A Few New Hats

The next fun and exciting adventure in the life of an Ensign is my latest assignment, to run the Battalions Mount Out Control Center. In a nut shell, the MOCC is the “brain” of the battalion for movement of troops, gear, and equipment. As the Officer In Charge, I am responsible to track every piece of equipment (ie fuel truck, Hummers, Generators,etc) as well as track the packing of pallets of gear and lastly track the people that would be deployed. This is all driven by several factors including, where we are going, what we need to take with us, and who needs to go. These are all prioritized and arranged to fit on planes, which we call birds. TRANSCOM tells us which type of planes we will receive(C-130, C-17, C-5, etc) and when they will be here and planning starts so the birds aren’t on the ground longer than 6 hours.

MOCC OIC (Officer in Charge) and Embark officer(trying to make an "E")


My job in the MOCC is to oversee the flow of information, and follow a checklist that tells me who should be doing what, what time they should be doing it, and in what order. Based on information flow from higher and knowledge of what going on in the battalion I proceed to make the mount out run as smoothly as possible. This is accomplished by a team of people, with me “steering the boat”.

NIGHT VISION!


My other new “hat” is being the battalion weapons and ordinance Officer. This means that I am the controller of all individual and heavy weapons, bullets, and explosives….also some really neat night vision. I have included a couple pictures of the crew served weapons we use; the 50 caliber machine gun, the 240B machine gun, and the m-19 automatic grenade launcher. I would tell you how many I have of each, but then I’d have to kill you.

50-Cal


Auto-Grenade Launcher


Also decided to take the “RAMBO” picture, now that I can. ENJOY!

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat!"
-Teddy Roosevelt

Snow in Southern California

So all of the 18 hour days and working through the night could not keep us down. Last Sunday, after a week of rain here is Southern California, we looked at the mountains to our North and saw snow.

These are the mountains(the goal), as seen from Port Hueneme.


Snow capped mountains don’t just look nice, they also make for a great hike. That’s just what we decided to do.
We climbed the tallest mountain we could find, somewhere inside of Las Padres National Forest. We knew there would be snow on the top, but never expected to have to hike through 4-6 inches of the stuff. Starting altitude was 2500ft above Sea Level, final alt was 5000+ ft. The hike to the top lasted about 3 hours.

(Playing in the snow)


Some Snow...and a beautiful waterfall.




After catching a great view and taking a bunch of photos, we climbed back to the bottom in about an hour and a half. Overall the hike was exhausting, but it felt great to get back into hiking, something I have not done much of since Boy Scouts.

Beautiful view off the front dash of our Chevy Pick-up.


We grabbed a quick dinner on the way home, and passed out about 8pm. Let’s just say that Monday morning PT and it’s 2 mile run was NOT fun.

What does it all mean??

I decided to stop and shake the rain off for a few minutes to enlighten you all with a second update. All I can say is what a week! Here in SoCal (southern california) we have had five days of solid rain. Sounds like nothing to my friends from the East Coast, but here on the Left that is A LOT. The courier post even covered it in an article here:

Five Days of Rain in Southern California

One the National Political scene it seems that the Country is finally waking up. I am not sure that the change the people would like is the same change that they sought when electing the big O, an no I don't mean Oprah. I think people are finally realizing that the answer to more effective government is less government. It does feel great to win Ted Kennedy's seat. Specifically that the person who won "Teddy's Seat" will be the vote needed to reject the largest increase in federal government intervention into private citizens lives since the great depression, something the Liberal Lion had worked to fuel for decades.

Well enough politics for now, but it was to big a win to go unmentioned.

I had a request that I specifically lay out what our battlions mission is in order for "my readers" to better understand what I am doing. I will attempt to summarize this as quickly as possible.


I am an Officer in Naval Mobile Contruction Battalion 21. A battalion is made up of approximately 600 people. The mobile aspect means that we can be ready to "mount out" and deploy within 48 hours of a order being recieved. Most important is our contruction mission, meaning we build and we fight. Contruction Batallions, or SeaBees (C-B's), became popular after WWII when the navy recruited contruction workers as enlisted Bees and Engineers and Officers. This is still true today, and the navy prides itself on having the most requested military construction force in the world, the SeaBees.

Our Bees are proficient in Building, Operating Heavy Equipment, Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, and all other types of construction projects. We are also all tactically astute and prepared to defend ourselves to the fullest in order to achieve mission completeness. Most contruction workers don't have to do their job while being shot at, we do and we can!

As an officer I am one of 15 people that oversee the running of the battalion. I say that because the Chiefs really run the Battallion, and without those 45+ Chiefs we would be dead in the water.

Stay tuned for more on my specific duties......

• The difficult we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer.
- U.S. Navy Seabees

Almost ready to start week number 2

Wow, it has been a long first week here in Port Hueneme California. The good part is that it is about 75 deg and sunny everyday, no rain, and a big weather event is when there is a 10mph breeze that cools us off to 70 deg. Since we have been here we have been through gear issue, medical and dental check in, and admin check in(pay).





These pictures are of the building that we processed through. Our battalion HQ is located here, as well as berthing(bedrooms/showers) for our sailors. They live about 20 to a large room.

Here are a few pictures of my berthing.





As you can see I have my own room to myself, TV, a fridge, and a nice bathroom. This is the berthing for all chiefs and officers.

One of our first tasks was preparing our troops for a PGI(personal Gear Issue) inspection. Pictured here:



My average day consists of waking up around 430am and working hard until about 9pm. It takes a lot of hard work to coordinate the movements of 500+ personel that are gearing up to go to war. Overall, the situation here is great, other than missing everyone. Thank you for the birthday wishes.

Me and my PGI gear:



I have decided to end each of my posts with a "thought of the week" of sorts.

Qualifications of a Naval Officer
Written by John Paul Jones

It is by no means enough that an officer of the Navy should be a capable mariner. He must be that, of course, but also a great deal more. He should be as well a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor.

He should be the soul of tact, patience, justice, firmness, and charity. No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention or be left to pass without its reward, even if the reward is only a word of approval. Conversely, he shouldn’t be blind to a single fault in any subordinate, though at the same time, he should be quick and unfailing to distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetence, and well meant shortcoming from heedless or stupid blunder.

In one word, every commander should keep constantly before him this great truth, that to be well obeyed, he must be perfectly esteemed.