How To Begin

The first step in this journey is to get yourself laid off back in March. That forces you to look for options. I'd always known that going back on active duty would be a good short-term financial move but I didn't want to come back after a year or two just to be in my mid forties and have to start at the bottom of some company all over again. That decision has now been made for me already. (Plus, after seeing some of my buddies getting jobs with defense contractors, I realized that military duty might not have as many negatives as I previously thought.)

So I started looking into mobilization options. Two great sources for reserve Marines are the MarForRes Global Billets list and Reserve Duty Online, which is an MOL thing. What with two wars going on there are plenty of opportunities out there. After sifting through them all I circled in on a billet with CJTF-HOA, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa. It's a standing command with responsibilities throughout the East Africa region.

What followed was an almost comical series of email exchanges where the addresses on the cc line became more and more numerous. Finally, back in May, I located the person at my current unit, MarForPac HQ, that was responsible for putting my package together and forwarding it on to approving authorities. Luckily for me, I happened to be in Hawaii for another exercise and I could go talk to him face to face. That shortened the process considerably. (I suppose I should mention that I live in Seattle, where it is currently raining and 65 degrees.) From that point on the process gathered inertia and began rolling down the line like the boulder chasing Indiana Jones. But, remembering rule number one, until it happens it hasn't happened.

Introductions

I'm a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and I'm volunteering to go to Djbouti, Africa, for a year of duty with CJTF-HOA. I'm putting this blog together because I found it hard to find first hand information when I was going through the decision process regarding my orders. Most stuff was dated by a couple of years and some other things just didn't have what I wanted. So the plan is to post as much unclassified information as I can over the next 18 months or so. Everything from the process of getting orders, to the training and travel, through the deployment and to include the retrograde. If my experience can be a help to someone, then I've done my job.

Currently, I've been in the process for a few months so there's some catching up to do. I would have started the blog earlier but, as I explained to my wife every time she asked about how certain of deploying I was, until it happens it hasn't happened. That's been true for my entire 20+ years in the Corps and it's still true today. Funny thing is, in the Marines... even after it happens it might not still keep happening.

Time will tell but I should be starting active duty on or about October 17th. Lots of ground to cover between now and then.