The Army Birthday Ball

The birthday is actually tomorrow, the part was last week

As I posted last week, I attended the Army Birthday Ball on Friday. It was a few days early, but also as I stated before, the Army is old and doesn't like to party on a weekday, just like me. Well, not just like me, the Army is 230 years old, I'm only 34. But still, we both prefer to celebrate on a weekend rather than a work night.

I was surprised by the number of people there. There were over 50 tables, each with 10 people seated. I was also very surprised by the number of junior enlisted Soldiers that had Dress Blues. I don't even have a set but there were a lot of young Privates and Specialists that did.

The ball itself was nice. It was the first birthday ball I'd ever attended. There was a cash bar set up in the lobby of the hotel so people could get the party started before heading through the reception line. They were doing the reception line by companies and my company, HHC, was last on the list. By the time they got to us, we were behind schedule, so my wife and I skipped the line and went straight in to our table. We were seated with another SSG from my company and our 1SG, a CW4, and a SGM. The table next to us was the other HHC table and it held our commander and a few other NCOs from the company. All together HHC had two tables. Most of the participants in the crowd were students here at the post.

There was a lot of small talk and introductions around the table. Then we had pictures. Lots of pictures. Eventually, the ceremony started. The Color Guard posted the Colors and we had a few official things to get out of the way. We had an Invocation, then the Commandant spoke, then we had the Toasts. Dinner started shortly after that. The pasta was terrible, so my wife and I shared my chicken.

After dinner, most of my table went down to the bar to have a few drinks away from the crowd. OK, more than a few. I was driving and hadn't made plans to take a cab or catch a shuttle home, so I got to watch everyone else drink. My wife and I barely made it back to our table for the entertainment. Only the SGM and his wife were there with us for the rest of the night. The other people from our table decided to skip the rest of the ball for the bar.

The entertainment was made up of Soldiers dressed up in periodic uniforms and performing monologs (the Civil War era performers did two monologs that were entwined around the same battle, brothers from each side not knowing the other was on the other side) based on letters home. It was very nice and the performers, mostly students again, did an excellent job. Then the command presented the Knowlton Award (an award specific to the Military Intelligence Branch) to four Soldiers. That was followed up by the guest speaker, a retired Major General that is still very active in the Monterey and military community. The Colors were then retired and the official ceremonies were over. They immediately started the dance music and the dance floor filled up.

My wife and I stopped to get our picture taken together on our way out. She had to work the next morning, so we didn't want to stay any later.

Speaking of pictures and my wife, I have to say this, too, and it really should go at the beginning of this post instead of looking like a footnote at the bottom, but here goes -

Breathtaking. Simply breathtaking. Even after knowing her for nearly eight years and being married for over six, she can still knock the breath out of me just by looking at her. And I don't mean just by getting dressed up, although Friday night was all the more than usual. I have truly married the most beautiful woman I have ever known.

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Well.....lets see a picture!

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Well.....lets see a picture!

That will be the subject of a post later this week. My wife plans to upload the pics to her site but won't let me touch the camera until she does! HAHA!

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I wish they were having one here, but there have been no announcements from my command. Suspecting we weren't being kept informed, I checked the Fort Hood web-site, but:
1) it's terribly non-intuitive to navigate, and
2) once I got to where it might have been mentioned, there was nothing.

Ah, well. It just would've been nice to take Mrs. soldier out.

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