The lost is found!

October 23, 2004

Everybody loves the chaplain.

It’s true.

Chaplain Griebel of 3rd Battalion helped solve the mystery of the missing newspaper box. Our newspaper box, the guidon of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Taji Bureau, was taken hostage a couple of weeks ago.

What is a newspaper box? It’s the plastic box usually found attached to mailboxes or on an adjacent post where your paper is deposited every morning.

Ours — mounted on a wooden post — is once again standing outside of our trailer at Camp Taji.

It’s been a long couple of weeks, full of ransom notes and threats, laughter and mystery.

After an extensive investigation and a refusal to pay a 100 penny ransom, we cracked the case.

Over the last few days, we’ve been planning Operation the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

And today, the planning and laughter paid off.

We recovered the hostage.

The key to the mystery?

The chaplain.

I was traveling between Forward Operating Base Gunslinger and Camp Taji the other day with Maj. Cary Shillcutt, 3rd Battalion’s operations officer, and Chaplain Griebel.

Shillcutt asked if I’d found my newspaper box.

Of course not.

The chaplain asked what we were talking about.

Apparently, he hadn’t heard about the kidnapping.

I explained the hostage situation, and the chaplain said, calm as can be, that the missing box was stowed in the little room he stays in at Fort Apache.

I knew Charlie Company was behind it!

It was well hidden, tucked behind a door in a hidey hole at the end of a maze of three rooms.

We carried the box out of its dungeon and proudly hauled it back to Taji.

Sure, it’s a little stained and the box was dislocated from its post, but it’s home.

And I owe it all to the chaplain.

We did consider leaving the box at Fort Apache, afraid that reclaiming our guidon would end the fun.

But the game isn’t over, it’s just entering a new chapter.

Didn’t someone once say turnabout is fair play?

Posted by Amy at October 23, 2004 03:25 PM