Good news, people!

A few days ago I testified before a committee. The subject of what to call the new year was discussed.

I proposed adding a one (1) to the current tally. I felt that this was the best and easiest way to transition from one period of time to the next. It just made sense to me.

Well, there were several old curmudgeons on the panel, each with his or her own spin on things. My words were largely ignored, at least I thought so.

You can imagine my surprise when I awoke this morning to find those sneaky bastards not only accepted my proposal, but forwarded the new number on to New York and cities worldwide in anticipation of the turning of the date!

Pretty awesome, eh? 2008! Woohoo! I hope they’ll invite me back next year. I think I might be able to push for a recurring numbering system for this year situation. If I can push it through, that’d be one less thing to fret over at the close of each December.

On a more serious note, I received my January/February issue of the Army Logistician today—a formal trade publication that serves the Army officer corps involved with supplies and—well, logistics.

It’s quite a thing to have one’s work published in the publication, at least in the small circles of officers who read it. To supply and logistical unit commanders, it’s pretty much The New Yorker.

As I worked for such a logistical unit while assigned to Fort Hood, Texas, it was my duty to strive and strive to author works of sufficient weight and poignancy to earn the right to be published in this coveted magazine. My pedestrian weekly stories chronicling individual soldiers or specific unit missions could hardly elbow room in the hearts of my commanders as would a byline in the Logistician.

At the direction of my colonel roughly a year ago, I began work on three mammoth articles that spanned our entire deployment to Iraq and efforts upon our return. After dozens upon dozens of interviews, hours of interviews transcribed, weekly meetings with the colonel, rewrite after rewrite, I finally finished all three in the closing weeks of my incarceration at Fort Hood.

The November/December issue of the Logistician carried the first of my articles and the latest issue carried the final two.

There, published three times in a magazine read by colonels, generals and adoring majors. Two of the articles even have my name on them, in a magnanimous gesture by my old commander. Usually senior officers use these bylines to grease the wheels for future promotions. The appearance of “staff sergeant” among colonels and warrant officers is pretty funny, I think.

Still, although it’s about as exciting as giving a tour of a bedroom, the damn things represent months of my life and the final, now closed, chapter that was Fort Hood. I shudder at the mention of the possibility of ever having to be assigned there again.

May God have mercy on those still stop-lossed there.

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