Boyz in The Hood

You may be surprised at this or you may not, but my eldest seemed way happier in uniform than  he was pretending to be a civilian for the last month. Seriously. Hey, just as well, because the kid had to report to Fort Hood today.

We drove out down the Highway to Hell that is I35 and emerged miraculously unscathed in Killeen, a short hop from there to "The Great Place," home of III Corps Phantom Warriors and lots more besides, not least expeditionary signals.

After waiting for an hour to get a pass to enter the fort, we drove on through to the vastness of the thing, and it is huge. The 1st Cavalry motorpool(s) alone probably mustered more armor than the UK's combined equivalent. Quite a thing.

Then we had a late lunch at a dysfunctional Burger King on base and I dropped the Specialist off at the "Welcome Center." Well done, boy, respect. He's got 2 weeks of in-processing and then joins his unit, 57 Expeditionary Signals Battalion, who've been blessed with lighter kit, demanding 4 man teams and a leadership program to boot.

Well, let's see how that goes. In the meanwhile, maybe I should go in as a volunteer chaplain, it'd add another level of accountability, as t'were. Just a thought.

Whatever, good luck son, you've done well so far. Now let's see "green to gold," not that there's any pressure, heh.

God bless,

LSP

In The Heat of The Day

 

What is it they say, only mad dogs, Englishmen, and members of tactical signals brigades go out in the noonday sun. Or something like that, and it's what we did, the mission being to catch some fish even if it was 100 degrees in the shade.

Sure enough they were on and before you could say Das Kapital, perch were snapping and tugging at the lines like the voracious predators they are. I pulled out a couple of fierce little beasts, looked over at the kid and boom, something slammed into his hook and it was rod double, drag out action. No fooling.

What was this monster, a cat, a bass, an enormous drum? No, it was a dinner plate sized blue gill, perhaps a Zeta Variant, and easily the best fish of the day. What a great result. Then, after another hour or so of catching we started to melt and headed for home, a good afternoon at the water well spent.

In other news, the Pope's attacking the Latin Mass. There are two classes of being which hate Latin, schoolboys and Satan.

Fish on,

LSP