This is a Small Army

                Ok, so since I joined the Army over three years ago, I have constantly been asked if I have relatives in the army, the answer from me is always “no, not that I know of.”  Blackburn, although not a Smith or a Jones, is a kind of common name.  They always so, “oh, cause I know a COL Blackburn, I worked with him….”  I have always just brushed it off, like I said it is a common last name.  But after several times being asked the same question, and it always being directly related to COL Blackburn, I did start to get a little curious.  Here is the deal when you are a young officer, often times people wonder why you joined the army, usually they assume you did it for the college money (I didn’t get any of that) or because you have a father or close relative in the army and therefore it was expected of you.  I have neither, that sometimes shocks people.  So anyway, I started to get curious about this COL Blackburn, there are several Blackburn’s in the army, a simple look on Global (the email contact list for the army) tells you this.  However there are not very many Colonels, in fact I only have seen one, but that doesn’t mean there are not more.  It became funny to me when people would ask, because for whatever reason it was always about COL Blackburn, not the other CPT Blackburn, or the SSG Blackburn (who I did run into one time at Fort Leonard Wood).  I started over the last couple years to adjust my answer to, well I don’t think we are related but I guess anything is possible.

                Ok, Ok, so you are probably going well we all see where this is going and you are right, I finally after three years ended up running into COL Blackburn.  While in Kuwait as I stated in an earlier post we were waiting for flights and you basically had to wait at every flight going to your destination, with all your bags ready to go, hoping your name would be called.  So I was at the tent where they were calling names, I was sitting outside on a concrete barrier, I knew my name wasn’t going to be called but I was waiting on a couple of friends to go grab dinner afterwards.  Anyway, there was some room behind me and someone walked up and put down some bags, in the process he kind of nudged me and apologized, I didn’t really look at him simply said “no worries it is tight quarters” and smiled.  The Soldier went inside, a few minutes later my friends came up and said “well didn’t you get all fancy.”  I turned around and gave a very questioning look, I had no idea what they was talking about.  The guy was like “Your bags you printed….” His voice trailed off because I look behind me and sure enough the bags that were dropped off behind me were marked very clearly in sewn labels for a COL Blackburn.  I chuckled to myself and though wow, what a small world, or really a small army.  So while my friends went inside to see if they had made this flight I waited outside until COL Blackburn came out to collect his baggage and then I introduced myself.

                Ok so after writing all that I realize maybe it isn’t as interesting as I thought it was, but hey if you were asked if you were related to someone for three years and then all of a sudden halfway around the world finally met them, that is a little interesting right?