Update #2 from Joe, the Castle's Sailor in Iraq.

The take-away? Toujours souple!

It’s been an interesting time here, going from Naval Intelligence Officer to State Department Sheep Expert

One thing that I’ve learned over my military career is that when things go wrong there are really only two things you can do. First, control the bleeding as much a possible, and second make sure it turns out so you can tell an amusing story about it later.

A few days ago I find out from the provincial team that the Marine Brigadier General in charge of civil affairs wants a briefing on a sheep feed program I inherited from the previous Ramadi area agriculture rep. Now it’s not the first time I’ve spoken to general officers but the provincial agricultural rep said he would do it. So several layers of agricultural experts get together and I used my experience as a planner and came up with some planning assumptions, courses of action and a way ahead for what we were trying to do. Everyone is nodding their heads, and the staff rep says the general is coming by at 1300. The provincial rep says “I can’t be here at 1300!” and all eyes tuned towards me.

Again, no big deal, I set up a meeting to go over my slides at 0900 and we all split up to go to work. I put some slides together, finished around 10pm, and went off to enjoy the rest of the night. Next morning I’m in my room about 0830 thinking “roll into the slide review, go work out, finally take a shower, change my uniform and go brief.”

It’s at that moment when there’s a knock on the door and I hear “hey they changed the meeting time, its happening right now.” …well thank God I at least shaved already.

So I pile into a three day old uniform that has mud stains from Ft Campbell I can’t get out, grab my draft slides and off I go.

Turns out the meeting is to cover a multitude of issues in his office, not ours, so my briefing is all wrong for the audience. . There is a slide for every issue he is addressing, (the agriculture one is blank, except for my name.) The meeting goes about as well as I could expect, especially when I find out that he asked a bunch of question when he was here last time that I didn’t know about. But I got some expert help and did hold my own. I wasn’t fired and any meeting with a general officer where I am not at attention the whole time can’t be all bad.

I just like the first impression he has. “Honan, oh he’s the dirty, unprepared sheep expert who shows up late.” That will great on my next fitness report.

Seriously though, I saved his staff hours of work on a project they had no idea about, so I gained some silver bullets to be used later. It’s been an interesting time here, going from Naval Intelligence Officer to State Department Sheep Expert, I had the Civil Affairs Team in stunned silence while I compared the local Awassi breed’s wool to the Merino, Shropshire and Hampshire breeds. If I can get my old sheep shears sent out maybe I’ll get back into the game. Its funny how life works sometimes.