Welcome to Fort Benning - now hurry up and wait!

As my deploymeny to Iraq approached last week I tried to think about ways to pass the downtime - books were loaded onto my new Kindle, my iTunes library was updated and I began to try and think about what else might help occupy the inevitable downtime that was coming my way.  So I decided to start blogging about my deploymeny experience.  I've never considered myself interesting enough to blog, but as I started saying my goodbyes to friends and family it dawned on me that everyone was very curious about the whole Army/deployment thing.

The truth is, I was very interested in the whole Army/deployment thing too.  Having been a civilian up until last July I was totally clueless about just about everything military.  I grew up in the Northeast and I didn't realize until I moved to Texas that in the rest of the country it was very common for people to join the military.  Where I'm from it seems to be the exception and not the rule.  I thought it would be enjoyable for people to learn about my experiences since this whole thing is so new to me and most of the people I know.

So let's begin....

On Saturday morning, Rachel, my wife dropped me off at the airport to attend CRC.  What is CRC you ask?  It's apparently the place you go before you deploy to make sure all your records and immunizations are up to date, and also where you get issued all of the gear that one needs to be deployed.  The next obvious question is, what does CRC stand for.  I didn't have the fogiest.  However, I'm happy to report that after nearly two days here, I've figured it out:  CONUS Replacement Center.  Unfortunately, the answer to the first abbreviation contains yet another abbreviation - hopefully I'll figure out what CONUS means by the end of the week.

CRC is held at Fort Benning which is a quick connecting flight from Atlanta.  When I got off the plane, I have to admit I was an emmotional mess on the inside.  It hadn't really sunk in that I would be leaving my best friend and wife for Iraq until I was placed on an Army bus.  I don't think I was the only one that was a little shaken.  The bus was immersed in silence as forty or so soldiers headed for unknown futures.  Many had been before, but the silence suggested that it wasn't going to be easy for the next couple of months.

Saturday and Sunday have been a whirlwind of activity.  They put you up in barracks in groups of four.  The rooms are anything but spacious and contain huge lockers to put your belongings in and that's about it.  I did feel right at home though when I hopped up to the top bunk - I shared one with my brother Adam for 18 years of my life.

So far, CRC has consisted of mainly a bunch of meetings(which the Army calls briefings), and a whole lot of standing in line waiting for signatures.  They said I will be shipping out on Friday, with the first destination being Kuwaitt.  From there it's anyone's guess as to how I get to Iraq.  Luckily, I was able to link up with the two other ER docs that I'm going to be deployed with to Iraq.  They have been really helpful so far telling me about the little things that I would never think of on my own that will help make the deployment as smooth as possible.

Now that I've caught up I think I'll stop here for now.  If you got this far, thanks.  I hope this blog will be helpful for other people who are preparing to deploy for the first time as well.