April 6 to April 12

Day One of 430...........

On Sunday, April 6, I said goodbye to Washington DC for a year and boarded a flight to Norfolk, VA. Destination: Navy Mobilization Processing Site (NMPS), Naval Station Norfolk. NMPS is the place the Navy sends you to make sure you are actually ready to be mobilized. They take care of all the issues the Reserve Center missed; mostly medical. NMPS is also the place you get your first sea bag of uniforms for the desert, or DCU's.

I did not have a rental car authorized on my orders, but I decided to splurge and get one. For anyone who has been to the Naval Station Norfolk, it is a large base and the thought of being stuck there for a week was not something I could stomach.

NMPS was pretty laid back. Most days, I was done by noon, so I had some time to hit the gym and go out in town to run errands. They told us the schedule, or lack there of, was intentional so everyone had enough time to take care of all their pre-deployment issues. I was generally squared away, so it turned out to be a pretty easy week. I even had time on Tuesday to catch up with a buddy I used to work with in DC who now lives in Virginia Beach.

On Saturday, they bussed us from Norfolk to Fort Jackson, SC (near Columbia) - eight hours of joy! Fort Jackson is where an Individual Augmentee (IA) like myself goes for Navy Individual Augmentation Combat Training (NIACT). To put it plainly, it is where a Navy Sailor goes to learn how to be an Army Soldier. It is geared for those IA's heading to Iraq and Afghanistan to support the Army, but since HOA is considered a contingency operation, I get to go through it as well.

Will write more about Fort Jackson once I get started, but it promises to be an interesting time.

PICTURE OF THE WEEK: Loading up the bus at NMPS prior to departing for Fort Jackson.