Treat 'em Rough

Dearest Readers,

Allow me to welcome you to my new blog, Treat 'em Rough: The Journey of a U.S. Armor Officer. For those who don't know me, I am Chris Hawkins, a 22 year old Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army currently stationed at Ft. Benning, GA. I graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point only a few months ago in May 2011 with a BS in Russian and Military History and a commission in the Army as an Armor Officer. I'm currently 'snowbirding' i.e. waiting for the Armor Basic Officer Leader Course or ABOLC (made an acronym like everything else in the Army and pronounced 'a-bolik') to begin.

The grand design for this blog is to branch away from my on again off again travel blog, 109 Days in Russia (http://109daysinrussia.blogspot.com/), and give my readers a little taste of what it's like to have the most exciting job in the world. That being said, I've had a few concerns about starting a 'daily life' type of blog. Travel blogging I've found to be relatively easy because the situations in which you find yourself in a foreign country need little in the way of wit or creativity to make entertaining. When your subjects are the vivacious Russians or the stunning beauty of Indonesia, the posts practically write themselves. I'm afraid this won't be true of this blog. The Army is filled with the ridiculous, the sublime, the shockingly inane and every other possible adjective, but still, it's daily life... Forgive me for prattling on with my concerns. I'll let you know how it goes!

Of course, to really start that job, I have to do my job training first, and that's where I'm at right now. My Armor BOLC class starts tomorrow and excited doesn't even begin to cover it! So, I'll be in touch and hopefully posting on a fairly regular basis.

Thanks and again, welcome,

2LT Christopher Hawkins, Armor

p.s. The title of this blog is a sort of 'unofficial' motto for the Armor branch, taken from a WWI recruiting poster by August William Hutaf. It's the picture attached to the top of this post.