Change of Command, Staff Assistance Visit, and Board Exam Results

The last two days have been pretty busy for the medical section of the 82nd Civil Affairs Battalion. We started our day yesterday with a Staff Assistance Visit (SAV) from our parent brigade, the 85th CA Brigade. I think the original plan was that all of our counterparts would come over from Ft. Hood, but in the end, it was just the brigade veterinarian and environmental science officer (so, my counterpart wasn't there). The vet, who is the head of the med section at brigade, explained to us things that he expected from us and updated us on live tissue training (LTT).

To back up for a second, LTT is essentially doing trauma training on animals, in order to prepare Soldiers to do trauma care on Soldiers in combat situations. To explain what happens in very simple terms, a goat will be shot and then it'll be up to the Soldiers to keep it alive for, say, four hours. This is done throughout the Army, but usually just for medics and just before deployment to Afghanistan. In the Special Forces community, where much of our leadership is coming from, all of the team members participate, because they operate in small teams (like we do), and if something happens to their one medic, the other team members need to know what to do. Summing up many months of discussions and requests, the battalion wants us to do LTT. Well, getting permission to do that isn't nearly that easy. The brigade vet explained the process that's going to happen, which is going to involve paperwork sent up the Pentagon and probably three + years of work in progress. In other words, not the answer we would have liked, but we finally have an answer when people ask.

After a couple of hours of meeting with them, we had a change of command ceremony for Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC). Since I am in HHC, I should have been in the formation, but because of our SAV, we didn't have time to rehearse, so we just watched (actually, our command sergeant major told us to sit in the second row of the VIP section, so that was kinda nice). It was ridiculously cold (our only cold day; it went back up to the mid-60s today), so I was glad to be able to sit and wear my fleece jacket, instead of standing at attention in formation.

Here's the outgoing company commander, CPT Scott Cummings, pass off the guidon (the flag) to LTC Gardner to signify handing over his command:

And below is LTC Gardner handing the guidon off to MAJ Will Richardson, the new HHC Commander.

I had never seen a change of command ceremony before, so it was interesting to see. And I'm happy for both Scott, who gets to move to B Company to be a team leader, and MAJ Richardson, who is going to be bringing his civil affairs expertise to the company command.

After all that, I finally had a little bit of time to do my job (imagine that), and then our counterparts from brigade wanted to go out in Savannah. MAJ Escajeda, the environmental science officer, had been stationed at Ft. Stewart before, so she knows Savannah. We went to Pirate's House for dinner (great food) and then did a hearse ghost tour just for fun. It was all very hokie, but we did get to hear some stories, like the involvement of the Candler Hospital in the yellow fever outbreaks in the 1800s and during the Civil War. And it's supposedly haunted, but we didn't see any ghosts. Just a really old hospital (the oldest in Georgia and the second oldest in the country, according to our tour guide).

It was quite a night out (I got home at 1 this morning), and then I had clinic this morning (ugh). When I got home, though, I had some good news waiting for me in my mailbox: I passed my board exam! It was a pretty poorly written exam, but apparently everyone who took it felt the same way, because I finished the two pieces of the test at the 95th and 98th percentiles. The certification lasts for 10 years, so I am done taking exams until 2022. That's certainly a relief!