A Return to Israel: Wayne Wall

Soldier Blog Post

A Return to Israel

August 31, 2010

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After returning from Israel without speaking to anyone in the embassy back in June, I decided that if another opportunity opened up I would utilize my close proximity (and multiple-entry visa) to go back to Tel Aviv to catch up on what I viewed as some of the most critical information in my region. So, I'm back in Tel Aviv finishing up the return visit, and it hasn't been disappointing. I've met with some key folks on both the civilian and military sides of the house and it is plain to see by talking to them the nature of U.S. involvement in Israel. I've also used this opportunity to catch a few sites that I was unable to visit the first time through due to time constraints. I just returned to Tel Aviv from the border with Gaza, where I took the following photo of the Gaza Strip (in the very back of the photo):

I find it interesting that the wall separating the Israeli community from which this photo was taken from the Gaza Strip has empty landscape painted on it.

I also used this return trip to visit a museum that had previously been closed in the Old City of Jerusalem, which turned out to be one of the best I'd seen (Tower of David Museum). While walking past the West Wall, I was asked to take a photo of a group of Israeli soldiers undergoing officer training. So, I asked them to return the favor:

In addition to all of this, I was also able to look at a lot more of the countryside than I previously saw, as well as having a few more in-depth conversations with some Palestinian and Israeli shop owners. All in all, it was really worthwhile to return for the value added to my understanding of Israel on a whole. The next stop for me will be equally if not more exciting: BEIRUT!

Distant Heat, Morocco, and my Big Fat Greek Adventure
August 16, 2010

Lebanon, Bahrain, and the U.A.E.
September 21, 2010

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Comments

Chuck Canon
Sep 6, 2010 5:18 PM

Wayne,

Still a faithful reader... You are doing one hell of a good job with your Blog.

Wife wants to know, what are your quarters like in Jordan?

Thanks,

Chuck

Reply
Wayne Wall
Sep 6, 2010 7:13 PM

Chuck,

Thanks again for following along. It's 2am here and I've been writing grad school applications all day, so please excuse the brevity.

The quarters here are better than most Army housing I've seen. As part of the Arab culture, you find that most middle class homes have quite a bit of representational space that exceeds what you find in the States, so they are quite large. My place has a sitting room, dining room, and bathroom in the area for guests. The family portion of the flat has three bedrooms, two baths, and an open kitchen/living room with a breakfast bar in between. The kitchen is quite large, as is the living room. So, for just one guy its a lot of house! Each family from the embassy lives out on the economy, so almost everyone has a different configuration. On LTC here has a three-story house, two for the family, one for the guests, and an apartment for a live-in housekeeper. Not to mention an enormous basement. Impressive!

Wayne

Reply
CPT JOY C. SWANKE
Sep 14, 2010 3:25 PM

Sir,

I've just been given FAO as my functional area. I am dual military (my husband is a Major) and have some concerns with receiving assignments together. How hard is the FAO life for families? Everyone tells me this is a great opportunity however, I have some concerns.

Questions:

1. Does your family accompany you on assigments?

2. Does your family accompany you while you're training and in school?

3. How long are the assignments?

4. And what regions are receiving priority fill?

5. Are there any stateside assignments?

6. How often do you travel overseas?

I know these may sound like asinine questions but I honestly don't have any background information. I did not seek out an FAO position and I'm not sure why I was chosen. However, it does sound like an honorable MOS with lots of opportunities.

Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated.

Reply
Wayne Wall
Sep 20, 2010 1:30 PM

Joy,

Congratulations on being a FA48 and welcome aboard! Thank you for taking the time to read the blog and I hope you find it useful. Let me see if I can help answer some of your questions.

1. Your family accompanies you during your ICT year for sure, but after that the country of assignment will dictate whether or not family travels with. For example currently no families are allowed in places like Yemen and Lebanon, but are allowed in most other countries.

2. Family accompanies you to language training at DLI, your year of ICT, and your graduate school location. ILE will happen somewhere in the middle of that and will be a 4-month TDY. Spouses are sometimes allowed to attend DLI with the service member on a space-available basis. This comes in really handy during ICT.

3. Most OCONUS assignments are two years, with the few unaccompanied assignments being a year. CENTCOM duty is three years (CONUS). Most other CONUS assignments are two years.

4. Obviously the Middle East is the current center of gravity, but other regions are also being assigned. All depends on DLAB scores and how many new FAO's are being assessed in a given year.

5. About half of FAO assignments are CONUS.

6. Up to you and what you tell your assignments officer. The "F" in FAO stands for foreign, so there is an expectation that you do some time down range. Typically, FAO's bounce back and forth a couple times between CONUS and OCONUS before they start looking at whether or not to stay in (you only get about 6 years of utilization as a FAO before you hit your 20-yr mark).

I hope you will take the time to look back through the blog in its entirety to get a better perspective on what a great opportunity FAO really is. You will receive language training, a year of travel abroad, and graduate school as part of the package. NOT a bad deal!

And of course, please feel free to fire away with any other questions. That's why I'm doing this blog thing!

Enjoy!

Wayne

Reply
Stephen H. Franke (48G "Gulfie")
Oct 2, 2010 7:40 PM

Greetings to all in our Army's FAO population... ahalan wa sahalan wa mi'at marHaba..

Ref Wayne Wall's comment: "I've been writing grad school applications all day,... [the remainder of his good note is omitted in this note].

I would be most appreciative if some of the newly-designated 48Gs would kindly advise me about what is the current guidance / preference / ROE / "druthers" which HRC is providing to newly-designated 48Gs about selecting graduate schools and what are their "acceptable" [if not mandatory] majors / concentration/ fields for the FAO to pursue in attaining the MA. With that info in hand to ponder, I can provide some suggestions, options, and long-term aspects of the majors and some useful additional courses (if the degree program allows flexibility).

FWIW, The University of Texas at Austin may still offer a double-major MA program: MA in ME Area Studies [multidisciplinary spread of courses] and MBA (comparative management and cross-cultural decision-making, using a number of selected case studies on successful, and not-so-successful, joint ventures, technology transfer programs and multinational corporations). As best I can recall, two 48Gs attended and completed that double-major program there in the late 1980s.

The U of VA at Charlottesville has some excellent and flexible MA programs and the US Army JAG School is nearby -- next to UVa's Darden School of Business, up from the main campus [or "Grounds" in UVa-speak] -- with some amenities and a military support group.

Suggestion: Keep in mind, and press to your advantage when applying and/or being interviewed for admission to grad school, that your full-time study of a foreign language at DLIFLC or equivalent institution has prepared you several light-years ahead academically of civilian undergraduate and [most] graduate students who otherwise acquired their language skills by periodic and part-time language classes scheduled among their other courses. Also, if you have polished and enhanced your language skills, along with concomitant cultural abilities, during a 48G-related ICT tour OCONUS, you are even more prepared and a more-valuable candidate for admission. If any academic has a question about your communicative ability, ask to be introduced to meet and greet with international students or visiting foreign faculty on campus who speak the same language [and as-local-as-possible dialect in the case of Arabic]. Your ability to read your foreign language should also be respectably strong, as you will usually be expected and required to do part of your thesis research in a non-English language, from popular journals and daily newspapers to books, plus online Arabic sources.

Hope this helps some 48s who are bound for graduate school.

Khair, in shaa' Allah.

"FAOs Forward!"

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke

LTC, MI

(FAO 48G "Gulfie", SOF/CT, SFA,

Attache, Strategic Intelligence)

USAR (Retired)

San Pedro, California

E-mail: stephen.franke@us.army.mil

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Wayne Wall

Affiliation:	Active Duty
Rank:	Major
Branch:	Foreign Area Officer
MOS/AOC:	Foreign Area Officer: Middle East/48G
Location:	Baghdad, Iraq
Hometown:	Winston-Salem

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Chuck Canon

Sep 6, 2010 5:18 PM

Wayne,

Still a faithful reader... You are doing one hell of a good job with your Blog.

Wife wants to know, what are your quarters like in Jordan?

Thanks,

Chuck

Sep 6, 2010 7:13 PM

Chuck,

Thanks again for following along. It's 2am here and I've been writing grad school applications all day, so please excuse the brevity.

The quarters here are better than most Army housing I've seen. As part of the Arab culture, you find that most middle class homes have quite a bit of representational space that exceeds what you find in the States, so they are quite large. My place has a sitting room, dining room, and bathroom in the area for guests. The family portion of the flat has three bedrooms, two baths, and an open kitchen/living room with a breakfast bar in between. The kitchen is quite large, as is the living room. So, for just one guy its a lot of house! Each family from the embassy lives out on the economy, so almost everyone has a different configuration. On LTC here has a three-story house, two for the family, one for the guests, and an apartment for a live-in housekeeper. Not to mention an enormous basement. Impressive!

Wayne

CPT JOY C. SWANKE

Sep 14, 2010 3:25 PM

Sir,

I've just been given FAO as my functional area. I am dual military (my husband is a Major) and have some concerns with receiving assignments together. How hard is the FAO life for families? Everyone tells me this is a great opportunity however, I have some concerns.

Questions:

1. Does your family accompany you on assigments?

2. Does your family accompany you while you're training and in school?

3. How long are the assignments?

4. And what regions are receiving priority fill?

5. Are there any stateside assignments?

6. How often do you travel overseas?

I know these may sound like asinine questions but I honestly don't have any background information. I did not seek out an FAO position and I'm not sure why I was chosen. However, it does sound like an honorable MOS with lots of opportunities.

Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated.

Sep 20, 2010 1:30 PM

Joy,

Congratulations on being a FA48 and welcome aboard! Thank you for taking the time to read the blog and I hope you find it useful. Let me see if I can help answer some of your questions.

1. Your family accompanies you during your ICT year for sure, but after that the country of assignment will dictate whether or not family travels with. For example currently no families are allowed in places like Yemen and Lebanon, but are allowed in most other countries.

2. Family accompanies you to language training at DLI, your year of ICT, and your graduate school location. ILE will happen somewhere in the middle of that and will be a 4-month TDY. Spouses are sometimes allowed to attend DLI with the service member on a space-available basis. This comes in really handy during ICT.

3. Most OCONUS assignments are two years, with the few unaccompanied assignments being a year. CENTCOM duty is three years (CONUS). Most other CONUS assignments are two years.

4. Obviously the Middle East is the current center of gravity, but other regions are also being assigned. All depends on DLAB scores and how many new FAO's are being assessed in a given year.

5. About half of FAO assignments are CONUS.

6. Up to you and what you tell your assignments officer. The "F" in FAO stands for foreign, so there is an expectation that you do some time down range. Typically, FAO's bounce back and forth a couple times between CONUS and OCONUS before they start looking at whether or not to stay in (you only get about 6 years of utilization as a FAO before you hit your 20-yr mark).

I hope you will take the time to look back through the blog in its entirety to get a better perspective on what a great opportunity FAO really is. You will receive language training, a year of travel abroad, and graduate school as part of the package. NOT a bad deal!

And of course, please feel free to fire away with any other questions. That's why I'm doing this blog thing!

Enjoy!

Stephen H. Franke (48G "Gulfie")

Oct 2, 2010 7:40 PM

Greetings to all in our Army's FAO population... ahalan wa sahalan wa mi'at marHaba..

Ref Wayne Wall's comment: "I've been writing grad school applications all day,... [the remainder of his good note is omitted in this note].

I would be most appreciative if some of the newly-designated 48Gs would kindly advise me about what is the current guidance / preference / ROE / "druthers" which HRC is providing to newly-designated 48Gs about selecting graduate schools and what are their "acceptable" [if not mandatory] majors / concentration/ fields for the FAO to pursue in attaining the MA. With that info in hand to ponder, I can provide some suggestions, options, and long-term aspects of the majors and some useful additional courses (if the degree program allows flexibility).

FWIW, The University of Texas at Austin may still offer a double-major MA program: MA in ME Area Studies [multidisciplinary spread of courses] and MBA (comparative management and cross-cultural decision-making, using a number of selected case studies on successful, and not-so-successful, joint ventures, technology transfer programs and multinational corporations). As best I can recall, two 48Gs attended and completed that double-major program there in the late 1980s.

The U of VA at Charlottesville has some excellent and flexible MA programs and the US Army JAG School is nearby -- next to UVa's Darden School of Business, up from the main campus [or "Grounds" in UVa-speak] -- with some amenities and a military support group.

Suggestion: Keep in mind, and press to your advantage when applying and/or being interviewed for admission to grad school, that your full-time study of a foreign language at DLIFLC or equivalent institution has prepared you several light-years ahead academically of civilian undergraduate and [most] graduate students who otherwise acquired their language skills by periodic and part-time language classes scheduled among their other courses. Also, if you have polished and enhanced your language skills, along with concomitant cultural abilities, during a 48G-related ICT tour OCONUS, you are even more prepared and a more-valuable candidate for admission. If any academic has a question about your communicative ability, ask to be introduced to meet and greet with international students or visiting foreign faculty on campus who speak the same language [and as-local-as-possible dialect in the case of Arabic]. Your ability to read your foreign language should also be respectably strong, as you will usually be expected and required to do part of your thesis research in a non-English language, from popular journals and daily newspapers to books, plus online Arabic sources.

Hope this helps some 48s who are bound for graduate school.

Khair, in shaa' Allah.

"FAOs Forward!"

Regards,

Stephen H. Franke

LTC, MI

(FAO 48G "Gulfie", SOF/CT, SFA,

Attache, Strategic Intelligence)

USAR (Retired)

San Pedro, California

E-mail: stephen.franke@us.army.mil

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