Mail Call

Sam's letters to her loved ones from Basic Training and AIT

11 July 2007

Update on Army Goddess

She arrived in Germany on Friday morning, July 6. However, after everyone else had been processed, they were unable to get anyone in Heidelberg on the phone to confirm her assignment. So she spent the weekend in a transition housing place in Hanau.

On Monday morning, she was told she was being reassigned to Wiesbaden. She was transported there and during "inprocessing" someone noticed her job on the orders and told her that wouldn't work there. All their mental health services are contracted to civilians. It turns out they were looking for a 68W (combat medic) rather than a 68X (mental health specialist). So back to Hanau.

A day later, she called me today from her new home in Landstuhl, Germany. She got moved this morning and has already been assigned a room, a company, and a sponsor (a soldier who has been there a while and becomes a kind of guide for new people). Tomorrow she will continue "inprocessing."

She will be working for the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center -- the largest Army medical center in the world (outside the US). This is the first stop for all wounded combat personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan. She is very excited about her new job. She will be in orientation 2-3 weeks which will include tours of the city and learning to eat in local restaurants (sounds like hell doesn't it?!)

Landstuhl is a relatively small German city but the installation is a part of the Kaiserslautern Military Community (shortened to K-town by infidel Americans) which includes the air base at Ramstein and multiple other posts/bases in the area to form the largest American community in the world outside the US. But it is still Germany (4 hour drive to Paris; 4.5 hrs to Amsterdam; 3 hrs. to Switzerland; 6 hrs to Italy).