112510 Thanksgiving Day Meal

112510 Thanksgiving Day Meal

 

Having a Thanksgiving meal with your co-workers is very similar to having a meal with those distant relatives whom you tolerate for that special day once a year.    It simply is what it is so suck it up and deal with it as it will be over when it's over.  Anyway, here are some pics.  The two chefs are the Commander and Sergeant Major of the Battalion here.  In the military, the tradition is for the senior enlisted and officer personnel to serve at meals. This was done when I was in the Navy too.  The group pic is me and my coworkers here.  The turkey was deep fried in peanut oil and was really pretty dang good and only took 30 minutes to cook.  I've never had deep fried turkey until I came to Iraq and evidently it is much more a 'southern thing' to do.  The DFAC personnel also go a little crazy with paper-mache.  Heck, why 'not' make a paper-mache turkey out of discarded pop cans!?

Unfortunately Thanksgiving and Christmas can be very stressful times for those miss family and are unhappy about life in general.  The previous Brigade chaplain use to come around the Battalion office about once a month the say 'hi'.  The new chaplain hasn't been around in few months so maybe he's really busy or just has more territory to cover and is needed elsewhere.  Between now and Christmas there'll be about one suicide-prevention message a week now through the New Years. 

R/Chris