Mustered In - Harty joins the US Army

On August 1, 2008 I up and joined the United Army! Actually it took a bit longer than just a day of course to get all settled from start to finish, but that was the day I entered Ft. Knox, Kentucky for Basic Combat Training. I graduated from there on 3 October and went promptly (from the arms of wife who I only got to see for about a half hour that day!!) to Ft. Benning, Georgia to enter the Officer Candidate School. So as you can imagine, I've been just a bit too wrapped up to engage in reenacting as of late! But I miss it very much and of course, I miss the guys in the group as well. Below is a pic of me on graduation day from BCT, as well as a shot of my old 2nd Platoon 'Mad Dogs' of D. Co. 1-46 INF on the assembly field at FT. Knox.


Here I am standing next to our platoon 'rock'. At formation time, our platoon would stand in front of this and wait for instructions. I did the art work for this while at BCT. I actually finished it just days before this pic was taken. It was one of several murals that I did for our platoon while at BCT. When they found out I was an art major, I was given several 'special orders' to do murals. The list kept mounting as BCT wore on! I had a good time doing the murals and am proud to have done them. At any rate, I hope there are many proud 'Mad Dogs' yet to come who will get pumped up as they stand in front of this each day!


So in the interest of keeping the site viable, I'm 'handing the reins' over to Merle Collins so he can manage the site. As I go along my Army progression towards becoming an officer in the United States Army (graduation is set for 8 January 2009) I hope to keep the group posted on my progress. I also hope to be able to fall in with the 5th Texas Partisan Rangers again in the future as schedules and circumstances allow.

So ride hard, sling some lead downrange and keep them Yankees running for me while I'm gone, boys!