Another Week Ends

[prophet_marcus]

I'm still sick. Miserable. I just barely made it through work today. But I did and the weekend is here with nothing worse than the likelihood of having to drive in a blizzard to pick Eric up after work. But there is an end in sight for that chore as well.

Eric has joined the Army. It seems that they aren't as concerned about asthma as the Air Force. So in two months, he reports to Fort Sills, Oklahoma for basic training, followed by advanced training in Arizona for Human Intelligence Gathering and finally language school out in California.

He seems enthusiastic. I just hope it works out well for him. Of course, it would be slightly cooler, in my opinion, if he got into intelligence analysis, but it seems there weren't any openings. Ah well. We'll see how it goes.

We'll also see how Trish reacts when she finds out. I suspect she'll be upset. I'm not really jumping for joy myself, but it's his life and at least he's taking some sort of action. After all, his uncle (my brother) was in the Army during Viet Nam (drafted - one tour,) and his grandfather (my dad) was in the Army Air Corps during WW II (1942-1945). Also, my mother's father was in the Army during WW I - Canadian, I think since they didn't move down to the USA until ten years later, but he spent some time at Fort Devons, Massachusetts, so I'm unsure. So while military service isn't really much of a tradition in our family, neither is it unusual.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to Eric. I remember when my daughter Amanda joined the Army back in early 2001, and how I felt both proud and concerned. Ft. Sill is just outside Lawton Oklahoma, and will be quite a change from New England. Ft. Huachuca AZ is a beautiful place nestled into the White Mountains in southeastern Arizona. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA is another scenic place. I hope he enjoys them all.

[prophet-marcus.livejournal.com]

Monterrey! That was it. Oklahoma doesn't concern me as much as his spending the summer in Arizona. Now that will be harsh. Plenty of motivation to stay inside where it's (hopefully) air conditioned and study.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Ft. Huachuca is high enough up in elevation that the summer won't be nearly as bad as if he were in Phoenix, though it will certainly be hot. I'm pretty sure all of the barracks are now air-conditioned, though that was not always the case. If you ever visit there you might see some old barracks (if they haven't been torn down) with very thick adobe walls designed to keep the interiors cool.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Today's New Action Army (yeah, that's an ancient slogan) ranks a far cry from what I saw -- without a draft, they can't treat the scum trainees like the scum they are...

Good luck to him. HumInt _can_ be touchy -- that shades into interrogation, or did when I was in. I stuck strictly to the tech side of the spook business.

I'm assuming Arabic for the language school?

[prophet-marcus.livejournal.com]

I'm gathering that interrogation pretty much is where he'll be. He doesn't know which language he'll get yet. A friend's daughter in Naval Intelligence got Chinese. Heck, they might need Farsi or Afrikaans.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Do you read pecunium? If not, you might want to check him out. Terry is an Interrogator/Translater in the California National Guard who's done a tour of duty in Iraq. He can give you a pretty good idea of what the training's like. He's taught all those courses.

[archangelbeth]

Good luck to him! And you. O:>