Thanksgiving Day Fox News radio is going to have an news special about troops and their life in forward deployed location including a segment with an Air Force chaplain. I look forward to hearing this, but I have to laugh thinking about it.
Monday night I checked my email for the first time in several days. To my utter shock and surprise I had an invitation to be interviewed by Fox for this segment. I had read an article by one of their correspondents about how he was in the process of loosing half his body weight, something I myself had to contend with 20 years ago today. (Yep, believe it or not - I topped out at 320 when I was 22). I had written him a quick note to encourage him to keep with it and he had written back that they wished to find an AF chaplain for this segment. They were taping at 1400 (2pm) yesterday, so I informed and secured the permission of my supervising chaplain, and from Public Affairs in my chain of command. IN the midst of this I was attending a meeting for my supervising chaplain and a uniform fitting for cold weather over at Bolling. But everything came together like clockwork. My colleague having graciously took my funeral, and I was arriving at Fox having made my way through DC traffic, (almost as difficult as loosing the weight so many years ago) when I received a call from the Air Force Chief of Chaplains office explaining that they had arranged for a phone interview with the command chaplain who is currently deployed for CENTAF and that I didn't need to report for the interview. So I made my way back out of downtown and experienced once again the joy of trying to figure out how to get back to where you came from with all DC's one way streets. I finally wound up over on the east side of the belt way before I found something I recognized. That is one nice thing about the belt way - if you get disoriented you will eventually run into it somewhere. It was a hectic day. I had a nice cup of cappuccino once I got home.
I do look forward to hearing the segment especially to compare how things are going now compared to how they were going when I was deployed with the troops last Thanksgiving and Christmas. I recall Thanksgiving fondly, because that night we were being shelled. It was after the service and we were still locked down from the shelling and a handfull of us were still there, including some who have become my friends from the EMEDS unit. We sat around finishing off my wife's famous fudge and singing Christmas carols. It truly was a grand time. I was glad to have my friends with me as a box of fudge is a huge tempation to an ex fat guy.
