So, some acronyms, because they are the Army’s first love, and you will always come a distant second.

GRINTSUM: Graphic Intelligence Summary, a quick visual wrap-up of important events. Can be “unclassified” or “classified”. You match reports of what happened with images that correspond to the subject.

MOS-Q: Remember that M.O.S. is “Military Occupational Specialty” (I’ve also heard “Mission Occupational Specialty”) and it is your official job in the military. A “-Q School” is a “Qualification” school. When Juni switched from her old job to Intel, she had to go to a MOS Qualification school,

I hate to say it, but my experience somewhat mirrored Juni’s. I learned a lot at the MOS-Q school I attended and it was interesting, but what they taught me was a lot of technical stuff and properly writing up reports.

What they did not show me was how to run the daily needs of a small “Intel Shop”, which makes sense– they don’t know where we’re going to end up, and it is the kind of thing that most people learn at their units. It is expected that you join experienced people already working there and they show you the ropes in on-the-job training.

I had a disadvantage in that I was showing up to re-start a Battalion “shop” that had no one in it for a few months and I was the only one there, along with another new guy who was an officer and also didn’t know the ropes. We did the best we could, but it wasn’t until we got a couple people transferred over to us who were absolute rock stars. They were junior to us but knew the system inside and out, and I learned a lot from them.

For this comic I kind of re-create some of the experience, but with a few modifications to the characters and roles. SGT Lyon, if you ever read this, I am a better Intel NCO because of you.