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From the gang at Special Forces Gear!

Not sure how hard or interesting this is, but my road to Special Forces is pretty much the hardest thing I have had to deal with. Feb of 05 I (we, family) made the decision for me to rejoin the Army to pursue my dream of Special Forces. Our business was just getting profitable and she would stay in Ocean Springs, MS and run the business and I would go back to the Army and “be all that I could be”. My plan was to get to post and immediately go to Selection and not spend any time at Ft. Riley, KS. So I trained furiously for 6 months, the SFAS workout plus the gym twice a day. August rolls around and it is getting close to time for me to leave. Then Hurricane Katrina hits and wipes us completely out, house, business gone. For the next month we lived out of our car trying to get to Memphis with what money we had on us, since our bank was destroyed. I was talking to the recruiters there trying to get back in, but now I needed to get in now AND with my family, because they had no where to live. Recruiters were able to make it happen. Then we finally get to Ft. Riley and I sit in reception for a month! There were lots of paperwork issues since all my copies were lost due to Katrina and we all know how the Army looses paperwork. So I was missing things that were irreproducible and no one knew what to do, so I literally sat there everyday on the phone trying to track down paperwork. I ended up having to accept E-5 instead of E-6 at day one, next to no promotion points, retirement points, etc.
I had no option but to accept it and was finally sent to 1st Engineers. During my introduction there I let them know I am just passing through and going SF. They in turn let me know there were on stop-loss/stop-move due to an upcoming deployment in a few months. So now it has been over 2 months since I was able to work out or really do anything more than sit down, so I wasn’t going to waste my family time working out now for a deployment. I can do that while I am over there. So Feb comes around and they drop the stop-loss/stop-move out of the blue and say they are not going anywhere now. Ohh and by the way, you are going to Sapper School in 3 weeks. Now at this time I haven’t really done anything for about 6 months. So 3 weeks of working out did not exactly whip me back into shape. I go to Sapper school and get my tab, but not without losing 23 pounds, dislocating my left shoulder, pulling a muscle in my back, many rollings of the ankles and water on the right knee. Then I get back to post to two things: first, my unit as a congratulations gave me Staff Duty the next day and alternating every couple of days for 4 weeks after I got back and second, my SF Recruiter gave me the great news of he got me in the April SFAS class. Just 4 weeks after I graduated Sapper School. Needless to say that whole 4 weeks I spent just trying to heal and catch up on sleep.
So then I go to Selection. We all know what that is like and without any chance of a train-up, selection may have been a little extra miserable for me. But, I got selected anyway. And my unit (1st Engineers) as congratulations for getting selected gave me Staff Duty the last day of Selection… before I even get back to Ft. Riley. I called them to let them know that wont be back to Ft. Riley for 2 days and they said no… you will be here tomorrow for Staff Duty. And since that day they have given me either Staff Duty or AHA Duty or conex guard Duty every other or two days for the last six months while I waited for my airborne date. Actually the Conex guard duty was split between 3 of us who have gotten selected and were waiting for our airborne date.
So I just graduated airborne yesterday and even that was hard due to my inability to have time to work-out. Now I have 2 months to get in great shape before Phase 2. Ohh… and I pulled or tore a few muscles in my neck from the collision with mother earth due to my high gravitational pull toward terra firma. (Means I hit really hard… every time)
So anyway this last year and a half have been pretty hard trying to get in Special Forces. Not just physically, but mentally. A lot of things/people were working against me and so far, fortitude and perseverance have prevailed. I have won.