MOB Day #5 - Big Gaggle Day

This is really the beginning of the real mobilization process at NMPS San Diego.

Acronym Moment:

• NMPS - Navy Mobilization Processing Sites. Where they stick you with needles, tell you about serving with the Army, and otherwise make sure you are 'good to go'.

The NMPS process takes one week. There is an NMPS in San Diego, one in Norfolk, VA, and probably others. The one here seems to pride itself on being the best.

I get the feeling that most of the time, the number of people going through NMPS is considerably smaller. It's usually just IAs and GSAs. This week the predonderance of people are Reservists mobilizing to the hospital at Landstuhl, Germany. They are going for a year. Because they aren't going 'forward' as most would call it, they skip the happy times at an Army base here in the States learning how to shoot guns and crawl through the mud.

Acronym moment:

• IA = Individual Augmentee, those who are essentially sent TAD from their command (ship, staff, shore duty)
• GSA = Global Support Augmentee, those who go from their last command, to this tour, then on to another (usually involves benefit of getting to choose their next tour).

The Landstuhl group is quite large. I appears the entire hospital is manned by a rotating group of Reservists. I happen to know a couple of the senior officers in this group from my time in CNFK. My old AOIC is also going, but for some reason is a couple weeks behind the main body.

Speaking of main bodies, the I'm with the advance party for Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron One, MAR EXP SECRON ONE for short, or MSRON 1 in the shortest incantation. Don't you like how we shorten names sometimes, and other times we make acronyms?

For the record, I think we're going with MSRON ONE, pronounced mez-ron won. For anyone interested, there was an excellent two-page article in this month's The Navy Reservist (TNR) from someone on a previous MSRON describing exactly what we will be doing over there. E-mail me and I can send you a pdf of the two pages.

My day started at 0600 for some initial processing. When I arrived at the NMPS building the rest of the MSRON ONE group was just leaving. But I met the Commodore for the first time, along with a couple others. It didn't take me long to go through the initial process, mainly recording my height and weight, taking my blood pressure, and turning in my medical and dental records for them to scrub. Then I was released for breakfast. I went to the base galley, and again ran into the closest thing I have for a sponsor, another LCDR from Sacramento who sent the e-mail that got me to volunteer for this whole sha-bang.

At 0730 we met in front of the quarters check-in desk and loaded buses for the base auditorium over on the 'wet side,' apparently the only thing big enough to hold such a large group.

Big Gaggle of people

The beginning of any exercise or Navy evolution always starts the same way: Everyone in one place at one time, all sort of wondering what we're supposed to do, who we're going to work with, and where do we go next. That's why I love to refer to this point in time as the 'Big Gaggle.' It usually starts with a Big Gaggle Brief where some Admiral or General gets up and welcomes us, says some inspirational words, and we split up into groups ("JFACC meet down here by the stage, right side!").

This day was not much different, except the fine folks and NMPS do this for a living. So there was no Admiral, just a Commander. We were welcomed, but it was made pretty clear there is a 'process' and pretty strict rules in order to get us all 'processed' in less than one week. Basically we became not much more than numbers; in fact they took role call by our last four of our social.

After a morning and early afternoon of briefs and filling out and turning in paperwork from our 'tri-folds' we returned to the dry side. The hurry-up-and-wait phenonminon started to kick in. Eventually we were released for early dinner and told to be back. We all crammed into a smaller auditorium to receive our group assignments. By this time they had reviewed our medical and dental records and determined, ostensibly, the best groupings to get us all taken care of.

I was assigned to Group A with a 0530 report time (really 0510 once you subtract 15 minutes to be there early and another 5 minutes to be on 'their' time). Yeah! I can only hope this is to make sure we get a good start and every day doesn't start this early. Or that an early start means an early finish. The last group didn't have to report until 1300, but it was only four people and they allegedly had everything done including all their NKO courses.

Acronym Moment:

• NKO = Navy Knowledge Online. Really Navy e-Learning, or where we take distance learning courses and they get recorded for stuff like this.

So off I went to finish my Naval Postgraduate School, Systems Analysis, homework for last week. Thankfully I got most of it done before Katie and I went to Maine last Monday and Tuesday. Only two more weeks to go on this certification.

Early start tomorrow, off to bed!