The Beginning Of The End.

Although our departure date is a ways away, we have begun preparing for it. Logistics, it is said, doesn’t win wars but it can certainly lose them, and logistics takes planning. For now, we’re packing up equipment that we can do without for a while. “Getting skinny”, as it’s called. I’ll probably see the gear again in about 6 months.

Last week several sections gathered to pack and stow some of their gear. First, we decide what we can live without, and what we are required to take with us on the plane. The latter changes as guidance from higher is received. Originally we were supposed to take all our Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment (OCIE) so we can turn it in at the de-mobilization station. That is pretty bulky stuff, and since we’re limited to two duffle bags and a backpack, it would prevent taking much of anything useful.

OCIE includes, for example, elbow and knee pads, pup tent halves with stakes and poles, an entrenching tool (foldable shovel), cold weather gear, and lots more crap that we just won’t need to de-mobe.

The new guidance allowed us to pre-pack and send OCIE home in a CONEX container, so I filled up two duffle bags of that stuff and a couple of folding chairs. I also sent a foot locker. It had books, posters, folding stools, rope, and just a bunch of stuff that I though I might need for this tour, most of which I didn’t.

Here’s the process. You pack your bags and footlocker so that you know what fits, and fill out a form (make 5 copies) listing everything in the bag or locker. The picture was taken at 0700, and shows a male soldier, still in his pajama bottoms, helping a female soldier (he's not alowed to enter her CHU). He is typing the form while she loads up her duffle bags.

After completing the form, load up the stuff into a truck, take it to a central area, unpack it and lay it out on cardboard. The MPs will then root through your stuff looking for contraband or other stuff you can’t ship. After they clear you, you repack, put everything into large boxes, marked and numbered, and then box is fork lifted into the CONEX container and the container is sealed, ready for shipment. Until it ships, it will just sit in the sun and bake. A copy of your packing list goes in each duffle bag, on the outside of the box, on the CONEX container, one to the First Sergeant, and one for you, total of five. Load lists are important. We lost a CONEX container for a while on the way over here. It was later found in Kuwait.

For me, the MPs rejected some prescription meds (have to hand carry them, and they have to have your name on the container), some vitamins (once opened, who knows what’s in the bottle, so they can’t go), some batteries (they might leak), and the mosquito net issued to me here. I never used the net, but it is similar to camouflage netting and neither can go home. We don’t have to turn it back in, either, so the advice was to just throw it away. Oddly, the commercial mosquito net I brought with me was allowed to go home.

I saw TV’s, small refrigerators, a violin, books, CDs, DVDs, and a rich variety of miscellaneous personal stuff being loaded. Here in a while we’ll do it again, and pack up the offices and pretty much everything else. We’ll be living out of duffle bags for a couple of weeks at the end of our stay in Iraq, and for the few weeks it will take to finally get home. I’ll have mostly clothing and hygiene items, along with a small footlocker of office stuff; active files, laptop, whatever I need to do business during the de-mobe.

If you're married, one of the rules of travel is "Don't whistle while you pack." At least here we didn't have to hide our good spirits as we prepare to travel.