Sa-weet!

Talked to my 1SG.
Definition of 1SG:

First Sergeant (1SG) - Principal NCO and life blood of the company: the provider, disciplinarian and wise counselor. Instructs other Sergeants,
advises the Commander and help train all enlisted Soldiers. Assists Officers at the company level (62 to 190 Soldiers).

That would be my 1SG! He was FABULOUS. He happens to know the 1SG of the unit I want to join. He is going to arrange a day I can go and meet him and talk about the unit. He also gave me some very practical advice about HRO and personnel types. He *also* informed me that whenever I am ready to go to Iraq, he will arrange it. He was dead serious. I guess that is what a leader is... he is great. I wish I could stay under his command.

I want to also explain here why I feel that staying in the unit I am assigned to is not a choice for me. This is a brand new unit. We currently have around 50 people. We have no equipment to train with. We have no weapons, so weapons training and qualification is out of the question. The unit is filling up slowly so it looks like it will be 2 years before we will even be ready to look at a deployment. Not that is necessarily a bad thing; however I have 12 years left to make 1SG or CSM. If I can't train and qualify and deploy...guess what? No advancement.

SO I can see that I will be doing something useful soon and that has made feel very optimistic.