2007 and Maintenance Day

Happy New year everyone. I hope this year will bring all of you good health and happiness. I myself didn't do much to celebrate. Instead, I decided to enjoy my sleep. I figured it would be better to celebrate the New Year at 9 A.M. instead of Iraq's New Year.

Saturday was my maintenance day. A day of light duty. I had another one of my Saturday afternoon softball league games. I don't really have many pictures of our softball team, so I tried to get some good action shots. We won our game, but the strong winds gave us some troubles in the outfield. After the softball game, I went with the rest of the S-1 section to the 240B range. Unfortunately, Hammer didn't get a chance to make it out as he was manning the office while we were gone. It sounds like he will get a chance to do something a little more HOOAH (cooler) than firing a machine gun. There were six of us, so it worked out nice. Each firing team was made up of a gunner and an assistant gunner. SFC Kerchal was teamed up with Burnham, Johnson with Kane, and Fleck with myself. Kerchal and Burnham managed to fire with the group ahead of the rest of ours, so I snapped a few photos of them sending a few rounds downrange. All in all, one of the best maintenance days I've had so far.
I ran across an article about America Supports You's end of the year accompishments. Here is the story. You can access their website by going to www.AmericaSupportsYou.mil, or SGT Kane has a link to thier site under "Military Stuff".
That's all for now, but stay tuned for the Husker Bowl Game post. Happy New Year.

SGT Hunt warming up for the softball game

SPC Pekarek fielding a ball hit his way

The S-1 section out at the 240B range

SPC Fleck firing at his targets

My range card

Sergeant and a Stetson

This week was pretty eventful for me. On Wednesday I was promoted to Sergeant. A handful of CAV Soldiers were there to witness it, and they were nice enough to take pictures and video. We all gathered in the S-1 office, and 1SG Cleveland sounded off with "Attention to orders", and everyone snapped to the position of attention. Then CPT Lorenz and SFC Kerchal pinned the E-5 rank on my chest. I'm surprised my chest isn't very sore as much as I was pounded in the chest by other NCO's. They pound the chest were the rank is placed much like they used to do with the pin-on rank.
Then on Thursday, I was called into the office again. There were soldiers gathered around again. I noticed they were staring at me. They called me in to present me with the Cavalry Stetson my family had given to me for Christmas. They decided to give it to me a little early for my promotion. The wearing of Stetson's is a Cavalry tradition. To learn more about this tradition, click here. Lucky for all of you, I have photos of both days. Enjoy.

"SPC BENES... POST"

Pinning on the E-5 rank

Congratulations from SGT Kane1LT Tarricone presenting me with my Cavalry StetsonCSM Hall adjusting SGT Kane's Stetson

That about wraps it up for this post. Merry Christmas to all and have a safe and Happy New year as well.

Peace, from the Middle-East

Passing the Time

The other day, the section was working pretty hard. Everyone had their faces buried in work. I myself was stationed at the famous typewriter, adding some dates on some awards. I felt like I was crammed into the corner, sitting directly behind SGT Hanseling's work area. The desk was cluttered with awards that I had to go through yet, but there was something that felt out of place. A bag of marshmallows sat near all the papers I was going through. It just seems odd to have a bag of marshmallows lying around the office, let alone the desk where I'm trying to work. SSG Johnson noticed this bag of marshmallows as well. I think he thought it was pretty weird too.
"What are we going to do with marshmallows here? I guess we could use them with some hot chocolate or something."
Well, everyone recalled the time I tried setting the record for chewing 12 peices of bubble gum at once.
"Benes could see how many he could fit into his mouth," someone suggested.
So of course I agreed to do it. Everyone had to guess how many I could fit. That's just how we do things here, always betting on stupid things. Not fo rmoney, of course. For example, SFC Kerchal and SGT Hanseling had a little bet on how long it would take for the construction work near the movie theater to get done. I guess it's just a way to pass the time and add a little fun in the day. So we had about 10 people guess how many I could fit in my mouth. We had people guessing anywhere from 5 to 37. Kane was the closest though with 10, as I could only fit 9 in my mouth. Here are some pics of the crazy event.

1000 Visitors Club

It took a while, but I have finally reached 1000 visitors. It has been a while since I last posted, but there wasn't much to write about. I guess with the mail picking up, I haven't had time to think about things to write about. In the last week we have seen three days where we have had 9 pallets of mail. It has been taking up our whole day pretty much. We do take about an hour break to fit in some lunch, but other than that, it has been taking about 5 to 6 hours to complete the whole day's mail operations. Just a little stat I though I'd throw out there... We got crazy one day and calculated that over the course of our year-long deployment, we will have handled and distributed over 6 million pounds of mail for our unit. Today we had a few guests tag along. I'm not sure how many of you watch 10/11's "One Soldier's Story", but the folks from our Public Affairs Office at Anaconda followed me around, filming my day to see what a day in the life of a truck driver turned mail man is like. On Tuesday, I will be interviewed via satellite by someone from the 10/11 News station. They will then take a few days to put their story together, and I am told it should air on Sunday evening. So be on the lookout for that. I am pretty excited about it. I am somewhat disappointed because they only shot until 1030. We had barely started sorting by that time, but there is much more to our day than what they had captured. We have an hour and a half time period set up for the units to drive up and pick up their mail. Overall, I was glad I had the opportunity to do it, to show all of you what my daily duties are like over here.
Our basketball team, D-Block Shooters, bounced back from our 0-1 start and are currently sitting at the top of our district and 3rd in our conference with a 5-1 record. We have a little work to do as most of our wins have come from 4th quarter comebacks. In our last game, we fought back as we were down 17 pointsto win by four in overtime. We also need to get some depth in our team. Since the start of the season, we have lost 3 players due to injuries and just straight up quitting. We did, however, add SSG Johnson to our line-up as a point guard.
The softball team lost a close one last week, and no matter who you ask, they'll tell you the officiating in that game was horrible. We moved on though, and were supposed to play this weekend, but the opponents failed to show for the second week in a row. We are now 4-1, and have a pretty tough team that can do some damage as the season goes on.
It's been fairly cool lately. I say cool because I hear the highs in Nebraska are in the 10's and 20's. An error made in some electrical maintenance caused a majority of places on base to lose power. Last night I attempted to clean my room in the dark, and without my heater running. "They" say it should be back on tomorrow morning, and some rumors say even tonight. The sooner, the better though... I borrowed a movie from SGT Hanseling that I can't wait to watch. It follows three soldiers from a National Guard Unit that deployed to Iraq in the early stages of the war. I saw a little bit of it, and it looks like it is all made from their own video devices, such as video cameras, helmet cams, etc.
I have received a lot of mail this past week. With all the decorations and things, I was busy getting my room lit up and decorated. I will post pictures as soon as I am able to turn the lights on in my room.
That's about all for now. Out here.