As the days wind down of our days as citizen soldiers, and the sound of martial music, and the beating of drums grows more loudly in our ears, the soldiers of the 485th Engineers are ready to pick up the mantle of our forefathers, and soldier full time.
By soldier, I mean:
sol⋅dier /ˈsoʊldʒər/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [sohl-jer] –noun
1. a person who serves in an army; a person engaged in military service.
8.
Informal. a person who avoids work or pretends to work; loafer; malingerer.
Seriously though, we're ready. The stress of balancing civilian jobs with our volunteer position with the Government is nearly at an end, and I believe that simply through the completion of our full-time work, and the beginning of our part-time work, full-time, we'll all be much happier.
The responses have been interesting to watch on the people in my company. Some grew pale when word was first announced that we were probably going; others became super-animated, and nearly trembled with excitement. As the months have gone by though, the unit as a whole has grown more stoic, more able to focus, more willing to find any reason to laugh, or smile. The seriousness of the situation coupled with the fear of what lies before us, and the chasm of dread possibilities concerning what and where our mission might be have had a sobering effect on the drunk, a calming effect on the excited, and have added depth to the shallow. War is the great equalizer.
Our mission remains a vague enigma, for now only populated with imaginary phantoms, and monsters made up of scraps of each others' fear. No one has any clear understanding of what it may be, or when it may start, but as Engineers we have been consistently reminded in the last months about what it means to wear the red and the white. "Scarlet and white are the official colors of the Corps. Scarlet symbolizes our shared heritage with the Artillery.
White, which was the original color of the infantry, symbolizes the Corps secondary mission."So there it is, we're essentially infantrymen with degrees. Going over all of the tool kits that we're taking, and then seeing the list of new equipment we'll hopefully be getting has been illuminating. We'll be ready for anything, if we aren't already. Though the Reserves has been an often difficult marriage for many of us, with equipment hard to get (most of us spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars kitting ourselves out over the last several years), answers harder to get, and organization ponderous at best; the switch from a Reserve force to Active has been positive. New equipment. Less answers. Somewhat better organization.
