The New Command - (Germany) Day 199

There was no PT this morning. We had a formation at 0730, then most of the folks got ready for the change of command ceremony. There were a lot that were going to be involved in it, and everyone else was told they had to sit in the stands and watch. The army seems to have a ceremony for just about everything and with most of them being pretty boring, nobody would attend…that is why people are forced to attend these events, they have to fill up the stands to make it look good...everything is about appearances.

I was lucky enough to have scheduled an appointment long before we were told of the ceremony, so I didn't have to be involved with any of it. I had to pick up my daughter and take her in for a physical. The physical went just fine and then we headed up to EFMP to schedule an appointment for the EFMP screening…which will be this Monday. We are now almost done with everything we will do for the command sponsorship progress. Once this is done, we'll submit all the signed paperwork and it will all be in the hands of the army.

After dropping my daughter back off at the house I arrived back to work just in time to take lunch.

After lunch I learned how to send ComSec material…it was kind of like arts and crafts day with boxes in boxes and lots of special (tamper proof) tape and paper. By the time we finished it was "Town Hall" meeting time with our new battalion commander and command sergeant major. The commander spoke for about 20 minutes about his expectations, then turned it over to the new command sergeant major and left. The CSM is a talker and went on and on for well over an hour. He talked about everything under the sun it seemed. His life history, expectations, consequences, having fun and so on. He called out an NCO in the front row and told her to stand up and say the first paragraph of the NCO creed…she stumbled under the pressure and he went on to say how every NCO needs to know the creed. We learned that he is a great spades and dominoes player.

We thought it was finally over, but then our first sergeant had to put in his two cents for a little bit before we were finally let go. We headed back to the shop where we then heard yet another speech from our platoon sergeant. At the end he did give some very good advice "Do not get into trouble this four day weekend. It's the new command groups first four day and if you get into trouble, they will make an example out of you" Let's hope everyone listens to that advice.

We cleaned up our office and were finally released for the day at 1630…time to start the four day! I headed home and had family dinner and a family movie as usual. The movie tonight was "Due Date" which my middle child had never seen…pretty funny movie!