First Blog

My name is Ryan, I'm currently in the Army National Guard. My unit will be soon heading over to Afghanistan to help build roads and other infrastructure.

I am starting a blog because I would like to keep a record of events that occur during this deployment. I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, and noticed that many memories, dates, and people I went with have already started to fade.

I semi-volunteered for this mission, which was probably a mistake. If I had kept a blog of my last deployment, I probably would have reminded myself why I never wanted to go on deployment again and would not have volunteered for this deployment.

Enough with the intro, here's what has happened so far...

We first spent 2 weeks in Roswell, which was pretty much a waste of time for me. When I first went to basic and AIT (job training), I was trained as a Chemical Operations Specialist, or Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) guy. I did not want to do this job again, so when I tranferred to the NM National Guard, I went to school as a Heavy Equipment Operator (Engineer). Of course, once the unit started training and getting mobilized, my fearless leaders put me in the NBC slot, which is supply/headquarters in this unit. Exactly what I didn't want to do. I'm also the First Sergeants driver. The First Sergeant is probably the only person I would not want to drive for. I love the National Guard...

After Roswell, we had a pass then went to Sante Fe and White Sands Missile Range for our basic army skills tasks. Pretty much more wasted time and wasted taxpayers dollars. Some of the instructors were alright, but most of them thought we were all idiots and had no experience whatsoever. The training was different then what I had my last mobilization, and was different then what we did in Iraq last time. I thought the Army had standards, but apparently they change every couple years. I also loved how the really 'highspeed' instructors would begin each class with "When I was in Afghanistan I saved seven people, an orphanage and went to the moon blablabla..." like they are sent from God to help us stupid people out.

I don't know how anyone made it through a deployment without some of those instructors' training.

There's other stuff that pissed me off as well, like going to the firing range and waiting for almost a day to shoot. The Army wastes so much time, it's crazy. 'Hurry up and wait' is alive and well in this unit.

That's probably enough negativity for this post, I'll keep updating as much as I can.

Ryan