Mob Cafe--Intellectual Corner

Seated near the drinks in the far corner of the Mob Cafe are the soldiers with some college who hang together and make jokes almost devoid of 4-letter words. If the Mob Cafe is a high school cafeteria, these are the smart ass kids that don't like the jocks.

Tonight I was doing my laundry when one of this group walked into the laundry room to take his stuff from the dryer. He is an ex-Marine with a shaved head in his late 20s. He was talking on a cell phone as he emptied the dryer. He was also carrying a cup he found that says, "Retired Navy." As he walked by, I noticed he was wearing a red CCCP t-shirt (the Cyrillic alphabet letters for Soviet Socialist Republic), blue sweat pants, shower shoes, and carrying an M16 rifle. An ensemble you just don't see everywhere.

Mobilization Cafe, Part 2

I got several comments back on the Mobilization Cafe. A co-worker who is also a Sopranos fan loved the idea that everyone calls it the (long O) Mob Cafe, but it looks like the Mob Cafe--like Tony, Silvio, Paulie, Bobby, et al would be sipping espresso and planning revenge hits.

Alas, there is no repose and no barista. In fact, the coffee is a good instant, but it's instant. And while the food is fairly good and there is lots of it, three meals per day more than 1,000 soldiers eat in just two hours.

At any given time there are more than 100 people in line. At a recent lunch I counted as follows: 50 people outside the door in line, 25 people between the door and the sign-in desk, 50 more between the desk and the serving line. It took 12 minutes to get to the sign-in desk, then 12 more minutes to get to the servers. Two minutes later I got the hot foot, dessert and went through the salad bar. Two more minutes to get drinks. Usually, I come to chow alone because of checking something on line or talking to someone. So while I am waiting, I look for someone who is 20 or 30 people ahead I can eat half of lunch with them. Typically, we eat in 10 to 15 minutes, so if you sit with someone who got their food 10 minutes before, they are done two minutes after you sit down. There are also a few of the older enlisted men who get to chow early and eat slow, so I can sit with them even if they have been eating for 15 minutes.

Today, the dinner choices were spaghetti with meat sauce, baked or fried chicken, and lasagna. Squash, baked or mashed potatoes and corn on the cob for vegetables. The fast foods tonight were corn dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches. A salad bar with fruit and about five dessert choices are available at every meal. The food really is pretty good. The plates and cups are styrofoam, the silverware is white plastic.

Weapons 24/7

In my room with my M16A4. We just pulled out all of our field equipment for a platoon inspection.



Tonight at 6pm (1800 hours) we drew our weapons from the arms room--permanently. We will have our weapons with us for all training until we leave. And it makes everything we do some part of weapons training. Because if it rains, our weapon gets wet along with us. And we have to clean them. The smart soldiers clean their weapons THEN themselves. I hope that neither me nor any member of my team is the first one to forget, misplace, or God Forbid, lose their weapon.

Sleep in a Building , Eat in a Tent

For the two months or so we are in stateside training, we are living in three-story concrete buildings more than 600 feet long with four entrances on each side. The two main buildings our unit lives in are side by side and together are almost 1/4-mile long. In front of the buildings is a 100-foot wide paved area with parking near the buildings. On the far side of paved strip, more or less centered between the buildings is a 200-foot-long, 100-foot-wide pair of tents with shipping container-sized enclosures in between. The tents are our dining facility called The Mobilization Cafe.

If you are curious this Web site has photos of the Mob (long O) Cafe, our barracks and other local landmarks.

Each side of the Mob Cafe seats 288 soldiers at tables that seat 16. I'll say more about the food and the service in my next post, but the seating is definitely high school cafeteria with uniforms. Junior officers sit with junior officers, pilots with pilots, fuelers with fuelers, sergeants with sergeants (also junior with junior, senior with senior), enlisted soldiers divide by age and sex, above and below 25 years old. For all the dividing up by age and sex and rank and job, almost no one divides by race. When I first joined in 1972 I was surprised how integrated the military was compared to civilian life. It's even more so now. But if all mechanics of all races sit together and talk shop, they don't generally sit with clerks and fuelers. I don't think that will ever change.

Day 2 at the Range--I Qualified

This morning we went to the rifle qualification range. It has pop-up targets from 50 meters to 300 meters that come up randomly for 3 to 5 seconds. To qualify, you have to hit 23 of 40 targets with 40 rounds of ammunition. I got 27. I passed. Since I was last on an M-16 range in 1972, I was very happy just to pass.

Cheap Bike Helmets

Apparently the Army REALLY wants soldiers and their families wearing bicycle helmets--or at least they want to remove one excuse for not wearing one. "Helmets are expensive" is not something you could hear at the Post Exchange (PX). My folding bike showed up in a shipping container that will be here just two weeks. I won't have much chance to ride it, but I took it out anyway, just because I miss riding a lot. My wife mailed one of my helmets here, but till it arrives I thought I could buy a helmet if it wasn't too expensive. I went to the PX to buy a helmet and found ANSI approved adult helmets on sale less than half price. So I bought one.

The original price: $4.28
This week: $1.99!!!!

The original price is the same price as a Venti Carmel Macchiato (my favorite) at Starbucks. The sale price is less than a tall coffee.

"That's What a Soldier Looks Like"

Today I had the biggest anxiety attack since this whole deployment started. It was first of two days of live fire with the M-16. Although I spent 11 years in the military back in the 70s and 80s, I have not fired an M-16 on a qualification range since Air Force basic training in February in 1972. Worse, in AF basic we did not go through the whole qualification process: zeroing the weapons, pop-up targets, night fire, firing in gas masks. In the Air Force, they handed us a weapon, we shot at some targets, they took the weapons and that was the one and only day in my Air Force career I handled a personal weapon.

When I joined the Army, I went straight to tank training. For the next eight years my personal weapon was a 45 cal. pistol. So this morning we boarded a bus to go to the range wearing our new bulletproof vests and helmets.

On the first range we zeroed the weapon. To zero, you shoot three rounds at a paper target at 25 meters. To zero the weapon, you must put 5 rounds in a 4 cm square. Since the M16A4 we use has both traditional iron sights and the new close quarters optical device, we have to zero the weapon twice, once with each sight.

So to zero the weapon with both sights, you have to shoot at least 12 rounds--six with each sight--and hit at least five out of six. Most of the 25 of us who were shooting fired 36 to 48 rounds. I fired 60. A few soldiers fired more. One soldier, a female sergeant, fired 12 rounds and was done.

We fire side by side in 8-foot-wide "lanes" with very prominent numbers. When the safety NCO told the tower the woman in Lane 6 zeroed with 12 rounds, the tower told her to walk down the embankment we shoot from and clear her weapon. As she walked toward the ammo point to turn in her unused ammunition, the tower told all the rest fo us to turn around and look at the female sergeant walking to the ammo point.

The sergeant in the tower said on the PA system, "Take a look ladies and gentlemen, that's what a soldier looks like. Now turn around."