At the CRC

The CRC

The CRC does not rank high on any soldiers list of Things I’d Love To Do All Over Again. My attempts to prepare myself by harvesting the experiences of others always boiled down to the same advice: forget you are a colonel, remember when you were a private.

Fundamentally true and sound advice. There is a lot going on at any given time and very little patience for the needs of the few. More than 400 soldiers, Department of the Army civilians, and Department of Defense contactors pass through here every week and the difficulties of herding these cats become obvious on day one. The cadre made it abundantly clear that there were more people present than the course could handle, so right away everyone becomes nervous and the jockeying begins to not be the guy or gal at the end of the line. Which ultimately someone has to be.

The civilians and military were formed into separate groups and in fact had distinctive inprocessing tasks. There was relative comfort on the military side that, if you had a reservation, you were going to get into the class. The civilians were clearly not all going to make it but there was no method of culling the herd up front, and so it became a mighty entertaining show when they were being corralled into lines for what folks sensed would be a first come, first served type of deal. Which it was.

So, approximately one half of the contractor civilians were sent packing that day. The remainder had the rest of the day to accomplish two fairly simple tasks, but for nearly one-half of the group this turned out badly. Both events were scheduled to take place at the CRC training site. The first was a diagnostic brain functions test, administered via computer, that forms a baseline in case anyone suffers some sort of trauma that might affect mental acuity. The other task was to simply sit through a 1.5 hour introduction and orientation.

As I alluded to, for many folks this went as programmed. Upon completing inprocessing, groups formed up and were either marched of to do these tasks or given another time to report and be marched off. I was with a group directed to report back at 1415, which we diligently complied with. 45 minutes later we were finally moved out to the training site. Even though the technician was present to begin the brain functions test, nobody was directed to do so. Later groups continued to arrive and still we sat. Ultimately, we waited about four hours doing absolutely nothing, got the introduction but were forced to return at 0530 two days later to finally do the testing.

So, the thing did not get off on the right foot. Much to my delight, things got considerably better after the first day. Eventually, we waded through medical screening, were issued way too much gear to haul around, and were wisked through some reasonably appropriate training and finally bused to the airfield to prepare for departure.

I’ll pick up on that adventure next posting.