I know it has been awhile since I posted, and I apologize for that; however, it has been quite busy over here lately. I started out Monday night on the flight line waiting for some of our replacements to arrive from Kuwait. The flight was supposed to be in shortly after midnight; however, they didn’t land until about 0130. By the time we gave them the abbreviated tour (chow hall, post office, latrines and their housing) it was close to 0400. My replacement will be here in a couple more weeks 
Tuesday morning after my usual meetings I headed over to the Base Operations court room where I watched one of the postal Soldiers plead guilty to mail theft. He was sentenced to a reduction to E1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, a bad conduct discharge and 12 months confinement.
On Thursday and Friday there was a trial for one of my Soldiers (he was assigned to me after being involved in this incident; not while this occurred). Prior to the beginning of the trial he pled guilty to dereliction of duty for failing to report drug use by another Soldier. At the conclusion of the trial he too was found guilty of mail theft. He had really developed while he was working for me; it was unfortunate that he didn’t start out with me. I am quite certain he would not have got caught up in the mess he did.
After the trial they moved straight into the sentencing phase. We were hoping the panel would take into account how hard he had worked for me over the last six months. The panel began deliberating around 2130; at 0130 they came back with the sentence. He was sentenced to a reduction to E1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, a bad conduct discharge and 135 days of confinement. We were all pleased with that sentence. Our hope was he would be given less than six months which would allow him an opportunity down the road to get his discharge changed to a general discharge and then be able to obtain a waiver and get back in the Army.
Tomorrow those two are headed to Kuwait where they will be confined for a couple of weeks until they are sent back to a state side military facility for the remainder of their sentences. We also lost our former Commander this week; she was ultimately relieved and is now heading home. I have lots to tell you about that when I’m not on active duty; I will say she is appealing the relief charge and I hope she wins her appeal.
We also have one other Soldier leaving this week for medical issues; he is really a scammer that plays the medical card with his back when he is assigned somewhere he doesn’t want to be, so I will be glad to get him out of here. That leaves us with one lieutenant who is still awaiting his court martial for multiple counts of fraternization and one for sexual assault; the rest of our mess has been cleaned up.
Our unit has been the poster child for the evils of cross-leveling. Some day when I am not on active duty I will tell you a lot more about it. Our losses in numbers have been incredible; had we been tasked with combat operations instead of support operations these issues would have manifested themselves in flag draped coffins; thank God we are combat support!
