While I was thinking and talking about our CHUs, I noticed another Army pronoun I do not remember from the 70s: Bitch. I do not mean the act of complaining or a derogatory reference to a woman, those uses are no different than the civilian usage. But when I cataloqued the use of Shit as a pronoun, I did not notice there is an upper size limit on the use of that word.
When a soldier refers to a truck, or a building, or other very large object, he will often say "This bitch is ready to paint" referring to a recently repaired truck or "This bitch has a busted air conditioner" referring to a CHU without the most important creature comfort. So there is a line somewhere between a duffel bag and a Deuce-and-a-half truck where the item referred to is no longer "that shit" but "this bitch."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart
Blindness reached out and grabbed me from the first page. A very ordinary scene of cars waiting for a traffic introduces the horror to c...
-
Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army. If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad... -
On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan. Artist Larry Selman i... -
C.S. Lewis , best known for The Chronicles of Narnia served in World War I in the British Army. He was a citizen of Northern Ireland an...
I absolutely love these posts.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed that too-- I guess "This bitch is ready to paint" is just another way of saying "It's going to be a bitch to paint this." :-)
ReplyDelete