Low fuel

My section sergeant is about to go on leave. I’ve been learning my new schedule – when and where to be now that our two-person shop will be but in half.

There’s the morning commander’s directive brief, the morning executive officer update, the “stand up” for staff personnel, the campaign update brief, the admin update brief, the trends brief, the brigade update brief, the battalion commander’s call, the division call, and finally, the FRAGO publication briefings.

All require PowerPoint slides, which I’ve been learning how to do. Lovely. Bill Gates should get a medal. The American military wins it’s wars through PowerPoint. Then again, I’m sure the few billion bucks he’s made off of licensing his software makes up for that.

The rub is that I have no time to do journalism stuff, which is sort of what I went to war for. Our higher headquarters is sending down someone to help take up the slack, but we’ll have to see how things turn out. I can’t expect her to go to these things.

There’s a picture slide show that the colonel likes playing in the background during a weekly Sunday briefing. The original idea was for us to showcase the photos we had taken that week. Simple, no problem. It was nothing more than eye candy and had nothing to do with our mission. Covering two or three stories a week would yield 15-20 decent pictures. No biggie. I mean, how many shots of a guy checking oil can you really squeeze out of a story?

But 15-20 wasn’t nearly enough. The command stepped in and, to make sure we were taking “enough,” dictated that the weekly slide show be at least 130 pictures. Oey!

One hundred thirty new, varied photographs each week? With the rest of this crap to do? Impossible. I even went in and stood my ground. “Sir,” I said, “with the number quota, I can’t give you that quantity and make them quality shots.”

“I was in the recruiting command,” replied our stand-in executive officer. “I expected my recruiters to give me quantity and quality.”

HA! That was worth a post in and of itself.

“Yes sir, but –”

“Just get it done!”

Oh yes, how silly of me. I had forgotten.

P.S. A new “Wrangler” is out. Enjoy it while it lasts. We might be discontinuing it. Have to make cut-backs somewhere.

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