civil Affairs Qualification Course (Mobilized) Class 05-07. Things will be pretty light this week, as some students are still rolling in throughout the next couple of days. But towards Thursday and Friday, we'll kick things off in earnest, and from there we'll have 6-7 weeks of classroom instruction. Ten or so days in the field will follow, and after that there won't be much left to do besides cleaning off all our gear and weapons, and graduating.

As we haven't really started learning anything yet, I don't have much to report on that front. Some information has trickled in, though, which is nice considering we've been left in the dark for the last 3 weeks.

Weekends are off, and we will have 2 long weekends during the course (labor day, and one other). There is minimal organized physical training, which means that we won't have to wake up at insane hours of the morning to run, do push-ups, etc. Class will start at 8 or 9 most mornings, and finish at 4 or 5 most evenings. The material looks interesting and useful (for the most part, at least) and I'm generally excited to get things going.

The quote at the top of the post was something that one of our instructors told us yesterday. His basic point was that the cadre have no intention of making things difficult/painful in the CAQC just for the sake of it, as is so often the case in Army culture. This came as a great relief to me and my friends, and is a big part of why I'm in good spirits as we begin the course.

One last note--the class is roughly half Navy officers. Some of them are reservists, but I get the impression that most are active duty--aviators, surface warfare folks, sub guys...it would seem that the Army is taking all comers. Add these guys to the Navy folks that I encountered down at Fort Jackson, and it becomes apparent just how many Navy dudes of all shapes and sizes are being loaned out to the Army in our ceaseless struggle to surge-out neoglobal islamo-fascist jihadists.

I suppose they've been telling us for years that joint operations are the future, so why not embrace it, right? Go Narmy.