Finally made it to Ft. Bliss, TX to move through the “CONUS Replacement Center“ (CRC).  After we lost some of our group to assignements to Afghanistan & elsewhere, the rest of us “Iraq-bound“ are finally at our CRC and, so far, loving every minute of it (NOT).  Its definitely Grand Central Station here...  a large contingent of Navy, Airforce, Civilians, and Medical Corps Doctors intermingled with the typical array of Army folks.  No one knows what the correct uniform is as we've seen just about every variation you can think of. 

We got started off Sunday as people reported into the CRC in a steady stream all day.  The cadre had a number of inprocessing steps that continued until about 2200.  Unfortunately, the last thing they did was assign our quarters, so most of us finally got a bunk in the barracks just in time for lights out.  The it was up at 0400 to be get ready for the first formation.

We had a full day of the “Soldier Readiness” in-processing today along with a civilian-contractor-run First Aid class (if you can believe it).  They had a nice battlefield simulation practical exercise at the end, but I'm not sure its worth the cost of what looked like 10-15 "Contractor" instructors! This type of training used to be done while we waited for a bus or the chow hall to open up!  We sure didn't need outside contractors...

We've got the typical Equipment Issue (a LOT of it), Weapons Qual, & Land Navigation through Sunday. Sounds like we'll be headed out in 12-14 days. I think the highlight tomorrow will be the stripped-down Body Scan to determine our DCU sizes!  If they bought the technology, I guess they need to use it!