Putting my foot in it... (Part 1)

The aspen trees around here are really golden yellow now, and the other non-conifers are changing color as well. It's quite lovely.

Yesterday, SPC C and I accompanied our Observer/Controller (O/C) [sounds rather sinister, don't you think?] into The Box to 'recon' our Area of Operations (AO).

As an aside, I'm flabbergasted that in just three short years I find myself speaking in acronyms. When I first started hanging around the two National Guard Battalions which were under the Command of a man who's become one of my best friends in the Guard, I was completely flummoxed by the throwing around of an alphabet soup which made no sense to me whatsover. Now *I'm* doing it.

Sigh.

I'd asked SFC A the night before whether we needed a 'trip ticket' to leave the wire, or whether I needed to come up with another vehicle (and personnel) so we could have two vehicles traveling together. He told me 'no' on both accounts.

So we were to take off at 1000 hours yesterday morning. SPC C readied our vehicle and just as I showed up (the requisite 15 minutes early -- can you believe I'd ever be early for anything?), I got a rather stern note telling me I needed to go to a building across our compound. Folks in that building needed information from me concerning my upcoming trip, even though I still didn't have orders to go on it.

I figured that information was more important than the morning's mission, so off I went. SPC C would bring SFC A and himself around to pick me up. I was hoping it would only take a few minutes, but I was there for forty-five.

Evidently this trip involves complexities of paperwork I'd never dreamed of.

I finally excused myself, and off we three went in our two vehicles. The drive in and through our sector of The Box was lovely. Rolling hills. Large meadows. Dark conifer woods. Fluffy clouds above. Falling temperatures.

(Well, the last bit you can have, actually.)

We stopped off in one "village" replete with a prominent minaret, visible from several kilometers away. As we walked through the town, I was amazed to find that I understood both the Albanian and Serbo-Croatian being spoken by the residents. (Unlike Summer Camp - North, wherein we actually had real Albanian and Serbo-Croatian being spoken, here overseas, everybody is speaking a language I actually studied in college, and we're pretending it's either Serbo-Croatian or Albanian.)

Given that I'd audited this particular language for a year in college, I was able to make myself understood pretty well with the "Imam" and the "Priest" in each of the two "villages" we visited. (The Army must be shelling out a lot of money to be paying locals to hang out in these "villages" for us to interact with.)

It was fun to be speaking a language I'd not attempted to speak in probably 27 years (the last time was when I spent the summer at the Vatican Astronomical Observatory at Castel Gandolfo, Italy -- but that's another story entirely). It was also incredibly frustrating! The actors were very gracious, and all in all, it was a good experience.

In the second town I noticed some handbills posted on buildings, written in that same language. My powers of translation are decidedly weaker than they once were, but I realized there was some information contained in those handbills that my colleagues back in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) did not know, but would probably need and want to have.

So I photographed each of the posters before we left town to return to Post.

Little did I know that I was putting my foot in it, as they say....

Blessings and peace to one and all,

Fr. Tim, SJ

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