Worried About What?

Earlier this week we got a briefing on the two or three weeks we will spend in Kuwait before going to Iraq. During the briefing we found out we were likely to be living in 200-man tents, huge open spaces that will give us 199 roommates. That news barely raised a murmur. They told us it could be blazing hot, but that did raise much of a reaction. In fact, the average temps during our stay, according to Google weather is mid-90s for highs, 70s for lows. Arctic conditions compared to what everyone has been telling us.

So what got everyone buzzing? They told us we would get one phone call per week and have to stand in line three hours to get that call, and there would be little or no internet service for us. That got everyone upset. No internet!!! Only the few soldiers willing to pay $1+ per minute or more for AT&T service will have cell phones. It will be interesting to see just what everyone does without internet. . .and without text messages. Almost all the squad leaders text formation and other information. I just got one telling me to verify my weapon was cleaned and turned in.

Before we go to Iraq, we will have a three-week fast from internet, cell phones, text messaging and very limited phone access. I can't even guess what people will do instead.

Convoy Training--Age Shows After it's Over

Sometimes I feel good about my ability to keep up with the 20- and 30-year-olds. Then reality shows itself on the smiling face of a 20-year-old who is in shape. On the first day of convoy training, we did not do anything particularly strenuous. Mostly, we stood outside wearing more than 40 pounds of Kevlar vest and helmet, gas mask, weapon, and a Camel Back and walked about a mile. But it was a hot day, we were out in the sun and a 25mph wind in the afternoon. After the first day of convoy training ended, two soldiers went running. Me and the guy who used me to wipe up some of the dirt in the field where we did Combatives (hand-to-hand combat) last May.

I was so sore and tired I ran three minutes slower than Saturday for the fast two miles of a three-mile run. The 22-year-old's time was also off. He was 30 seconds slower than his last run, but he thought it might be the course. He ran two miles in just over 12 minutes. He could have run three miles and beat my two-mile time.

Now it's Wednesday. We just ended the longest day of convoy training. We actually did pretty well up until the last exercise today when the convoy commander got taken out of the exercise and the assistant commander (me) took his place. I'll try explain on Saturday when the training ends.

Goodbye Roomie

This morning at 3 am our roommate went home. He was a 22-year-old mechanic who joined us just three weeks ago, one of the later arrivals. He came here over the maximum weight, but his home unit sent him anyway. He was a great guy and we hoped he could lose weight fast enough to be able to deploy with us. But late last week the medical staff decided he could not lose weight fast enough to be ready to go and be healthy, so they sent him home.

So how overweight was our roommate? I don't know exactly because there is a complex formula called taping that takes into account the general size of a soldier's body to determine maximum weight. Specialist Big Dude weighed 335 pounds the day he arrived. He is a weightlifter. He has a size 19 neck and has trouble finding clothes in general and gloves in particular. Even Army XXLs are tight on him.

I only worked with him a few times in the motorpool, but it was clear he is a good mechanic. We were a team on the SAW (machine gun) range. I qualified. He was a sharpshooter and was one target away from expert (the best). He is also a sharpshooter with a rifle. But at his size, he can't run two miles at anything close to the maximum time. So he is back home now. I really will miss him when he is awake, but not when he is sleeping. He was in the bunk above me (Yes, we have very strong beds.) and snored so loud he made the bed shake. Some nights I would wait for the moment when he quit snoring and will myself to sleep before he started again.

Our first roommate lasted about a week before they sent him home. He had a previous back injury that was too severe for deployment. In a couple of days we get another roommate. I hope our room is not medical bad luck for him.

Convoy Training

Today we dressed up in all of our field gear and spent the day learning about how to avoid getting killed by Improvised Explosive Devices, better know as IEDs. This first day was all classes. The rest of the week we will be rolling in convoy and learning what to do to find and stop IED attacks. I'll write more later in the week when we are moving long distances and getting "attacked" on the road.

Wild Pigs and a Rattlesnake

Today I rode north toward the lake 8 miles from our barracks. At about the five-mile mark, I heard rustling then running in the reeds next to the road. This low point of the ride looks like it can be swampy when there is rain, but it has been dry during the past six weeks. In a second I saw two brown pigs moving faster than dobermans away from me, up the hillside into the woods. They were high-speed pigs and lucky for me, they did not want to chase bikes.

Earlier in the week, I was riding this same stretch of road with the base chaplain and saw a long stick in the road. We were riding fast. When we got close, the chaplain yelled, "That's a rattlesnake!" I turned around to get a picture (from a safe distance) but the snake had slithered away. The chaplain said the rattlers are just waking up for spring. They are hungry, shedding their skin and grumpy. He said I should not bother them. He did not have to repeat himself.

Pink Running Shoes and Combat Boots

The hallway next to the one I live in is where the women live. We pass through their hallway on the way to the laundry room or the B Stairwell dayroom. Today when I can back from chow I saw this ten-foot line of shoes outside a room where six women live. If my roommates and I lined our shoes up in the hall, it would look different--except for the boots.

Non-Sexist Zombies

This morning I got a note asking if it is just guys who watch Zombie movies for breakfast or do women watch horror flicks also. I didn't know. An hour later I left my room and walked to the dayroom while my roommates watched another Zombie movie. When I walked in the dayroom the only soldiers inside were two young women watching Sponge Bob and eating cereal. One said, "Good morning sergeant. How are you?" I answered that I was good and I was going to sit in the back of the dayroom because my roommates were watching a Zombie. One of the women turned from Sponge Bob and said, "Which one?"

So young soldiers are fans of Zombie movies without regard to gender.

BEER

Today was the battalion party. Six hundred of us went to a recreation area on post just after lunch. Each soldier was allowed two beers. The lines were long long enough that it took an hour between beers so no one could drink two beers in the same hour. And then the keg ran out before many soldiers could get a second beer. They bought more, but that spaced the two beers out even further. For many, they got an idea just how fast they can get a buzz on after six weeks without alcohol.

I promised not to drink and rode my bike to the picnic--8 miles out, 21 miles the long way back. So I had a great time. Some of us hiked up the bike trail near the picnic area. We were at Lake Elmer Thomas Recreation Area where the bike race was held. We saw the bikes go up the hill, but did not see the trail down the other side. The trail is steep and covered with loose rocks leading down into a dry stream bed--and that was just the first mile.

Zombies for Breakfast

It's Friday morning. I am back in the room behind the stairwell. My roommates are watching a Zombie movie this morning. Lawton, Oklahoma, is on the western edge of the Central Time Zone, so when we went on daylight savings time, sunrise moved to 0745. This morning sunrise was just past 0730. We got up at 0450 to run. One roommate early training so he did not have to do the run. He went back to the room and got changed for training. When the rest of us got back from the run he was watching an anime Zombie movie based on a video game. I was laughing about Zombies for breakfast and another of my roommates said, "It's dark outside, that's when you watch horror movies." Makes sense. I got showered and went to the hidden room without TV or video games.

Do You Remember in that Movie When. . .

I am soooo 20th century. Actually so early 20th century. I did no notice how culturally backward I was when I first rejoined the Army. Without knowing it, I surrounded myself with backwards people just like me who use books as cultural references. Not here. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, uses movies as the shared culture of their lives.

For the first month people tried to include me. They would say, "Sergeant G, do you remember in Wedding Crashers when. . ." Or "That's just like in that Jim Carey movie when they watched his whole life. Yo G, remember. . ." And I don't. No it's just a joke. Someone will start to say, "Do you remember. . ." then look at me and say "Right. Never mind."

I don't watch sitcoms, I don't watch comedy movies, I watch one or two movies per year. These guys go from room to room sharing gigabytes of DVDs on thumb drives and plug-in hard drives. One of my roommates has a terabyte drive full of movies and music. He is still mourning the loss of a second terabyte hard drive that crashed a few days after we arrived.

At home, my friends, co-workers and family all read books. Two nights ago I got an email from a friend, a college prof who had never been in the military. He was commenting on a post I wrote that the military is a meritocracy where everyone knows who is the best at everything, and the most competent people tend to take over whatever their rank.

My friend Ray said the military is a hierarchy and he couldn't believe what I wrote. So I called him and could remind him to read CS Lewis' essay "The Inner Ring" which begins quoting Tolstoy's "War and Peace" on the real rank structure of the military and the actual way things get done. With Ray, I can use books and essays to illustrate a point. I read to my own kids till they graduated high school and knew many of the books they read for classes, so even though I could not share movie culture with them, we had a lot of literature in common.

I brought some movies with me because everyone said I should. I haven't watched one yet. Maybe when we get to Iraq I will. In the meantime, it's seems OK for me to remain a cultural illiterate. I am old enough to get a pass. Right now I am in the back of the C Stairwell dayroom and a small room people forget about. I can sort of hear the drone of a TV movie through the walls, but I don't have to look at it.