Dear Friends:

     Greetings from Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where the weather is hot and humid with occasional mini-thunderstorms to further make life miserable!

     Much to my surprise a couple weeks ago, my written orders to deploy to Afghanistan were actually carried out as they were written, despite being told that I would be subject to a medical delay.  So after the joy of celebrating the Graduation Mass of the St. Victor School 8th graders I did a panic packing and cleaning job Saturday night, the 6th of June, in order for my parents to take me to the airport the following morning.  For those of you at SV who were expecting me to stay a bit longer, that's what happened.  And thanks for the cleaning crews who helped me out my last week at SV.

    My first stop after leaving was a week at Naval Station Port Hueneme in southern California.  This is a Seabee base, the West Coast home of the Navy's master combat construction units.  After several years of sending sailors under prepared administratively and medically to the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Navy created four sites that would screen all active duty and reservist sailors prior to sending us into harm's way. The processing site at Port Hueneme fixed up all our records, screened us medically more meticulously then the reserve centers were able to do, and gave us our Army uniforms before shipping us out to Army bases for further training.

    I joined only a handful of sailors from Port Hueneme who had the pleasure of traveling to Fort Jackson.  Fort Jackson is outside Columbia, the state capital, but might as well be the end of the world as far as the sailors are concerned, as we are without cars or easy transportation to go anywhere.  Except for the two chaplains in the group, the focus has been learning how to shoot rifles and handguns and learning the bare-bones basics of the "Army way."  The chaplains have been learning the Army way along with the rest but are exempted from shooting since we are non-combatants on the battlefield.

   However, the real thing we have all learned is a renewed appreciation on how good we had it in the Navy!  My group will be chanting the famed slogan of the Army-Navy game with a bit more gusto this December:  "Go Navy!  Beat Army!"  The officers, in particular, are sleeping in a forty man open bay barracks, something most of us haven't done since we were officer candidates.  That would be some 20 years ago in my case.  There are National Guardsmen and Army Reservists quartered in our portion of the base, whose average age is in the early 20s.  The sailors and naval officers range from age 21 to 59, so we are considerably older (and out-of-shape and grayer) than the soldiers.

   The Navy personnel are quite inspiring, however.  Many of the reservists have made considerable financial sacrifice without complaint to serve their country by deploying overseas.  Some of the sailors have already served two or three years in Iraq and/or Afghanistan.  Of course, most of this group is married, so their families sacrifice as well.  My own personal sacrifice seems quite small in comparison.

   I will end this letter here with a "thank you" to those who have already emailed me in the past couple weeks.  I do appreciate the words of encouragement and offered prayers.

May God bless you all!

Fr. Michael