Thinking Back...

Here We Go Again...

Same Ole' Shit Again...


That is the first line of my favorite cadence from basic training. Back in 1998 at Fort McClellen, Alabama. I sang that one with such gusto that even the drill sergeants laughed at me.

I stand around now looking around at all the insanity going on around me and I can't help but laugh. (I do that a lot). Mostly because if I didn't laugh at all of this shit I would most likely have a rather debilitating psychotic episode within the first week or so.

I have been reminiscing a whole lot lately about my military life. Which has been interesting to say the least, but given the fact that I am now at a post, and in a unit that is chock full of privates (lowest rank in the army) I have been thinking a lot about my experiences in basic training.

I remember getting there and having a rather large black dude step onto the bus and bracing myself for the Full Metal Jacket style tongue lashing that was certain to be on its way. At which point he politely smiled and asked, very cordially for me to step off the bus and stand on the yellow line.

Alright, not what I expected but whatever. Its supposedly a new Army so I guess they do it this way now. I got in processed, got my new haircut, which made me look like an alien because not only do I have a misshapen dome piece but it is also incredibly large. I mean the damn thing has it's own weather system.

Then I packed up all my civilian shit in a bag, locked it and handed it over. I am still missing a pair of underwear from that. I am still disturbed by the thought of exactly what happened to that pair of red hot chili pepper boxers. I ate some dinner and went to sleep. Not bad food either. Then I spent the next few days going back and forth from this place to that, seeing the doctor and all of that crap. Filling out paperwork and what not. Then one evening a drill sergeant, who was very disappointing to me since he was a very nice guy, came to me and said, "Hey bud, get some sleep tonight because tomorrow morning at 0400 you are going down range." Down range in the military can mean a few different things. You've got the basic training definition, which is leaving reception and heading to a basic training company for the next 16 weeks. Then you have the deployment meaning which is heading into the shithole that you will call home for the next year.

I had yet to realize that basic training still had not yet begun. I saw all the usual stuff. Marching, singing cadence, getting up ass-crack early in the morning and all. However, as yet I had not seen one person get a real, solid, profanity laced dressing down. I mean I felt cheated. Little did I know what was about to happen.

The next morning I woke up at about 0300, I was excited. I was finally about to get to do all that hooah Army shit. So before breakfast they loaded about 80 of us onto a bus and drove us for what seemed like forever but it was really only like 20 minutes and we got there. Bravo Company 787th MP Battalion. My birthplace as far as the military is concerned.

We got off the bus and still nothing good...we marched up the walkway and still nothing good...we walked around the corner (carrying two duffel bags full of all our shiny new Army issue crap)...and still nothing...we crossed under a little banner that said some goofy crap about Bravo being the best company in the Army or something and...it happened...

About 100 or what seemed like 100 but was really only 8 drill sergeants swarmed at us from all directions. I swear to God some of them dropped from the sky and they were all really pissed, had some serious halitosis going on, and they all hated me. I remember shaking. I actually shook. Now ladies and gents, I don't scare easy. But this little surprise got under my skin. I blame it on the fact that I had already been up for two hours and the sun was still not up.

For the next two hours we stood there while we were accosted by these guys who didn't know us from Adam, but were still able to say some of the craziest stuff I had ever heard. "Holy Jumping Fucking Shit Balls Private, You look like about 250 pounds of chewed bubble gum!" "For the love of God private, you must've been born in the ugly tree, fallen out and hit every ugly branch on the way down and smashed into the ugly puddle at the bottom."

All the while as they are screaming at us to hold our bags up. HIGH!!!! Now I don't care who you are holding a bag that weighs 35 pounds or so up in the air is hard, and then to have to do it for any extended period of time is murder. And it had only been like 5 minutes and my shoulders felt like they were being burned by the devil himself and I wished they would just fall off, and I distinctly remember thinking to myself. "You volunteered, dipshit."

Two hours later, caked in sweat and not being able to lift my arms above waist level I dragged my shit upstairs to the wonderful government issue bed of nails that was to be my home for the next 4 months or so.

I spent the next 4 months in one level of pain or another. Never getting enough sleep or enough to eat or ever having enough time to even stop and think. I had taken the first steps down the tumultuous, crazy, enlightening, difficult, heartbreaking, homesickness inducing, thought provoking, and full of shit roads ever. Which has led me to right here.

Sitting on top of a government issued bed of nails with a pile of army issue crap and my shoulders feel like they are being burned by the devil himself and I wish my arms would just fall off, and I continue to think to myself..."YOU VOLUNTEERED DIPSHIT"

Ah, whatever, I guess I am just a glutton for punishment. But then I think about all of them. Who? My mother, my brother, my cousins, my friends, my home, all the people who whether they know it or not depend on dipshits like me to live their lives the way they want, and a strange sense of calm washes over me.

I've done this for over a decade now. Anyone who thinks the military hasn't sent me through the ringer a few times can kiss my Irish ass. I have been through it once or twice. And I still cannot keep that line from "Patton" out of my head.

"God help me, I do love it so..."

Note To Self...

To be read in case of personal contemplation of reenlistment. I have successfully embraced the suck for the majority of this huge pile of bullshit that the army has been putting me through for the past couple of weeks. Its actually turning out to be quite a bit of fun. In that I have taken to watching everyone else as they descend from mature, intelligent adults, into sniveling, whiny, soft little children. Good times for me.

We have been training out here for about two weeks now and people are already starting to crack and its fun to watch them march right up to the edge and then just give them a little shove and watch the fireworks.

But that doesn't change the fact that I have been doing this shit for in excess of a decade now and I should've known better than to come along for this. Anytime you let the people that the Army finds to be in charge run anything, the reindeer games are something to behold.

We have been placed on guard duty for trucks that do not exist, we have stayed up until 2 in the morning to be told that we are getting up at 4 in the morning. We have been given a mountain of equipment that no one knows how to use. Half this stuff, when I look at it, I can't even tell what it is, much less how to use it. We have been given briefings until 2300 and taken a PT test at 0400. We have been given blank ammunition with which to fire in training simulations in the forest (which is so similar to where we are going) and then told that as we fire the ammunition we have to pick up and account for every single round due to the fact that there is some endangered frog in the woods or some shit.

We have been ordered by our commander to turn in all our weapons to the head shed (the commander's minions.) So we threw 200 and something weapons into the tent! That wasn't at all hard to figure out later. We have spent 6 hours in the middle of the night looking for a piece of equipment that was right where it was supposed to be the whole time. We have been scolded for not saluting officers when we are carrying weapons systems that weigh more than some people. We have been forced to wear equipment weighing more than 50 pounds for literally 12-16 hours at a time. We have not gotten more than 5 hours of continuous sleep for two weeks.

Am I bitching? Yeah a little bit, but I go through this one as a reminder to myself of all this shit for when I come up for reenlistment. You see every time I have reenlisted it has been because of the fact that I ignored all of this shit and only remembered the good stuff. I suppressed every ounce of bullshit the army sent my way and only thought of the things that made me smile and signed the dotted line on faulty information.

I do not regret my decision to volunteer for this, not even a little bit. I know for a fact that I will rise to any challenge that the army sends my way. Embracing the suck is all you can do, because it only gets worse. However, that doesn't change the fact that a few years from now I am going to be asked to raise my hand again and to those pricks I will say, "Kiss my ass, I'm out of here"

I paid what I owe, I paid what two people owe, and you Uncle Sam have gotten everything out of me that you are going to get. How you like them apples?

This We'll Defend...

Now the title of this post is the Army motto, "This We'll Defend". A good motto if you ask me, but I am not quite sure I really understand what it is we are defending anymore.

The reason I am writing like this is because my buddies and I just went to the PX here on post and were sitting down enjoying our sandwiches from Charley's when a news report came on that stated that there is some chick out in Nevada who is selling her virginity online for a million bucks. So I am sitting here wondering exactly what this world, more specifically our country is coming to.

I mean I didn't really care one way or the other about this woman. I don't know her, and I don't have a million bucks so who gives a shit right? But then I started thinking how I would have reacted to all of this if I were her brother or worse yet her father. Holy shit, I can only imagine.

I mean this girl should lose her virginity like everyone else. At a party when she is 17 after having way too much to drink and waking up to some ugly ass dude drooling on her shoulder. I mean is that too much to ask. But no, she is going to sell it at a whorehouse to some dirty old fart with too much money and too little time to live and a truckload of viagra and then she is going to be set for life. I gotta admit, I might be just a tad jealous. All except for the geriatric sex part.

But is nothing sacred? Are human beings capable of anything? Is there nothing in this world that is not for sale? Answers, no nothing is sacred, humans can and will do anything, and everything is for sale. Even your daughters honor. Embrace the suck on that one all you fathers out there. And people wonder why I don't want to have children.

That, and the fact that our entire nation for the most part, has spent the last 8 years at the mall while all my boys and I have been doing this military bullshit.

They have been buying their hummers, and Beamers, and Lexus, and shit while gas shot through the roof, and the world outside our borders steadily collapsed and they spent all that time at the mall. Or in college, protesting our very existence while enjoying and exercising the rights won by guys just like me. (Yeah, I'm bragging, you don't like it, f**& off)

All the while, through all of that, we kept on defending. Kept on doing as we are told. Kept on, keeping on. While I watch as this nation that I love has fallen under attack, not from the outside, but from within. By all these cry baby assholes who think that everything is ok and no one should be accountable for anything.

So I wonder, is there anyone out there who will change the tide. Could I do it even if I tried. Is there any real point in trying because of the simple fact that for the most part this great land of ours has degenerated into one big joke. Not that I am complaining. There is a lot of fun to be had there.

But then I look around myself here and I see all these people more than willing to sacrifice everything for this nation and I think we just might be OK. I just wonder if these guys and gals are enough to stem the wave of shit that is coming down from all the douchebaggery happening in the world right now. Are we enough, and are we too late?

The World's Most Expensive Game of ...

Today was a joke. From top to bottom, left to right, and from 0830 to 1730. We sat there and didn't do shit. I mean literally, not a thing. We got up really early, like 0530, which isn't Army early but its early to me, then we got some breakfast, laid around for another hour and then we got told we were going to some convoy simulation training.

We have learned that simulation means "video game". So we get there and there are all these trailers set up which people are going in and out of doing important looking things, and carrying official looking papers, and moving quickly and yelling at each other in military acronyms and what not. So I, correctly, assumed that this is the place where the training was going to take place.

Shortly after arriving we were notified that another company had to go through the training also. No big deal, we'll just get in line with them and we'll all get through this. Right? Not a chance baby, this is Uncle Sam's mean green machine and we don't do anything the easy way.

We sat there all day. Now when I say all day, the only exaggeration is that we didn't sit there for 24 hours. We sat there on the pavement, moving our gear from this place to that, and shuffling it around to avoid the sun as it passed over our heads and redoing this and adjusting that to get comfortable enough to sleep on the blacktop. We sat from 0830 alllllllllllllllllllllllll the way through to 1700, for those of you keeping track that's 8 and 1/2 hours. Then we finally got into this thing, which turned out to be a big plastic humvee with a bunch of cords coming out of it and a fake 50 caliber machine gun on top, all facing a huge screen.

We then pretended to drive this plastic beast through a stretch of simulated Afghani land. We ran into some explosions, we got shot at a little bit, and we ran over some civilians, shot a camel, and accidentally lit up an ambulance. Lots of fun, but all in all we were in there for 15 minutes.

So I would just like all the taxpayers in my audience to think about this. Your government, due to lack of competent leadership, subjected an entire platoon of mobilizing soldiers to a day spent sleeping on the blacktop outside a training facility, while somebody else played with the toys, not to mention the government has managed to sink what I can only imagine to be zillions of dollars into a gigantic video game for soldiers to learn how to run a convoy in the middle east and Asia. Relax ladies and gentlemen, your government is in charge, you can feel free to go back to sleep now...

Don't forget to vote.

Love you mom.

Hey La Di Da Dee...We Got Attacked Again

Ah ladies and gentlemen the reindeer games are in full swing here at the feaux FOB here at beautiful Fort Bragg. Apparently, and this one really made me laugh. We got attacked last night and only about a quarter of the soldiers here on the FOB responded because for the most part soldiers are a lazy and uninspired lot and they will do anything they can to avoid work of any kind. Myself included.

But how the hell do they expect us to know. We spent the last few weeks listening to nothing but fake grenades, artillery simulators, blank rounds and a whole mess of other shit going off all day and all night. About the only thing we haven't had is tanks rolling through here, other than that it is pretty much non stop. I go to sleep every night to a symphony of booms, bangs, and rat-a-tat-tats. So after all of that why would I care if there were a few more going off around here.

So we had to go and get into a formation so we could be told that we had not done very well on this little test and therefor the SOP would be changing on how we do things here at the FOB. OK, but if you have ever seen the snail's pace that military commanders can move at we will probably see our SOP changed sometime after we get back from Afghanistan.

But that is not such a big deal, anyone who knows the military knows that the only constant is change. That and whenever you start to wonder what is going to happen next the easiest way to figure it out is to find whatever event will suck the most. And that is exactly what is going to happen.

Now the big deal is guard duty. I love this stuff. Its one of those things that they throw you on when they really don't have anything else for you to do. I mean I get the fact that we have to guard the vehicles but that is because all these other shit bag units around here will cannibalize and steal all of our parts. But now they want a guard on the company TOC (tactical operations center). I could see why they would want a guard on that if it weren't already behind a tollbooth. I mean really, there is the front gate of the FOB and then there is this little thing that looks like a tollbooth that controls entry to the area of the FOB that has the TOC in it. So what's with the extra guard. But that...(had to stop writing because we got fake attacked again)

How much fun can you have in one day. 200 soldiers all running around like chickens with their heads cut off, firing off blank ammunition like we will never run out of it, NCO's yelling at each other trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. About 10 guys who all think they are Delta force or some shit running out into the woods to chase down the bad guys and getting lit up by a crew served machine gun as soon as they left the wire. The rest of us all laughing at them because they decided to run directly in front of all of us making us completely useless because you can't fire when some dip shit is in front of you. Now I am sitting here wondering what the letter would read like to their parents after that shit.

Dear Patriotic Parents,

The Defense Department regrets to inform you that your children are dead because they were stupid. Life insurance collection forms are enclosed.

Sincerely,

Douche Bag in charge.


Admittedly, that was a bit brutal. However, it doesn't change the fact that some of these young guys have to realize that this is not a video game. People have died, are dying, and will die. Not to mention the ones who will be maimed and wounded and completely mind fucked by this whole thing. There is a very, very, ridiculously thin line between heroism and stupidity. What I saw tonight was nothing more than stupidity.

I have no interest in dying. I have no interest in getting wounded. I don't give a damn about getting the bad guys. I have one prevailing thought in my head. Accomplish the mission, stay alive. That is all there is and that is all I will do. I wish to God that these young ones get that through their head sometime real soon. I mean I saw guys climbing over concertina wire. One slip and they would have been wrapped in this shit and cutting themselves up like grated cheese. But hey they got the testosterone and their all going to slay the huns and save the world.

I don't know about you but I wonder about these young guys. They got it all ahead of them. I swear to you some of them haven't even gotten their dicks wet yet, and they are going to pull some shit like this. Not that it really matters. I wholly expect that they knew in the back of their minds that this was just training and that nothing real was going to happen to them and that might be why they conducted themselves the way they did.

But that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to be around when some 19 year old kid gets boxed up...

I'll See You In The Next Life...

There is a song performed by a band called "Suede", called "The Next Life" and I just started listening to it. The problem with me is this, sometimes we all do this, but I do it on a fairly regular basis. I start thinking about the wrong things.

Things you should never let enter your mind. Why? Because they will only do one thing, and that is fuck up your head and make it impossible for you to focus on the task at hand.

My task at hand is simple. Survive the next year and get home to my family and the rest of my life. Unfortunately for me, I have been thinking quite a bit about death lately. Not my own so much, but everyone else's. I look around and I can't help but wonder...

Who's it gonna be? Who is not going home this time? Is it him...or her...or him...or him...or that guy...or that girl? Which one of our parents is getting that letter. Which one will it be?

I am trying so very hard to put this shit out of my head. I wonder if everyone else wonders about this kind of stuff too, or are they smart enough to just not worry about it and focus on what they are doing and get through this?

It's funny, I haven't even left the states yet. How jacked up am I gonna be when we are in country? Am I a coward? Will these thoughts pass?

Once again, a million questions, and not a single answer.

I wonder if I am still cut out for this? Have I passed my prime and am not of any use anymore?

I know deep down that none of this is anything that I should worry about. I know that I can do this job, and I can do it well. I have been trained, I am ready, and if at anytime the Taliban decide to come dance with me they will be meeting their 72 virgins just a little bit sooner than expected.

But that doesn't change the things running through my brain at a million miles per hour for every minute of every day that I am awake. Thankfully, all I think about while I am asleep is sex.

But its funny how fast your mind, or in actuality, my mind can change. Just ask my ex-wife. Now I feel OK. Nothings changed but it doesn't bother me anymore. Maybe its just because I got it out here onto this "paper" and got that bullshit off my chest.

I'll leave you with two maxims.

Fuck the bullshit.

Its all bullshit...

Just Letting You Know...

So I am here at Bragg training for this eminent deployment. Just wanted to drop a quick note because I haven't had internet access for like 2 weeks now. Its funny that when we are on the base it is hard to get on the internet because the MWR joint is all the way on the other side of post, but the FOB (forward operating base) where we are training has wireless. Explain that shit! But I haven't been ignoring my blog, as soon as I get wireless I have all my posts saved on my laptop and they will all shoot up as soon as possible.

I am OK, and everything is going as well as can be when everything is run by officers. Later, and pray for all of us...

Love You Mom.