Mole Funerals, MRE Bombs, And Queens For A Year...

Monday, December 8, 2008 1950 hrs.

So where to begin? How much douche baggery can one company produce in one deployment? I don't know, but I do think that this company is going to take a shot at the title.

Well, we buried a mole yesterday. Yes, that's right we buried a mole. Not the digging under the ground animal type. We buried the type that grows on people's faces.

Why did we do this? Well part of it is the fact that you have all these GI's around who are incredibly bored, but the other half of it, is in this case, the mole was an integral part of the human being from whom it was removed.

We have this guy here; we'll call him Scribbler. And he had this huge mole on his chin. I mean a mole so big there was an entire patch of his chin that he could not shave because if he did he would have cut a divot in his face the likes of which have never been seen before. I mean this thing made the mole from "Austin Powers" look like a tic-tac. Monstorous is the only word worthy of describing this thing. I do believe that it had its own weather system. It looked like he had a small child growing out of his chin. Disturbing, to say the least.

Well finally, one of the medics around here offered to cut the thing off for him. You know, so he could stop eating for two. (I still think that he had to feed this thing, it was that big!) So anyways, he got it cut off...and he saved the thing. He saved it, put it in a little coffin, and held a funeral yesterday.

It was a beautiful ceremony. We set up about 20 chairs and dug a little grave for this thing. We had a eulogy given by our version of a preacher. (You qualify for this job by being the most religious member of the platoon) We had a couple of guest speakers who described what Scribbler's mole meant to them during its short life, and then we had a farewell address from Scribbler himself, and the whole thing was MC'd by the Godfather of the E-4 mafia himself. (Someone remind me to explain to all non-military personnel what the E-4 mafia is).

Like I said a beautiful ceremony and a fitting send off for a small piece of Scribbler that had meant so much to all of us. Mostly in that it provided us with infinite entertainment by allowing us to mercilessly make fun of Scribbler for having that huge fucking thing growing out of his face.

Moving on, something I found funny. So I was sitting around our Hummers today. We were on stand by for a mission that never came. But after sitting out there a while I got hungry. I searched my truck and myself but turned up nothing worth eating, but I did find some stuff that was worthwhile in other ways but we'll get to that next. Now I was pissed, normally I can pull skittles, and snickers bars out of a million different places. So I asked Pigpen for something to eat, he immediately went into one of his ammo pouches and pulled out a Three Musketeers bar and gave it to me. Now while I was enjoying this wholesome, chocolaty treat I started to think about this.

I was angry with myself for not having a bunch of junk food stuffed into every pocket that I've got. Bearing in mind that when I put all the shit that the Army makes us wear on I have about 56 pockets all of which are for a specific purpose. Some are for ammunition, some are for grenades, some are for knives, some are for tools, and others are for medical shit, and on and on. Now do I, or anyone else use these pouches for what they are meant for? HELL NO. I put the shit that I want in these pouches. About the only one that gets used for what is supposed to be in there is the ammo pouches. The grenade pouches, (which are ridiculous because they only give grenades to the bosses), are perfect for lugging around several packs of cigarettes. You always have to bring as many cigarettes as you can because you never know how long you will be out there. The tool pouches are perfect for candy bars, and the medical pouches are good for stuffing a Mountain Dew or two into.

So basically, soldiers turn themselves into a walking vending machine. Sooner or later someone is going to ask me, "Do you have enough ammo? To which I could only reply, "No, but I've got a shit ton of kit Kat’s! Would you like one?" So it goes.

Moving on, MRE bombs. Yes that is what's next. What is an MRE bomb? Well allow me to explain. MRE stands for "meal ready to eat", its the modern Army's answer to C-rats or T-rats or whatever the hell the old timers called them. Now don't get me wrong the food isn't half bad as far as Army food goes. I mean if you eat it chances are pretty good you won't die, so I guess we should count ourselves lucky. Only difference is the old timers got cigarettes in their meals. So I would rate theirs above ours just on that one point, but I could be wrong.

But these MRE's come with a water activated heater. All you have to do is drop the package of food you want heated into a pouch with this heater and fill it with water and the expanding gases give off heat and warm up your chicken fajitas. (Yes, chicken fajitas is one of the better meals) Now the operative word in that last sentence is expanding.

These gases expand and fill up the pouch, and if you close the pouch too tightly and the gases can't escape then sooner or later the pouch explodes and the gases are released. The more of the heater's or the more water you add to the heater the quicker and more powerful the reaction is. Now is there anyone out there who thinks that bored out of their mind soldiers wouldn't come up with a new and interesting use for something such as this?

Well what we do is fill Gatorade bottles about a quarter of the way full with these heater's and then we fill them about half way up with water, then we screw the cap on really tight and wait for the "BOOM". Which usually takes about a minute or so to come. These can be great fun when employed to awaken a sound sleeping soldier.

So we made one of these bombs right after we watched one of our platoon mates climb into his truck for a mid morning nap. We waited for him to start snoring and then moved in.

We were lucky in that the door directly behind him was open because there is no way you can open a Hummer door without waking everyone inside. We slowly opened the door and placed said, MRE bomb on the floor behind him, gave it one last shake and closed the door...and waited. About a minute after we had placed the bomb and he had begun to drool on himself. The expanding gases finally became too much for the fragile walls of the Gatorade bottle and then came the BOOM.

To which he responded by jumping up, banging his head on the ceiling of the hummer, and to top it all off he started yelling, "Incoming" mistakenly thinking that we were under mortar attack. Finally, he looked around and saw that his entire squad was standing there, laughing hysterically and snapping pictures and taking video as he made a fool of himself.

He jumped out of the truck and hurled a seemingly endless stream of profanity at us, and I couldn't help but ask him, "How are your drawers? Are they still clean?" Suffice it to say, he was not amused. But I was, so it's all-good.

Remember people; this is what soldiers do with your hard earned tax dollars. We make homemade bombs in order to scare each other shitless.

Now on to the Queens for a Year. What is a queen for a year? It is a woman who back home in the states would be considered moderately attractive at best and usually would be considered homely. But here, given the fact that guys outnumber women about 15-1, they become very popular. For no other reason than the fact that they lack a penis. Since these girls are not used to the avalanche of attention thrown at them while they are here they usually do not respond well to it. Unfortunately, there are always a few who try to set a new worlds record for number of men slept with in the least amount of time.

And then the fights start.

Guys fighting with each other over women that they would not even give a second glance to if we were home. Luckily for me, I have been able to steer clear of all this shit so far. However, I just got one of these girls (yep, girls, can't call them women just yet) stuck into my team. So now I have to try and get her to curtail her promiscuity. How the hell do you tell a 20 year old girl who is surrounded by a bunch of 20 year old guys who are all sniffing around ALL the time to stop screwing?

I'll let you know how this one turns out. But the sexual culture in the military is so horrible that on previous trips of mine overseas I have always found at least one bathroom or barracks room or stairwell that had something scrawled on the wall to the effect of, "Hey girls, What are you going to do when you get home and you are ugly again?" I don't particularly care one way or the other about women in the military, but this is one unfortunate by-product of sexual integration that has kicked us all in the nuts.

Well I need a nap.

Later,

I love you mom...