I have finished up training at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Three weeks of training that included convoy situational training lanes, weapons' qualification, and individual warrior task training proved to be rather tiring and, at times, frustrating for all involved. I'm the Platoon Sergeant for 2nd Platoon, Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 124th Cavalry. As most who know me are aware, I've been with this Cavalry Squadron for my entire career in the National Guard, with the exception of my deployment to Bosnia with HHC, 49th Armored Division eight years ago. I'm a proud cavalry scout and have been waiting for the opportunity to lead a scout platoon into combat for a long time. It will prove to be challenging as I begin to develop my platoon, which is comprised mostly of "fillers" from other units across the state, very few of which are actually cavalry scouts. Our mission remains up in the air and even if I knew it, I won't be talking about specifics here anyway.

My platoon has made it to Fort Wolters in Mineral Wells, Texas and will be here for a few more days before moving back to Waco to release for the 4th of July. I'll be back on orders again following the holiday and at this point, I have no idea what I'll be doing during the period between now and our next training period in August. We'll be in Fort Wolters again at the end of July and will remain here until our Federal active duty orders kick in, at which point, we'll begin the official preparation for deployment to Iraq. I'll get into more of that later.

Fort Wolters, located in Mineral Wells, was an old World War 2 training camp and during Vietnam, was an Army aviation training camp. The most significant part of its history, as far as I'm concerned, is that it was the drilling location for F Troop, and specifically, Jack Knight, the only Medal of Honor recipient in the China Burma India theater of operations in World War 2. F Troop was part of my Cavalry Regiment and Fort Wolters served as the drilling grounds for one of the last horse cavalry regiments in the US Army. Jack Knight served at the commander for F Troop and served along with his brother Curtis, who was the Troop First Sergeant. I had the pleasure of meeting his youngest brother, Bill, who happens to live in Mineola and also happens to know Kristi's grandmother....small world. Learn more about the Regiment at the other website I maintain, http://marsmen.org.

Internet access, while present, is miserably slow through the tethering on my phone so photos will be uploaded while I'm home for the holiday. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures but promise to make up for it in August and when we get to our mobilization station.