One Year Later

I was able to spend some time on the phone with Chris the other day. Come next week it will be one year since he's been home. When I spoke to him he was on a bus heading out to some more field training. Only this time they will be living in tents and, as he said, "it's getting freaking cold". He'll be out of touch for about 4 weeks.

His trip home for Christmas may be on hold. It seems he has become quite the marksman and the Army may send him to school for sniper training. That training would start around December 1st and goes for 5 weeks. Even though the training would be at Fort Benning in Georgia he would not be able to make a side trip home. So if this happens the earliest he could make it back would be in February.

It looks like deployment to Iraq is a given. He said it would most likely happen in March and would be a 15 month tour. If he takes this training he would become part of a hunter patrol. That's a 4 man patrol that would go out on their own to an area of insurgent problems, like the laying of IED's, and lie in ambush waiting for them. Ot them for him. Not exactly the job I would be hoping he would get but we'll take it as it comes.