Farewells and Such

Today our little band of slide zombies had to say adios to one of own. Goodye, Big Dan and good luck in your travels. It has been a real pleasure sharing workspace with you and enjoying the fruits of your considerable analytical talents.

Dan was an on-site agent for a large contract operation we run here. He, and a whole lot more like him, volunteer to represent their companies in locations that most prefer to leave off of their preference lists. Their services are no less vital than that of the uniformed military here and the sacrifices no less challenging. If you run across any of them in conversation, please thank them because we would have had no success here in Iraq without the huge assistance they provide.

Sadly, departures such as Dan's are far too frequent here due to the nature of assignments to a war zone. Almost all of the people working for the headquarters of USF-I are individual augmentees, meaning the military (and the contract agencies) are forever trolling to find warm bodies to fill positions anywhere from 4 months to a full year. The result is a steady and rapid turnover of personnel. There are just eight folks working in my little cell, but the nature of this assignment beast is such that every single person working here when I arrived will be gone before I leave.

And so, many are the goodbyes. I thought it bad enough just being a military careerist: moves every 1-3 years, farewells for hundreds of close companions, wives crying in driveways and doorways, fearing that goodbye was forever. Only after a couple of decades do you start to understand how small the world can be and fully appreciate that your good friends then are still your good friends 25 years later.

Still, the churn of normal miltiary comings and goings can seem bewildering, what with the ceremony of a single goodbye involving lunches and beer calls and solemn ceremonies for the beqeathing of appropriate medals, flourishes, and honors. And this in organizations where the minimum stay is typically two years.

Here the merry-go-round turns a bit faster. My little groups has a 4-month guy, some 6-monthers, and some unfortunates like me in for a year. The big downside to this is that almost every month out that I can see I have to check off another person leaving and figure out how to manage the subsequent train-up of a replacement. If one arrives.

It seems you just get to knowing someone and all of a sudden your standing out at the curb in 118 degree heat, waiting for the Armored Winnebago to come wisk them away to the better life you know awaits them. So it is, so it has been, so it will ever be in this environment.

Anyway, see you later Dan!