Official Orders are In!

WooHoo!!!

ZIf you're an army sponsor or spouse, I don't have to tell you how excited I am!

ORDERS ARE EVERYTHING.

We were told that orders wouldn't be available until 90 days out, but they came much sooner. Me thinks it's more of a estimated time frame rather than a set in stone thing here in Bavaria land.

So, orders are in. Now what?

First thing's first: Make sure the orders are correct!

Double check that the sponsor's info is correct: Name spelling, social number, etc,.

Check the report date (specifically the month and year) for errors. It's uncommon for the report date to be crazy off, but ya never know.

If the sponsor plans to report with dependents (wife and children), their names better be on the orders, too! This information is generally found at the end of the orders.

If their names aren't on orders for Command Sponsorship and/or an accompanied assignment, the army will NOT reimburse nor pay for any part of their travel. The army will also not authorize the soldier family BAH at the gaining duty station.

**Sometimes the army authorizes "Deferred Travel" for dependents. If your orders say "Differed Travel", that means dependents will not go with the sponsor initially to the new duty station, but at a later time AFTER the sponsor has signed in to his/her new unit.

Often times, Deferred Travel is for a good reason, in instances like a soldier headed to South Korea. Generally, Command Sponsorship must be applied for once the solider has signed into the new unit in places like Korea, not before. This is not always true for a Korean assignment, but most times it is. 

Deferred travel can also apply to a family who would prefer to stay back stateside until the sponsor can acquire a house, or sometimes because the spouse is waiting to graduate college or possibly has a job obligation. In these cases, the sponsor requested deferred travel when signing paperwork at their LEVY brief.

***If for some strange reason a soldier's orders state that the soldier is not authorized to bring along dependents to a new duty station, and it is a CONUS location (within the continental US, stateside) chances are there is something really screwed up in the system. That is VERY rare.

If you are going OCONUS to CONUS like myself (out of America and back to the States) OR the other way around, your orders should mention your traveling baggage allowance for the flight.

Report Dates:

Across the board in the army world, 60 day early report is authorized to all soldiers now. It used to be 30 days, and if someone required more, they'd need a commander to sign off on it.

How is that important?

Well, it matters when looking at the bigger picture when moving from OCONUS to CONUS. Big time.

On our orders, his official report date is October 10th. But my husband's DEROS date is August 11th.

For the most part (unless there are extenuating circumstances) report dates are AFTER a soldiers DEROS date, and usually no more than 60 days past it (because of early 60 report authorization).

*If your OCONUS tour is being cut shorter than 36 months for whatever reason, the army usually changes your DEROS date to accommodate that "whatever reason".

Both your DEROS & report date are important when it comes to scheduling everything regarding your move. I'll get into that in a minute...

All people stationed in Germany have up to nine days after their DEROS date to get the heck out of Germany and back to the states. Visas (SOFA passports) are no longer good at that point, and you have no official business in Germany after the fact. 

Orders: Bottom Line

There's a lot of mumbo jumbo in the orders that's 'kinda' important other than what's mentioned above, but the majority of it all is also basic knowledge: Soldier must be deployment ready upon arrival to his/her new duty station/unit, soldier is authorized for shipment of household goods, what to do in the case of an emergency in the middle of a PCS, blah, blah, blah.

What to do now that you have orders:

It's actually been over a week since we got our orders. They came they day after I wrote the last post!

It's advised that the soldier gets in contact with transportation (the office that schedules movers and junk) within five business days of receiving their orders, though I think army orders have to state this because some folks don't get orders cut until a couple weeks before their report date and procrastinate. Basically put, if you wait too long with orders in hand before scheduling transportation, you'll be screwed, or have to leave your goods with someone you trust and a POA for them to take care of it.

In conjunction to that, soldiers cannot clear housing and final out before taking off to the next place. So if a soldier doesn't schedule transportation for his/her family's goods for pick up early enough, uhhhh they'd be delaying themselves from final-ing out and probably not without consequence.

What We Did:

Though we're still a little less than than four months out, we wanted to schedule as much as possible, as soon as possible.

We are shooting to get out of here as fast as we can, making the soonest we can fly out of country August 8th (that's our AVAL date; it's always 3 days prior to a DEROS date. Again, my husband's DEROS is AUG 11).

SATO was the first place we visited, but unfortunately they could only see flights scheduled up until August 1st. We have to go back sometime this week and see if the second week of August can be scheduled, but the lady did say that it's likely we'll be on a flight for the 8th (because Patriot Express flies out on certain days of the week as it is).

NOTE: SATO wanted six copies of orders to book a flight, and there are six of us, so I assume folks need one set of orders per accompanied passenger.

After that, we stared at the calendar for a day, arguing dates for everything else.

Knowing that we'll fly on the 8th (give or take a day), we needed to figure out the next big thing: Transportation.

Because we're only allotted three days lodging on this side before it starts to come out of pocket (we have heard they do not count weekend days), we don't want to ship our household goods too early and be without for too long. But remember, movers cannot be scheduled on weekends, so that kinda plays a factor in picking a pack & load date.

If my husband had his way, HHG would be scheduled in June (don't ask), but with the kids getting out of school mid June, I'm not trying to sit in an empty house with four restless pre-teen/teen children who are already "bored" enough during the summer.

Nine danke!

We agreed in the middle: July 17th & 18th are our moving dates.

Transportation determines how many packing and loading dates a family needs based off household size and weight estimation. Any estimation over 5,000lbs is automatically contracted as a two day moving process.

Those moving dates give us 3 weeks from flight day (again, give or take a day because our flight has not been officially scheduled, but has been estimated) of being without a house and shit, but I think it'll be okay.

Here in Germany, when you get the keys to your new place, it comes furnished with basics; one bed in every room, a small dresser in every room, dining table/chairs, coffee table, end tables, couch and love seat. But when you move out, you reschedule it to be redelivered; so you have somewhere to sleep while your bed is gone, and to make it ready for the next occupant.

We scheduled the delivery for July 18th in the late afternoon- just as the movers should be leaving, or hopefully already gone.

We also scheduled the little moving brief (that is not optional for the soldier) for some date in at the end of May. They cover the basics of what you can/can't ship, cleaning your bbq, and basically what you already know. It is at this brief that you get the form to ship your car. Can't ship a car without it, but you can schedule a car shipment date without it.

After that, we scheduled our car shipment at the VPC in Graf. We're okay with being car-less once the kids are out of school (three of my kids go to school way down yonder and ride a bus -about 45 minutes away). I didn't want to encounter an scenario where I'd have to be able to get to them fast and not have a car at my fingertips. You never know when a barfing kid sitting in the nurses office will strike. 

School ends on June 15th. Car shipment has been scheduled for the 19th of June.

VPC estimates a shipping time of 60-90 days, so it is possible we won't be without our family ride for too long after getting to the states.

Whew! 

I'm almost done...

Next stop: Housing. 

It is recommended you schedule a pre-inspection at least 30 days before you plan turn in keys & final out of your home. But you can schedule it for somewhat earlier, if need be.

We went ahead and scheduled it for the end of June, even though we'll be doing our final inspection most likely in the first week of August. It's all about leeway, my friends. Better to be early than sorry.

And finally, we went to both on-post lodging facilities. Tower Inn was first, and they had almost no availability for August already (it's mid April now)!

The lady scheduled us for check-in on August 6th, a Sunday, which is the best she could do. That kind of puts us in a pinch, being as that we can't clear and final out of the house on a Saturday anyway, and if we did it Friday the 4th, we'd have nowhere to go until checking in on that Sunday. UGH.

Nonetheless, it is scheduled, and we can give them a call to see if anything has changed along the way, or cancel at anytime.

So we went down to Krystal Inn here on Rose Barracks, and what do ya know? Loads of availability! So we scheduled with them, too.

You can call us greedy, but hey, we spent over 30 days in an off post hotel before getting a house on post. They never had on-post lodging available for us after landing in Germany. Thirty days of catching rides to post, sharing a bathtub (no shower), no mini-fridge, not even a trash can, oh, and it was up five flights of stairs in a medieval tower. And we shelled 2,000 euro our of pocket every 10 days! Yes, it was reimbursable, but still, it sucked.

Krystal Inn was able to schedule us for July 31st to our estimated flight date (and she said that we should have no issues extending the time if needed, as long as we do it within a month or so).

Tower Inn is a bit more favorable because of its proximity to the main px, a shoppette, and the town outside of the gate, but that's why it books up fast. Krystal Inn has the basics nearby, at least, so its whatever either way. 

So, we are almost set!

This coming week we'll be hitting up SATO again to see if they are able to schedule flights for the week we need, and we'll adjust lodging dates accordingly after and figure out our final out date for the house based on that. 

All of the above regarding our scheduling is more so based on his AVAL and DEROS date like I mentioned earlier on. These two dates, no matter who you are, are the most important to schedule around and to keep in account.

And if you've made it this far...I'm done writing about PCS-ing for now :-)

I'll blog about what happens with SATO in the next week or so, but not much should change until June.

Until next time!