Last year I celebrated the 233rd Army Birthday by attending the official Army Ball in Washington by being one of 6 E4s who weren’t working the event.  The Army’s 234th Birthday was yesterday and it was pretty eventful for me.  I covered two stories involving the unit I’m supporting here in Kalsu, the 172nd Infantry Brigade Blackhawks.  They decided to have a parade where the highlight was the command group, that includes a full-bird Colonel and a scrappy Command Sergeant Major, spraying down engineers dancing to the YMCA on the back of a flatbed with water guns.  Then I covered an NCO Induction ceremony that was pretty damn awesome.  I’ll be working on packages for these stories as soon as I get back to Basra this week.

In the mean time, I recorded a one-way conversation with the “Army.”

I interviewed quite a few people yesterday and I asked all of them how the Army is looking on a scale of 1 to 10 on her 234th birthday.  Remember I gave the army a “deployment 6″ rating.  She’s been worked pretty hard the last couple of years.  We can’t expect our lovely lady to get put through the ringer and still come out looking like a beautiful 221-year-old.  She’s a handsome 234, but looks good…..for 234.

I've been caught drinking the communal wine

This post is tagged 234 years young, 343rd MPAD, Army Ball, Army Birthday, Deployment 6, One-way Conversation