Flash Gordon And The Biggest Turd Ever...

So recently, as we all know my unit has begun the long trip home. It’s going to cover almost 7,000 miles. And that’s just the flight. So most of our unit is already sitting is Salerno just waiting on a flight to Bargram and then on to anywhere but here. For them, the journey has already started. For me that journey begins in about a week.

They’re gone, and I’m still here. So what does that mean? Movie night and a raffle, of course.

I already told you that this has got to be the greatest FOB in all the land. Pool, great food, and the bathrooms have hardwood floors in them. Yes, all the bathrooms in this country are converted semi-truck trailers and someone thought it would be a good idea to put hardwood floors in this one!

So every Friday night they have movie night, which is a good time. They usually play first run movies. How do we get them? Well, someone back in the States or Britain or someplace else takes a little movie camera into a theater, records the flick, then sells it to some unsavory character, who then makes about a zillion copies of the movie and sells them all over the world for about $1 a piece, then this guy Zaheed who runs one of the shops in the Bazaar gets a hold of about 100 of these copies and sells them to us for $2.00. Then Zaheed has to turn around and give 50-80% of his profits to the Taliban to keep them from cutting his head off.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Afghani’s have not embraced American style capitalism. And don’t ever think that the Taliban haven’t either.

Anyway, so then they had the raffle. I managed to get my name pulled. But mine was about the eighth name called. Not good. Why? Because there are usually like 10 prizes. 3 of which are good. The rest of which you couldn’t even get a haji to want. So coming in 8th, I walk up to the table to find a haji disk of the Andy Griffin Show, and Flash Gordon. Three episodes of the TV show. I didn’t even know there was a Flash Gordon television show.

They were playing some movie that I didn’t want to see, I don’t even remember the name of it. So I figured this was a good time to hit the latrine and drop the kids off at the pool. I walked in to the most horrendous smell I have smelt since, well yesterday. But it was bad. Anyway, gonna save the gory details, make everyone’s life easier. Biggest turd ever! Sitting in bathroom. I swear to God some of these assholes that the Army let’s in are dumber than a box of shit. I am telling you, the things that people in this Army do is argument enough for a forced sterilization program. If nothing else they should at least have to pass some sort of test before they are allowed to pollute the earth with their demon seed.

But all is not lost, Mud Puppy has had almost a full 4 days of near-Nirvana.

What has brought this wonderful state of being to my world? The absence of anyone but myself, my squad leader and another dude we call “Buckets”. We call him Buckets because I swear to you he looks just like a Keebler elf, and one day we got on the internet and looked up the names of the elf’s and found one named Buckets. So we ran with it.

They all left, all the joe’s, all the other NCO’s and especially the platoon daddy and the platoon leader are no where to be found. So basically my job for the past 2 days, and the next 2 is to sit here, totally out of uniform, doing anything and everything but what I am supposed to.

Yesterday, I slept in all the way to 0800. I have never felt so refreshed in my life. I haven’t had a real uniform on for more than an hour since they left. And get this, I took a nap yesterday, and am going to take another one today!

So unfortunately there are no real events on which to write but I think I may have found some inspiration.

Well, if not inspiration at least something to be psychotically overjoyed about.

The bulk of the new unit arrives here in about half an hour, and then tomorrow morning begins our training of them so that they can take over for us.

That means that in roughly one week we begin our long journey home.

So hopefully, there are at least a few more interesting stories to tell before this whole thing is over.

But the light at the end of the tunnel is bright enough for me to see the door! And that makes me very happy.

I’m done now.

Later,

I love you Mom...