CRC (17 Sep - 24 Sep)

CONUS Replacement Center, Ft Benning GA.  Arrived on Saturday afternoon.  Checked in and was given a number as well as a health care provider badge.   Got a room assignment.  Had to get linens – pillow case, two sheets, plastic pillow and scratchy, green, wool army blanket.  Went to my room – four man room, two bunk beds and four wall lockers.  Very small.  Beds were about 4 inches of foam on a spring frame.  They sagged pretty well in the middle.  Soon after I got there, I had two roommates show up.  One, an internal medicine doctor going with me to Afghanistan, the other a preventative medicine doc going to Djibuti on a Civil Affairs deployment.  Who knew we had people in Djibuti or on the horn of Africa?  Both very nice guys.  The internal medicine doc had a friend off post, so he spent each night there instead of in our little hostel and the other doc didn’t snore.  It turned out okay.  The bathrooms and showers were communal, which took a little getting used to.

The overall mission of the CRC is to make sure that each individual replacement has all of the boxes checked before they get deployed to wherever they are going.  For example, shots, medical review, dental review, hearing, issue of equipment, wills, lectures on IED’s etc.  Since I had done most of those things at Ft. Hood before I left, I didn’t have to do much.  I still had to go wait in all of the lines, but when I got to the front, I would just show them my paperwork or they would look me up on the computer and I would be done.  So basically it was a lot of waiting in lines and waiting around.  Typical Army.  I brought a book most places to help keep myself entertained.  The one thing I didn’t get issued at Ft Hood was my weapon, so I was issued a 9mm Beretta pistol which they kept locked in the armory along with everyone else’s weapon.  I also had to qualify on the weapon, which basically meant that I had to hit a certain number of pop up targets with a certain number of rounds.  It was actually pretty fun, until you think of why we were doing it.  However, if I’m ever pointing my weapon at someone with my feet shoulder width apart, slightly bent at the knees, arms extended, trying to aim… then we’re in a lot of trouble.

The food at the CRC was okay.  Cafeteria food, but lots of it.  They had some kind of meat for every meal, usually with potatoes or rice and some vegetable.  Basically right up my alley.  They also had a small salad bar, soda, juice, milk and dessert.  It wasn’t bad, but they only had about four different meals which they cycled through while we were there.

I didn’t get to work out that much.  A little running and a little basketball.

In the end, they were very efficient at their job and got a lot of us through the process and on our planes to England without much problem.