Uniforms!

OK, so I'm trying to add some pictures, but I guess I have some more to learn. Give me some time. In the meanwhile I'll regale you with "Tales of the uniforms".

As you can see in my blog picture, I am currently wearing the Army's ACU, or Army Combat Uniform. As I was preparing to leave, all the instructions we (this applies to all Air Force people over here doing this job) were told that we would wear the ACUs. Now, these instructions came from Air Force A3 up at the Pentagon. So, even though I was issued Air Force DCUs (Desert Combat Uniforms) I only brought one along because we were told that we weren't allowed to wear the Army uniform on an Air Force base, so it would be wise to have one along just in case.

So, I show up at Camp MacCrady for the Army combat training. That's where we learned to shoot very well and other combat techniques. While there we were all issued the Army ACUs. I had already ordered the proper Air Force name tags and everything so I was set. We wore the ACUs during training and while in transit to Iraq. Everything was going well, or so I thought. When we graduated from the JCCS-1 class that we all have to take, The Deputy Commander of the 732 Expeditionary Squadron (the Air Force squadron that has Administrative control and Operational Control over us) came down to "welcome" us all to Iraq. I put that in quotes because what he really came down for was to mark his territory. He spent almost an hour showing us powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide showing us in no uncertain terms that we belonged to him. It was all so very impressive.

After his little spiel, he then went on to explain that we were all wearing the wrong uniform and that we were not allowed to wear the ACUs and had to wear the DCUs. We explained to him the situation, the instructions from the pentagon and the fact that all the Navy personnel we were working with were wearing the ACUs. He would have none of it. This even got as far as getting our local squadron commander (a Navy O-6) involved with our group commander in Balad (an Air Force O-6, or Colonel). They went round and round over the phone and it basically ended with the Navy Captain saying that if we wore DCUs he would send us home, and the Air Force Colonel saying that if we wore ACUs he'd send us home. There followed a flurry of emails between the Deputy and me (I'm the ranking Air Force guy at JCCS-1 Headquarters) telling me that we all needed to have our DCUs sent out, and in the mean time, we were to wear the one set of DCUs we had whenever we could.

We've been in contact with Mary at the Pentagon. She's the one that gave us the information about the uniforms to begin with. She, like us, feels that this guy is next to certifiable and shouldn't be in the position he's in. As it turns out, this guy is not only not a front line combat guy (he's a contracting officer) but he's not even an active duty guy. He's a reservist! So, this is what happens when you have a rear echelon type reservist put in charge of a bunch of actual warfighters. He's more concerned with the tiny little details instead of letting us do what we were originally told to do, and something that makes us much more effective in fighting the war.

So, before you think I'm just a big whiner, let me explain a bit. I personally don't care which uniform I wear. In the big scheme of things, I'm not going to go "outside the wire" so the camouflage protection offered by the Army uniform isn't really a factor. The Army uniform is a bit more functional in that it has many more pockets than the Air Force uniform (more like the flight suits I'm used to). What upsets us all about this is the way it's being done. This guy, who we will only see once a month or so when he comes down to welcome the newest Air Force guys in theater (and figuratively urinate on them to mark his territory) is threatening us with action if we wear the uniforms that we were told to wear, that our squadron mates are wearing, and that the Army trusts when we wear them. Oh well, the soap opera that is our lives. "like tons of desert sands through the hourglass, so are the day of our deployment". Or something like that.