Day 1 - First day of training at CALL

I have to admit that I was a little worried that only a week's training anywhere would not prepare me to do my job while deployed since I haven't been to this theater.

Today's training has gone a long ways to putting those fears to rest. These guys here at CALL have their stuff together. When I reported in at 7:30am, there was someone to greet me and the whole team knew I was coming. After initial meet and greet with the four ops guys (mostly all former battalion commanders and retired COLs), I got my training plan, which packed every hour for 5 days with essential briefings and activities. Some of them were admin, like inprocessing personnel and finance. Even these weren't bad because my ops guy had an appointment set andpersonally brought me there himself. I'd never had this, but if I were with a unit, any of these half-hour long sessions would probably have taken several hours.

More informative were the sessions on what CALL is, how to introduce myself and my mission to the unit commander, and how to generally be successful in the job. The folks here at CALL have a lot of faith in us, the TODs (Theater Observation Detachment) and our ability to be creative, adapt to the situation, get along with others, and suck out critical information to pass on to the rest of the Army. And, for the most part, it works.

What jazzed me up the most I think was learning that I'd have some say in creating a collections plan and deciding what I would be focusing my attention on. Since I'll be a division-level TOD, I was worried that I'd be isolated from the troops and play powerpoint jockey. Not so. The plans person who briefed me said that I needed to let the analyst know that I was more interested in tactical lessons learned and observations and also perhaps cross-cultural interactions with the Iraqis -- something he thought I could sell based on my time in Asia.

It was a full day -- but I definitely have a good vibe based on the professionalism of the people I've met here so far, the training they've got set up, and the quality of my fellow TODs elsewhere in theater. There will be just a handful of other observers in Iraq, which is both a challenge and also an opportunity to really play a part.