Uh-Oh!

It was almost a bad thing.

I'd been having a pretty good night out on the yard. Just driving around in the cart as usual, talking to some of the knuckleheads.

I went up to Central to grab another bottle of water out of my lunchbox. Our new shack still isn't finished, so I keep it up there.

Lt. Gerber was playing shift commander tonight and when I went in he was on the phone, trying to get hold of the duty officer. And he was starting to look a little stressed out. Things in the office felt a little tense so I got my water and left.

About five minutes later, back on the yard cruising around when Control Center calls on the radio and closes the yards. Then they say "Lock down and prepare for a Code 23." Uh-oh. A name and number count at 7:30 at night? Two and a half hours early?

Snap! Something is wrong.

We get the yards cleared and Sgt Uncle T sends me and one of the OJT's down to make sure the chapel on our side is cleared and secured. Sometimes the chapel people don't listen to the radio. It was and we headed back and they finally called for the count.

And we waited...

And we waited....

And then we started getting nervous. Sgt Uncle T was laying out plans about which sets of keys we were going to get and who was going to be searching what buildings and pairing us up into teams. If somebody was missing we were going to have to determine if they were or were not still on the camp and pronto!

And then count cleared. H'ray!

Turns out that one of the P-car drivers had found a piece of a torn t-shirt hanging in the razor wire that he swore wasn't there when he went by before. And it apparently looked like the razor wire had been pulled down some.

They made the right decision in locking down for count.

But it was a little nerve wracking there for a bit.