Looking back, part 6
Posted by Gypsy on Mar 6, 2007
A few years ago, to realign with the war effort, the Army started finding ways to free up more soldiers for deployment. This included replacing soldiers in non-deploying positions with civilians so those soldiers would be free to go to deploying units. Even though I was in a deploying unit, we worked for the Fort Irwin Public Affairs Office, which meant that our garrison counterparts would eventually be replaced with civilians. It was while Jeremy was deployed that this process began. Unfortunately, the experience working with civilians at Fort Irwin was the polar opposite of the amazing experiences I had at Fort Leavenworth. Civilianization is among the worst ideas the Army has ever had.
The civilians we did get in were all retired Army public affairs, which would normally lead to the assumption that they know what they are doing and are disciplined enough to do it. WRONG. They were an extremely incompetent group who would never have been hired if it weren’t so hard to find employees willing to drive 45 minutes to the middle of the desert to work for shit pay. Things remained relatively bearable until the public affairs officer left, leaving the office to a civilian public affairs director. Thus began an experience that would ultimately keep me from fighting to stay in the military after my back issues became intolerable.
After the civilian director was hired, we still had a military officer in charge. This lead to a lot of tension between the two as they stubbornly battled to come out on top. It especially came to a head over me and another soldier. This was great at the time, but as soon as the major was reassigned, the civilians and the non-public affairs non-commissioned officer in charge (for non-military folk, that is the senior enlisted military person in the office) turned all their animosity on us. They kept us from writing for the paper (which was our job), were on our asses for the slightest infraction and generally out to make our lives miserable. When it got to be too much, we went to our first sergeant for mediation. Unfortunately, that got us no where because even the first sergeant saw what they were doing.
Eventually, the final straw hit when I overheard the NCOIC and the director “jokingly” say they wished they could ship me and my coworker in a metal container to Fort Hood, Texas. Formal complaints were filed and we were finally removed from that office and sent to work as supply clerks for our battalion. Not the job we were trained for, but then again, we weren’t do that before.
Around the same time, I’d finally hit the last straw on the issues with my back. I had started having problems with it when I was stationed at Leavenworth and doing a lot of running. When Jeremy first deployed, I started running more and messed it up for good. After a long discussion with my physical therapist, it was decided that there was no way I could stay in the Army like that and medical evaluation board proceedings began. By this time, I was ready to be out. My marriage was over and I was just waiting for it to be final, I was completely jaded and sick of the military after all the earlier bullshit and I was just ready for a total change in my life.
Within three months of moving to supply and starting my MEB, I got the call that said the medical higher-ups agreed with my physical therapist and they were going to release me from my contract. Within two weeks I was putting on that uniform for the last time and here I am: jobless and loving it, writing again and this time writing what I want to write, not what I’m told to write. And even better, no more regulations telling me what I can and can’t do. So what am I gonna do now? Well, I’m not a football player winning the Super Bowl, so fuck going to Disneyland. I think instead I’m going to smoke some pot, snort coke off a big breasted stripper’s ass and get my nosed pierced. One down. Two more to go.
Looking back, part 5
Posted by Gypsy on Mar 4, 2007
To this day I still remember my last night in Kansas. We all went to a coworkers new apartment to watch Monday Night Football (the Chiefs were playing) and then I said my goodbyes and left to get my mom from the airport. We were set to start a road trip early the next morning to San Diego, where I would spend a couple weeks with Jeremy before heading up to Fort Irwin to get settled into a new apartment and a new life. While I was in San Diego, Jeremy and I went up to Barstow so we could find an apartment, our first apartment, which I moved into in early November, 2004. Within a couple weeks Jeremy joined me and though things weren’t perfect, we were at least together and finally living like a real married couple.
Fort Irwin was totally different from what I was used to at Leavenworth. It was a bigger installation and for the first time since job school, I was working with only military coworkers. It was also smack dab in the middle of the desert. I was lucky to arrive before winter, so the climate wasn’t a total shock. By the time summer came, I would be able to slowly to adjust to the temperature hitting 110 in the shade.
Life was near perfect at this point. I was sleeping next to my husband every night. Waking up next to him every morning. Coming home to him after work every evening. We ate dinner and curled up on the couch afterwards and just settled into being newlyweds. For Christmas, we decided to stay in California and have a quiet holiday together. We got a three-foot high real Christmas tree, decorated it and put presents under the tree. He had gotten promoted right before he moved. I continued working my tail off to get promoted. Life was peachy. Unfortunately things wouldn’t stay so great.
After eight months of living together, while on a family vacation in Vegas with my parents and sister, Jeremy got the phone call saying he would have to deploy. Less than a month later he was gone. I was back to being a married woman with no husband in sight. I threw myself back into work. Again, to fill my free time, I went back to school and spent some time with friends. I got into chatting online via a message board and started going on trips to visit family and friends. Anything to fill up the time and keep from being lonely.
About halfway through his deployment, I received an email from higher-ups at Department of the Army headquarters that I would be deploying myself, just a month after Jeremy came home. This threw me into a mad rush to get this deferred so I’d have more time with Jeremy when he got back, though all the panic was for nothing when my orders were canceled a few months later. But all the stress took it’s toll on Jeremy and I as our relationship became strained from all the stress his deployment was putting on us. He was stressed and doing the best he could to keep things together. I was equally stressed and not handling it well. Or more accurately not handling it at all and instead spent my weekends drunk off my ass and fighting with him when we actually got chances to talk.
The only place I was having any real success was at work. I finally got promoted to sergeant, though I was one of the last in my office to be promoted so I still didn’t have any soldiers under me. Through some networking I had been doing in Los Angeles, I was able to bring a producer up to Fort Irwin to do a story on the National Training Center, which got me some time out of the office and into the desert enjoying the media relations aspect of my job. I assisted on a redesign of our newspaper and even got to try my hand as an editor for a few weeks. Our office was in it’s golden age, with an amazing and knowledgeable staff of writers and broadcasters all focused on telling the Army’s and Fort Irwin’s story to the world. It was the perfect time to work there.
But as usual, when it rains it pours and just as my personal life was crashing at my feet, my professional life decided to as well.
Looking back, part 4
Posted by Gypsy on Mar 2, 2007
For a girl who had only been off the East Coast to spend three year’s in Germany as a child, being sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, seemed like a fate worse than death. To me, it was too far from the ocean, too far from every city I loved and too far from anything resembling civilization. And, even worse, smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. The night I landed at Kansas City’s airport, with all taxi services closed and the only option calling the base and getting the duty NCO to give me a ride, I remember standing there wanting to cry. Talk about stressed out. On top of it, Jeremy was already in California and settling in to his new base, and though we were engaged, I was still very apprehensive as to where our relationship was going.
I arrived on a Friday night, during Labor Day weekend 2003, which meant I had three days before I’d actually be able to meet people, get into my permanent room and get in-processed. And those were three long fucking days. I only knew where the Post Exchange was because it was behind the barracks, I couldn’t find the chow hall (I later learned there was none), I had no TV and no Internet. It was not a good way to start off my next stage in the Army.
Luckily, Tuesday morning came and with it meeting all my new coworkers and the fellow soldiers in my unit. I immediately made some awesome friends and got my first story assignment. I was finally getting the chance to really do what I was trained to and it was amazing. Even better, Jeremy and I decided to bump up the wedding date. He was going to come visit me at the end of the month and we were going to have a justice of the peace marry us so we could take our time in planning the church wedding. I took leave, and on September 24, 2003, Jeremy and I were married at the Leavenworth Court House.
Fort Leavenworth is famously known as the home of the biggest military prison. But it’s also home to the Command and General Staff College. The installation essentially looks like a college campus, since the prison set very far back from the main area of post. On top of that, it’s only 30 minutes from Kansas City, which meant there was always something to do. Fort Leavenworth is also a non-deploying base, so it’s a pretty easy gig if you can get it.
As soon as I was married, I started working on getting myself reassigned so I could live closer to Jeremy. I spent a year at Leavenworth and had an amazing time. I met so many amazing people, many of which I’m still friends with even now. Jeremy and I visited when we could and I filled up the rest of my free time hanging out with friends and going back to school. I even finally learned how to drive a stick shift. At work, I wrote stories, some fun some boring, one so good I even won an honorable mention from the Kansas Press Association, which was at the time the highlight of my so-far short journalism career.
Once I had been there for 6 months, I was able to put in paperwork to be transferred to Fort Irwin, California. At the time, I had an amazing branch manger and with a few phone calls, I was on orders to leave Kansas just short of a year after I had first landed there. This led to fears of the unknown, just like any change of station does. Even moreso, though, because I was on my way to a deploying unit. On top of that, Jeremy was working on getting reassigned to the Marine base right near Fort Irwin, so suddenly I was going to have to actually be a wife. While at Leavenworth, I acted married and said I was married, but I still wasn’t living with him and having to do wifely things like cook and clean and actually have to live with his habits (and have him live with mine), so it was again a scary and exciting time. And it was a happy and sad time. Sad, because again I had to leave close friends who had become important to me, but happy because I was finally going to see my husband more than once a month. Little did I know how much things would change when I got to Fort Irwin.
