TJ here with a little late night tell-all on the real life events that have been and will be effecting my hobby/ blogging time here. For those of you who could care less please move on to one of the incredible blogs in our blogrolls, for you long time followers and friends of DFG, I will give you a little insight into what has been keeping me so busy. In short, I'm on a boat ...
... or ship depending on your preference for Naval terminology. You see I have been a Marine since 2000 and as a part of that duty, I have deployed numerous times over the years and it is time again for me to sail for foreign shores, this time aboard the Bataan, or the "Dirty Nickel" as the Sailors refer to her. I recently completed some work-up time aboard the vessel, which is why I haven't been responding to the posts I had scheduled to post over the last couple of weeks.
This work-up represents the first of three at-sea periods I will complete before disappearing for most of 2014.
We did a number of cool things like ride in LCACs.
Which are like hover craft that we can store inside the ship and deploy troops with.
We also performed a ton of flight hours, in fact, I left the boat via CH-53 Super Stallion the other day.
Here is a photo of the boat as I watched it vanish while I headed home. For now, I am back, but soon I will head back to the boat and in the new year, I will leave for quite some time. It is both exciting and sad, but such is life. How about you all? Any other military folks out there past or present, U.S. or other nations? I would love to hear the stories of other veterans in the hobby.
NIce. That boat is real.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your service ! I've got friends in the navy and air force, and i was considering joining for a while myself. But that's about the extent of my real world military experience.
ReplyDeleteI put my Hobbying on a back burner whilst doing 6 years in the forces, deployed to various places all over the world. In the Jungle, desert or artic theatres all were good times now I look back on them even though they probably weren't at the time. Trained with the US Marines a few times as well which was always good fun. All I will say is enjoy it while you can, this hobby will always be here for when you return. Good Luck with your tour.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Navy man too, 15yrs in the RN and counting, but shipmate, that is a ship. Not a boat ;) Boats are black, have a Sail (Fin) and go under the sea! Fair seas and following winds my friend (failing that, a bloody war and sickly season.. for promotion! Traditional Naval Toast)
ReplyDeleteThat looks like a pretty big ship. While it is probably more boring to not see any action hopefully you will have a peaceful deployment, as I know that the armed forces members have really be stretched thin by the multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteI know that Paul of the Man Cave (http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/) is the skipper of a boat in the navy down under and is currently out to sea.
Another US Marine here. In fact, I grew up in Havelock. I escaped, and haven't been back for almost twenty years as my family moved to Charlotte when I went to bootcamp.
ReplyDeleteA bunch of the guys in my platoon gamed, we would be on ship or in the field playing anything from Axis and Allies to Risk. When we were in garrison we played more rpg's and 40K.
LCAC's are incredible. I kind of miss doing that sort of stuff!
I was an M1 Abrams crewman in the US Army. I got my start there with Rogue Trader and fantasy third edition. Every Post I was assigned to had a group of gamers. We did a lot of marathon gaming when we were waiting for payday.
ReplyDeleteI will be going to Afghanistan in January some I am in the same boat, we'll not really because I joined the Army. Get Sea sick too easy. I think I get a little more room though. Already trying to decide what unprainted project I plan on bring with me.
ReplyDelete23 Years in the Marine Corps (semper fi BTW) and I've been "extended vactations on the Essex and the Kearsarge with the 31st and 22nd MEUs respectively.
ReplyDeleteWell Semper Fi brother, I myself am with the 22nd MEU, so we are in good company. If you have served on the Essex, then you aren't missing anything, the dirty nickel is the carbon copy of that ship.
ReplyDeleteI am coming to this post about a week late, but I'm a Sailor myself. Or used to be, depending on "your preference for Naval terminology". I was an enlisted crypto-tech on a cruiser, got out of the Navy ten years ago, and came back in 5 years ago as a Navy nurse corp officer. My last command was the hospital on Camp Pendleton, so I've seen a little of the green side. I'm training corpsmen right now and just took orders to Yokoskua hospital in Japan, which is where my ship was home-ported, so excited to go back. I'm also going to use the move as an excuse to sell some of my models. no need to move so many toys when i don't play with them all. We'll see if I can convince myself of that...
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