Henry's Web Log

Finished up our second week of Ordnance education at Aberdeen. This week has been all about ammunition (right stuff, right place, right time). I missed one question on the final exam.
Now I'm looking for a ride so that I can meet Lisa down the road, and help her drive the family to Aberdeen late tonight. After the boys have done their trick-or-treating, of course, which means it'll be pretty late.
Still no news on our confirmed assignment, though. UGH! It'll be Monday, at least, before we learn anything.!
But I did get a ride to Union Station, DC. Nice! I had my eye on a train to Staunton, VA, which would intercept Lisa nicely, but I was too late. A close second is a train to Lynchburg, just 30 minutes out of the way. We'll just stay in Lynchburg for the night, or longer!
In the mean time, I had some time to kill while waiting for the train. I took a walk to find a CVS photo printing station and got some nice prints to share with Lisa and the boys. I also snapped a quick photo of our capitol building, and of course found a wifi spot to work email, complete another online training course for medical logistics administration, and tweak the blog!

I have uploaded ALL my October 2008 photos to my Picasa web album account (HenryBassACI).
There's some overlap with the McCrady folder because McCrady is a subset of October 2008, created for my fellow soldiers that were with me at McCrady.

Lisa and the boys are definitely visiting this weekend! This marks 4 weeks apart, and it's a great time to get together. Last weekend was a reconnaisance mission for this weekend!

Wheels make all the difference! Saturday we drove to Baltimore's Inner Harbor, with some help navigating by both my iPhone and Thomas . We visited Fort McHenry ("Oh say can you see..."), and several display ships, including a diesel submarine. I'm hoping to show this to my boys next weekend...but only after watching "Up Periscope" to get a real sense for diesel subs!
Speaking of Kelsey Grammer movies, we watched "Pentagon Wars" Saturday night. If you've not seen it, it deals with the prolonged development cycle encountered by the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle (shown). This was part of our inspiration to stop and visit the Ordnance museum, right on post. They have a fantastic collection, both indoor and outdoor. Inside is small arms, an Eniac computer (one of the first computers, for computing artillery tables), the WOW (women ordnance workers), and exhibits on the development of shells and Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Outside are rows upon rows of tanks, artillery, missles, and vehicles from many countries.
We finished the day with a drive to Havre De Grace. It's a very well-to-do town with a nice marina on the bay. We enjoyed a $9 crabcake dinner at an outdoor spot near the boat ramp.
I'm very excited about the prospect of Lisa, Eric and Ethan either visiting me next weekend, or me going to them. It has now been 3 weeks since we said goodbye.

The weekend started off with our first successful two-way video call from me to home. Eric was the genius that rebooted the computer and suggested I reboot mine, then Voila, it all came together. Very nice.

A Lieutenant Colonel and I drove into Charleston on Saturday. Initially, we had understood that there would not be time off, but we're keeping up with everything, and the government doesn't like to work on Columbus Day. So we visited many of the historical sites like Fort Sumter-- Dale manages our materials database website, MatWeb, and challanged me to devise a defensive plan for Ft. Sumter! We also saw the first submarine to sink a ship in combat, the Hunley (did you know she sank twice before her final, successful voyage where she sunk the Housatonic, but sank mysteriously just after that?). The events wrapped up with a thorough walk over the grounds of historic Charles Towne Landing, the first South Carolina settlement dating to 1670. They certainly had defensive issues as well. Fortunately, the local indians befriended them, partly because this local tribe needed the new settlers guns to ward off another tribe that had allied itself with the Spanish. It's all who you know, right? Those original settlers weren't religious pilgrims so much as profiteers: they journeyed 6 weeks from England to Barbados, and stopped there to study the slave-intensive sugar farming process for a couple of months. Then, off to South Carolina...except they had heavy storms enroute, lost a ship, broke a ship, and took something like 3 months to just get from Barbados to South Carolina. But they brought a culture of slave-intensive profiteering and were mighty disappointed to find that sugar didn't grow well here. So this ties together with Fort Sumter because the slave-focused labor practices led SC to be one of the loudest advocates of slavery. Abraham Lincoln's election sealed the deal, SC seceded, other states followed suit, and Colonel Anderson moved his forces from a weak nearby fort to Sumter. Beauregard, a West Point student of Anderson, was sent to negotiate the return of Sumter but was forced to deliver an ultimatum. Which he backed up with 30 hours of artillery until SC forces captured Sumter. The Confederates held Sumter amidst the Union siege and blockades longer than any other siege. And when the Union did finally get it back, they invited Lincoln to come to the official ceremony. But he had tickets to the Ford theater and couldn't make it! Really!
So anyway, my conclusion to this tour was that South Carolina, from its roots in 1670, had a culture of greedy exploitation of slave labor, with two very separate classes of society. I also learned that Charleston is a beautiful city, with lots to do and see. And some delicious seafood!

Yesterday's events included heavy weapons training. That is, training on weapons of large mass and firepower. Not heavy like intensive. Unless you're on the receiving end of the weapon. We worked with the M2 (50 caliber, in use since WWI), and the Mark 19 (in use by the Navy since Vietnam, adopted by the Army in the late 1990's). The Mark 19 is a medium-velocity grenade launcher, practically hitting anything you can see. l After a lunch of bbq ribs, corn, lima beans and apple cobbler (nice!), we received our flak vests with insert plates, designed to stop ammunition up to 7.62mm (squad-level machine gun caliber). The new helmets are a little tougher, and lighter, than the Kevlar I had with Va Tech ROTC.
I would have been signing for weapons this morning, but 7 of us needed to head back for our over-40 physicals. Officers get the 9mm pistol, plus the M-16. My understanding from the class ahead of us that the weapons are mighty old and very loose- meaning they're not very accurate. That's OK though: we want the accurate ones to be in theater, not here in training. This isn't a long-term issue: just for the remaining 8 days we're here at at Camp McCrady.

Last night, a buddy and I drove into Columbia for dinner. At a wifi hotspot in the historic downtown, I attempted a video call with Lisa, Eric and Ethan. They could see me, and we could talk well enough, but I couldn't see them. We'll troubleshoot that, but the news was pretty good: both boys are doing great in school. Special praise to Eric for straight A's this first grading period!!! And Ethan's grades will come out in about 3 more weeks. On the other hand, Ethan's recovering from a fever, and Eric is coming down with something.
It sounds like their weekend is just packed with activities: Cub Scout spookeree, paintball, and a Boy Scout popcorn sale at Walmart. I miss them already. The video call is going to be a great way for us to stay close once I'm overseas.