Rough going for a classmate

My unit didn't suffer much from the recent Fort Hood shooting. In my platoon, we only had two people even remotely connected to the event.

One guy, who's in the middle of his medical board process, had his psychological evaluation completed by Major Hassan. The second had served with Pvt Francheska Velez in Korea.

I saw movie with one of my classmates from BOLC3 this past weekend, though, and he's had a real tough time in his company. He's in the 20th Engineers Battalion, working with the Forward Support Company. They lost one soldier, with another four wounded. [Source]

His trouble started even before the shooting. His unit is scheduled to deploy, and it's been his job to get everything ready for transportation. It's no small thing to figure out which stuff goes where in which container, which stuff stays behind and goes to whom, who signs for what, and -- in his case -- to do it with no training.

Talk about being set up for failure. He didn't even get a chance to attend the class before this stuff got dropped on him.

Then there was the shooting. As a deploying unit, they had all kinds of people at the Soldier Readiness Center that day, getting their required immunizations. Their losses threw a huge monkey wrench into the mix.

Since that day, they've had memorial services to attend, counselors and investigators to meet, VIPs to host, and all the normal deployment hiccups to deal with. I can only imagine his level of stress.

The good news is that he's got a chunk of leave coming so that he can spend the holidays with his family before going overseas. I hope this past weekend was not the last time I'll see him.