Tuesday, August 30, 2016

After 1,500 Posts the Top Ten Topics? Not Helicopters!



Command Sergeant Major of the Army National Guard Christopher Kepner

Today marks 1,500 posts on this blog since August of 2007 when I re-enlisted after 23 years as a civilian.  Last night I wrote to the soldiers who are the subjects of the most popular and the 11th most popular posts on my blog: Christopher Kepner and Pamela Leggore.  In between my stories about the current Command Sergeant Major of the Army National Guard and a flight medic who just returned from her second tour in Iraq, are stories Army life, but not about helicopters.

Pamela Leggore, Flight Medic

After Kepner, the most popular story I wrote was about CHUs, our homes on base in Iraq.  These sun-baked metal boxes were Home Sweet Trailer Home for most deployed soldiers and a lot of people wanted to know how we lived. 


                                            A Containerized Housing Unit in Iraq

After the CHU comes a post comparing Soviet and American Armor in the 1973 Arab-Israel War.  The tenth most popular post is also about tanks--a drunk German driver crashing into one of the tanks in my unit near the East-West German border:  Spoiler alert, the tank was undamaged.

Also popular was about about firing machine guns, about barracks liars in the Facebook Army, about "Military Privilege," a Tough Mudder competition, and one about the use of war language outside of war called War Metaphor.  

I posted a lot of helicopter pictures, but those posts were never as popular as the posts about soldiers' life and about soldiers, which makes perfect sense.  

My favorite post to write was "Shit as a Pronoun."  

Thanks for reading.  And thanks for sharing my 1,500th anniversary!!


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