“Hey! Don’t I know you?”

“Hey!  Don’t I know you?”

I get that from time to time.  I was at the Mayor’s cell in Taji and went in to see the Garrison Commander, a LTC from the Idaho Guard.

“Hey! Don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so…have you been to 90 Alpha school?  Maybe…are you an aviator?”

“Once.  But I know you!  I know that name!”

Before I left Camp Buehring in Kuwait a CW5 West was standing next to me as I am gathering some salad and he says, “Do you have a brother?”  Oops!  (Another guy from my past)  That wasn’t my brother that was me.  A young me, granted, but still me.

I was his TAC officer when he went to flight school, the Warrant Officer Military development Course (WOC-D).

The XO was a Warrant Officer Candidate when I was his TAC Officer (Training Advising Counseling) in WOC-D also.  He was there with another guy from California with the same last name.  California!  Who would ever want to go there! (23+ years later I have been there that long).

We yelled at them and turned them from enlisted Soldiers into officers. Think “An Officer and a Gentleman” meets “Gomer Pyle” for six weeks.  Some people quit, but really it wasn’t that hard.  I mean the XO made it, so how tough could it be?  Back when I went through…it was really tough!

Mark Watters was trained by me also.  When he showed up at Los Alamitos there I was.  I didn’t remember but he did.  Last week he sent me a friend request and a webpage for all his old buddies from that class.

CW5 Jeff is here in the brigade too.  I was his NVG flight instructor in flight school.  The last time we flew goggles together I was teaching him; if we fly here he will be teaching me (refresher training).  I really haven’t lost a step…and goggles were dangerous back then (look it up!)  Now that I am passing 50…I am not so sure I want to fly NVG but if you are going to fly at night it is the safest way to fly.

About two years ago I was in the John Wayne airport and a guy walks up and asks me my name and tells me I was his TAC officer too.  Small world.  Only one guy resented me for years afterwards and he didn’t make this deployment (but he tried to) for medical reasons; getting close to or over 50 and there are more medical issues popping up than you can believe.

As we left the Garrison Commander’s office he said, “OCS.  Ft. Benning, summer of 1992!”  Yep!  That was me and him and 100 or so other screaming idiots at Officer Candidate School.  Ft. Benning, Georgia in the summer is incredibly humid, hot, muggy, with TAC officers who were nice enough but really sub-standard.  I mean really; why would great leaders go to be a TAC on purpose?

You never know whose lives you will touch or when you will meet them again.  Since I will be working with the Garrison Commander to get things done around here (he is in charge of coordinating the different activities of the guards, contractors, roads, water and a million other things.)  He isn’t in charge of any of them but he is in charge of making it all happen.  And now I have a friend in the office.  Life is sweet!