Writing About Soldiers

For the last week I have been splitting my time between resuming my duties as Sergeant Tool Bitch in Echo Company (issuing high value tools from a central tool area) and writing brief vignettes about some of the soldiers in the battalion. Since the higher headquarters (brigade) wants photos also, they gave me a motor-drive NIKON SLR camera with an 18 to 200mm telephoto lens to do take pictures. I don't know much about current camera, but one of my buddies who saw the camera said it costs $3500 new and is "Awesome."

In the course of these brief interviews I have learned a lot more about the soldiers in Echo Company and as I move to other companies, about their soldiers. One of the helicopter mechanics I spoke with got fishing gear shipped from the states. One his day off, he fishes on one of the two ponds on Water Street where the water storage and water treatment plants are located. So far he has caught a catfish more than three feet long. He threw it back but it is strange to think someone is fishing in this dust bowl.

Returning to the chicken shit theme from earlier this week, I took off my Livestrong bracelet yesterday. The directive I spoke about does not allow cancer survivor bracelets, only MIA and KIA bracelets. I have worn that yellow polymer bracelet since 2001. Actually the original one broke in 2003 but the current one, though thin, is still in one circular piece and in a drawer until we go to a less chicken shit command. Although I will be putting it back on in a week if Lance wins his eighth tour. Just for the day.

A first sergeant in one of the communications units who is on his sixth deployment including the Gulf War was talking about how the uniform is the way we show we are soldiers. By complying with the current uniform SOP we show that we are ready to do whatever is necessary when the time comes. He is also taking an on-line college course in writing and is one of the few senior NCOs I have met who really wants to learn to write. He is not taking the course just to meet a requirement for his next promotion.

All the Way Across Iowa and other Blogs

If you down my blog roll you will see blogs I follow for various reasons, but mostly for their odd perspective on some part of life that I care about. For the next couple of weeks, the blog posts I most anticipate enjoying will be on Adventure Across Iowa in which my friend Kristine Chin, a New York editor and event manager, will write about she and her husband Rick riding a tandem across Iowa in July with 15,000 other people.


Thunder Run is another excellent site. It's the only military blog I have on my blog roll because it brings together many other good milblogs, so it is one-stop shopping for interesting perspectives on the wars we fight and the warriors who fight them.

On a completely different note, if you have ever doubted, suffered, or torn your whole life up by the roots and started over, you will probably enjoy Meredith Gould, a Jewish sociologist who took a tortuous path to becoming a Catholic author. Her most recent post, the link above, may be one of the best things she has written about the paradox of living faith.

For weirdness by people who publish in scientific journals, the Annals of Improbable Research blog will introduce you the people who study the medical side-effects of sword-swallowing, who electronically modified the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is, who demonstrated that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine, and who discovered that professional lap dancers earn higher tips when they are ovulating.

More later. . .

Calling Home During Viet Nam

My Uncle Jack who served in Viet Nam and other parts of South East Asia for several years between 1965 and 1974, had this response to my post on stress:

I was intrigued by your blog about stress. This is completely opposite my experience during remote interludes in the years 1965 to 1974. As late as 1974 calling home from Thailand was impossible. When if you got to the Philippines you had an opportunity. Even then it was a hassle: Go to a special location, file a request with a clerk to call a certain stateside number, then wait. When the call went through you'd be summoned and directed to a booth to which the call would be connected. Then for, as I recall, a dollar a minute you could talk for a limited time, say ten minutes. Pretty much things were even worse in Greenland and other garden spots SAC (Strategi Air Command) populated. There was no internet/email.

In those circumstances it was impossible to be involved in the daily life of your family at home. They had to solve their own problems--or, more likely, create them. As a junior officer of modest means writing a check from the joint account you shared with your wife took two weeks or more of coordination via snail mail. This was in an era when bouncing a check was a serious offense. Of course, trusting your spouse to actually balance the checkbook and keep you from doing that was a stressful gamble. On-line checking didn't exist.

I never considered the circumstances families now face: more or less instant communication and the blessing or burden of participating from a distance. I imagine there is lots of real-time involvement, "Where did you put the vacuum cleaner bags? I can't find them anywhere!" "Do you know what your son did now?!"

Safe at Tallil

If the current crop of email memos is any indicator, we are stationed at a very safe part of Iraq. The new garrison command is making changes, that's what new garrison commands do. In one recent memo we got uniform standards including sock length with the PT uniform, when we are allowed to wear a specific uniform shirt in the chow hall and when we can't and whether or not we can wear MIA, Cancer Survivor, Livestrong and other rubber bracelets. There are new security standards for weapons taken into the gym and so forth. Minutiae written out at great length in the military is usually referred to as Chicken Shit (yet another use of that word).
Answers.com says:
1. Contemptibly petty or insignificant. For example, He has spent his life making up chicken shit rules that nobody follows anyway. This expression gained currency during World War II, when it was often applied to the enforcement of petty and disagreeable military regulations. [Vulgar slang; c. 1930]
2. Cowardly, as in You're not too chicken shit to come along, are you? [Vulgar slang; mid-1940s]
In this case we are only using Definition One.
The good side of this for your father, mother, brother, sister, spouse or other loved one stationed here is that their is an inverse relationship between CS and danger. After all, if there were immanent threats, the garrison is there to protect us. For most soldiers the increase in CS is a strong indicator that the enemy is remote.

Nigel Update

Nigel's room is getting a Spiderman makeover.


He also got a wardrobe addition with a new Sponge Bob Square Pants bicycling jersey.


And finally Nigel got an Army haircut.

Half of 2009 by the Numbers

Today I passed 3000 miles riding--more than I thought I would have ridden by now. So I figured I could do a short numbers update. In addition to riding 3000 miles in just over 6 months, I have lived (in the sense of having some type of domicile for a week or more) in three countries:
United States
Kuwait
Iraq
Two states: Pennsylvania and Oklahoma
Four Army Forts/Bases:
Fort Sill
Camp Buehring
Tallil Ali Air Base
Ali Al Salim Air Base
This blog has more readers than ever. When I started it, I wanted to give my friends a way to keep up with what I was doing without me sending emails they might not want. IF they wanted to read the blog they could. Last June I put Site Meter on the the blog. That month I got 370 visits and 503 page views. June of this year there were 4378 visits and 5681 page views. People from all six continents look at the blog. I guess an old guy in the American Army is weird enough to make a New Zealander laugh. In any case, The blog has had just over 26,000 visits since last June, making my blog almost as popular in a year as Hannah Montana is for 112 seconds!

I have had two glasses of wine and four beers since January 29 when I got activated. So the "no alcohol" policy is not much of a hardship. There are other activities I am only able to participate in during leave and pass that I will not count and also miss a lot more than more than Guiness Stout or Pinot Noir.

I have watched two movies since I was deployed. Both at the insistence of my roommate who worried that I would be completely culturally illiterate without having seen: "Full Metal Jacket" and "300."

Oh and I did watch the first 16 episodes of "24" while we were in Oklahoma. Since I am still here, I assume Jack Bauer saved the world.

That's all the numbers for now.

Music at the Laundry

Three or four days each week I drop off or pick up clothes at a laundry run by three young men from India. It's a great serve. Drop off up to 20 pieces and 1 to 3 days later it returns clean and folded. The three men are polite and soft spoken. They almost always have music on while they work. Mostly it is Indian music, usually upbeat and not too loud. Today while I was sorting and counting my clothes with the guy at the counter, I noticed the music was different. The beat was calypso. Then I heard the words. Or at least I heard the word motherf#^ker repeated several times. I turned toward the music and the two guys who were sorting a large pile of laundry. One smiled and said, "You like sir?" I smiled back and started laughing. The guy at the counter speaks English well and said something that got the other two laughing--and they turned the song down.
I went back to my CHU and told my roommate about the song. He knew right away that the song was "P.I.M.P" by 50 Cent. You can google it if you want the lyrics or the video. He had some laundry to drop off so he walked up to the laundry to hear it himself. He said when he went in the door "they were playing some other [song]." But as soon as he was inside they switched to P.I.M.P.