Bored2 + Curious2 = Stupid2

            “That’s the biggest, hairiest, most colorful caterpillar we could find,” Williams said.

            “Alright, get the pot up to 50 bucks and I’ll eat it,” JT promised.

            “All we got is 15.”

            “Close enough.”

            A few of us had finished our land navigation early and decided to gather at the top of a moss-covered hill near Fort Knox, Kentucky during basic training to hide from those scary drill sergeants, or drills.  JT grabbed the juicy critter and held it in suspense over his mouth as his head tilted back.  None of us had seen entertainment like this since Private Sore-ass rubbed Icy-Hot on his balls for $12.  Basic training drove us to such extremes to pass time between getting smoked by the drills.

            “No, no, no!  Oh shit, ew, ew, ewwww!” we all gasped.

            JT smiled, chewed and swallowed what hoped to become a butterfly, but those dreams were cut short thanks to a bunch of bored privates.  This boredom killer of a ritual didn’t stop in basic.  It would follow me throughout my entire time in the army.  The only difference was that as privates became soldiers, money didn’t have to be the great motivator.

I’ll always say that I never met a dirt bag until I joined the army.  One in particular was a plus sized Puerto Rican named Soar-ass.  He had a hilarious lisp when he spoke.  Now to his credit he could somehow move his jellyroll-looking body real fast, but besides that he was only good for comic relief for the rest of us.  He was also going thru OSUT to be a Nasty Girl and I’ll never forget the day our drills told him that his unit was activated to deploy and he would join them as soon as he graduated.

“Soar-ass! Your Pennsylvania unit has been activated!” yelled a drill.

“Like, what do you mean drill sergeant?” he whined.

“It means you are going to deploy, buttercup!”

“Yes, drill sergeant,” and the panic set in.

Soar-ass didn’t join the army to deploy, which made us all very curious as to why he would enlist in combat arms during a time that our country was in two different wars.

“Guys I don’t want to go!”

“Then why are you here?” we questioned.

“To look good in uniform for my family to be proud.”

Yet another moment that everyone’s jaws dropped.  To look good in uniform.  You have to be fucking kidding me.  That was his mentality throughout OSUT; to just do the bare minimum to get that uniform.  We didn’t like Soar-ass much after that, so there was one night we got him to do something incredibly stupid.

I was in my room getting ready for lights out one night when I heard an awful scream from down the hall.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” screamed Soar-ass as he ran down the hall and into the cleaning closet across the hall from my room.

“What was that all about?” I asked my bunkmates.

I didn’t get an answer so we piled into the hallway to look into the closet only to see Soar-ass spread eagle with his pants down and the sink turned on full blast and aimed at his crotch.

“I put Icy-Hot on my balls,” he moaned.

The entire 45 man-platoon erupted into laughter.  I couldn’t sleep too well after that.  Sleep was something that just didn’t happen much during OSUT due to the training schedule or guys putting spicy cream on their nut sack.  You have to laugh at the little things.

Ritalin

The only other time I was smoked as an individual was due to an investigation.  An investigation as to who had chewing tobacco.  I know, how trifling.  No one was allowed to chew or smoke tobacco during basic.  Even the drills weren’t supposed to smoke, chew or drink around the privates, so you know damn well they were always in a pissy mood and if they couldn’t do it we’d be punished harshly for such acts.  One of the drills still managed to fill his camelback with whiskey for every march we did.  We got a buzz just smelling it come out of his sweaty pores. 

            The person in question during this investigation was someone I became good pals with, JT.  He was a tall, skinny, white Kentucky boy with a southern draw and lots of confidence.  JT wasn’t afraid of anything and he enjoyed living life to the fullest.  He was the guy that would take bets to eat certain critters, such as a thumb sized, multi-colored, hairy caterpillar.  JT was going thru basic to be in the National Guard, or Nasty Girl as us regular army people called them.  One thing JT missed just as much as his girlfriend during basic was chewing tobacco.  Somehow he had it smuggled in and had gotten away with it for a couple of months, but he messed up and a drill found a dip can hidden in the bathroom, or latrine, excuse my French.  Learning military dialect was always hilarious to me.

            The drill was furious that one of his privates was enjoying something that he could not openly do.  This is when drills take their platoons to the “Pit.”  The Pit was a 50 x 50 foot area filled with 3-5 inches of sawdust.  If you managed to piss the drill off to the point of going to the Pit then you were in for a long fucking day.  The Pit was covered to keep the sawdust extra dry.  As you do various exercises the sawdust kicks up and you have no choice but to inhale it into your lungs.  This makes breathing very difficult and usually creates quick results when a drill needs answers.  Unfortunately for our drills, we were a tight nit platoon and not so eager to rat on a good man.  Unfortunately for JT there would eventually be a rat and it would be one of his own bunkmates.

                I was in the leadership room with only four others.  Typically if anyone messed up, we would be replaced.  We made it thru most of the 16 weeks of training together, which was unheard of.  JT was one of those leaders.  The rat in the house, Ritalin, was another.  Ritalin was only in that room because he was good with computer programs the drills used to keep all the private’s training and progress in order.  Ritalin had dark brown hair and freckles peppered his cheeks.  He was of average height, thin, completely nonathletic and annoyingly hyper.  The kid was also a pathological liar. 

Ritalin knew we couldn’t prove anything he said during basic, so he filled us with a lot of BS.  He told us his great, great grandfather was the first recipient of the Medal of Honor during the Civil War and that his brother had recently earned one in Iraq as a scout.  Ritalin said his brother was killed while earning the medal, so of course none of us contested his proud claims.

            After basic I regained access to the Internet and did some research.  That lying motherfucker.  He also claimed that he was higher ranking than all of us, because he had done college courses and JROTC during high school.  The rank was definitely a lie too; only it was a drill that called him out in front of everyone.

            “That’s not the way it works, private, so shut the fuck up!“ yelled the drill.

            If our eyes represented applause, that drill got the longest call for an encore in the history of mankind that day.

            Back in the Pit we continued to sweat and gasp for air.

            “Whoever did it just fess up and stop being a blue falcon,” cried Ritalin.

            “Shut the fuck up, private!” even the drill despised that little shit bird.

            The term “blue falcon” was synonymous with “buddy fucker.”  The drill realized the Pit wasn’t working and sent us into the barracks to stand by for another smoke session.  As the drills were plotting our torturous night to come, the platoon’s leaders gathered.

            “Vance, I’m just going to call it,” JT told me.

            “Yeah, you should admit it you fucking buddy fucker!” Ritalin screeched.

            “Just for that outburst, let it ride JT,” I suggested while glaring at Ritalin, “as far as the drill knows, that dip can has been in the latrine since the last cycle of privates.”

            Ritalin looked like he was going to cry.  A drill walked into our room first. 

            “I’m going to make the walls wet with your sweat if I don’t get answers, privates.”

            I could tell immediately he was bluffing and about to just smoke us for a few minutes then call it a night.  Ritalin wasn’t so good at reading people.

            “I know who did it drill sergeant,” the drill turned to Ritalin and he about crapped his pants, “well, I mean, I know that Vance knows who did it, drill sergeant.”

            “The fuck I do Ritalin,” I denied.

            “Watch your fuckin’ mouth, Vance,” the drill snapped, “Well, who did it?”

            “Drill sergeant, I do not know who did it.”

            “Yeah you do Vance, just say it,” yet another weak, whiny cry from Ritalin that made me think of the part from the Never-Ending Story where the girl keeps saying, “Say my name Atreyu, just say my naaaaaaame.”  You know what I’m talking about ‘80’s babies!

            “No I do not.”

            “Step into my office, Vance,” said the drill with a calmer voice.

            JT looked like he was about to say something as the drill turned his back, but I shook my head at him to keep quiet.  The drill smoked me for only a few minutes.  We both knew I wasn’t going to talk even though we both knew I had answers.  JT was too good of a man to watch me suffer so he told the drill the truth and said I knew nothing.  It was a blatant lie about my knowledge of the situation, but neither JT nor the drill believed a person should be punished for not ratting in that particular situation. 

            Unfortunately for JT, lying to a non-commissioned officer, or NCO, was a punishable offense.  He was kicked out of the leadership room and paperwork was being done to strip his Private First Class E-3 rank to be replaced by Private E-2 rank.  He was also put on 30 days extra duty, which meant the drills would have extra work for him even after each long day of training.  The next 30 days would suck for JT.  As he was getting an initial ass chewing from a drill, I was in the leadership room with Ritalin.

            “See dude, its all good,” Ritalin said in an attempt to rid my face of rage.

            I was seeing red and I know the room was left to just us by our other bunkmates for a reason.  It was a moment that happened throughout basic in different forms for a private to be fixed violently by another private.  We never had “pillow fights,” which were pillowcases filled with soap bars used to beat a blue falcon in his sleep.  That was a more old-school approach.  In our platoon, we just arranged for a room or latrine to be emptied except for the privates that needed to fix a problem.  It was just Ritalin standing 15 feet away from me in our empty room and a quiet hallway beside us.  Rucksacks and duffel bags stood in my way.  I had to beat him to a pulp for such cowardice.  As soon as he spoke I B-lined it toward him at a high rate of speed, kicking and throwing everything in my path right at him.

            “You fucking coward! Pussy-ass piece of shit!” I bellowed.

            He was out the door before the first rucksack hit the ground and no, I have no idea what a “pussy-ass piece of shit” is, but that’s what naturally came out during my temper tantrum.  I’m actually glad I didn’t get the chance to cave his face in, because he most likely would have tattled.  Ritalin hid from me until he could request to change rooms from a drill.  My platoon approved of all my actions and Ritalin was ignored for the remainder of our 16-weeks of training.  Even the drills knew what had happened and ignored my attack.  In that moment I had to take a relationship with a friend and ask if it was worth losing rank over.  I chose my friend.  Life in the military would put me in several different situations with these options.  JT’s situation was the easiest decision in 6 ½ years of service.

Holla Back Girl

We rarely had an opportunity to make phone calls.  When we did, we would only have three minutes to spit out as much as we could and then abruptly hang up.  One day we were walking in formation en route to the short row of three phone booths behind the barracks.  There were two unfamiliar privates already there.  This displeased the drill, but drills wouldn’t mess with privates they didn’t know, unless those privates happened to be tankers.  Tankers were in training to stay on a big ass Abrams A-1 tank.  They had their own area they had to stay in, but their drills were a lot more lenient than ours.  On top of that, the first time we were allowed to go to the post store for toiletries we ran into some tankers.  They were bragging about some type of simulator where they drive behind scouts on the ground.

“Yeah man, I only killed 19 scouts today!” one fat tanker said to another.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” I asked.

“That’s bull shit, man,” said JT

I guess tankers "accidentally" ran over or shot scouts while driving behind us in the simulator.  Not comforting words of confidence and it didn’t help that they were laughing about it.  This left a bad taste in all of our mouths regarding tankers.  However, DS Anderson made all of our worries go away that day at the phone booths.

“Are you two turds scouts?” asked Anderson.

“No,” said one tanker.

“No? No WHAT motherfucker!”

“No, drill sergeant,” they quivered and stood proper.

“Start pushing!  

 Down they went.

"Well, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Using the phone, drill sergeant.”

“No the fuck you’re not.  You’re in scout territory and these are phones for scouts only.  You know, real fuckin’ men!”

Our first compliment!  It felt riveting!  Must. Stay. Composed.

Anderson smoked the tankers for a couple of minutes and then sent them running.  It was great to see a drill stick up for his platoon.  It’s a nice relief to see them stick up for you after months of riding your ass.  Anderson then smoked everyone that was done with the phone to put pressure on everyone else to hurry up.  It didn’t take long to go back to normal. 

Anderson always took time to laugh at the simple things, even if it started out with him being extremely pissed off.  Our platoon was at the range one day and learned the importance of the proper form of range walking.  We were apparently moving too slow throughout a range so upon our return to the barracks, Anderson explained that when a drill screamed “range walk!” you were to walk as fast as humanly possible without actually picking up a jog.  This ensures that time at the range will be at a minimum, which is always nice when working with a platoon full of people that have no idea what they’re doing.  I’ve always had respect for positions like drills or teachers.  They get a group of retards, teach them how not to be retards and then get a whole new batch of retards.  I would go nuts in their shoes, I mean boots.

We all went behind the barracks fearful that Anderson was going to take us to the Pit, but he told us to line up in two rows behind him with a smile on his face instead.

“All right, privates!  Since you mouth breathers don’t know how to move with a purpose we’re going to range walk until I believe you understand.  Think of it as a race too.  First two, go!” he barked.

Off we went, two at a time to the end of the sidewalk, which was 200 feet away.  The losing platoon would be rewarded with push-ups of course.  As we were racing we had to wear our pistol belts.  The funny thing about pistol belts is that our belts didn’t have any pistols.  Instead they only carried two canteens, one on each hip.  Walking as fast as you can with two canteens provided a lot of entertainment we didn’t see coming.

It came time for the smallest guy in our platoon to race.  Coincidently he had to race one of the taller guys.  Wilson was white, had light brown hair, stood 5’6” and weighed maybe 130 lbs soaking wet.  He spoke quietly with a thick Tennessee accent, wore thick, brown-framed military glasses half the size of his face and listened to heavy metal music.  Not the most threatening looking or sounding individuals, but if you crossed him he would come at you with everything he had.  Wilson would always admit when he was scared, but never once acted like it.  It’s a mentality we both shared and brought us close as friends.

Wilson took off with the mission of winning.  We all new this wasn’t going to happen, but for some reason we all went ape shit cheering for him.  The race was out of reach for him to win, but that didn’t stop him from trying his best.  Wilson was in full angry granny walking mode with his hips swinging violently side-to-side, like a runway model in heels.  This action combined with everyone going nuts even brought Drill Sergeants Anderson and Rouse to near tears laughing and applauding Wilson’s effort.

“Atta girl, Wilson! You sexy lady you!” yelled Anderson.

“Fuck yew geyes!” Wilson yelled back while smiling at all of us.

Random moments like that taught me to enjoy the little things.  We were all stressed out and needed a laugh.  Something that mundane made us smile all the way thru lights out that night and into morning formation the next day.

Deep Conversations with Drill Sergeants

Drill Sergeants became older brother figures, constantly putting us in our place.  DS Anderson looked like the drill right out of the movie, “Full Metal Jacket,” only he was shorter than most of the privates.  Drills would often bump their chests on a private’s chest as they barked to let them know how upset they were.  This Neanderthal approach at showing us who the boss was became difficult for a short drill like Anderson.  He had to repeatedly jump to bump chests with privates while barking at them.  JT found this too funny to contain himself.

            “What the fuck are you laughing at private!” yelled Anderson.

            “Nothing drill sergeant!” JT yelled back while failing to keep a straight face.

            “Beat your face, private!”

            “Yes, drill sergeant!” JT started push-ups with a smile.

            “Anybody else think I’m a comedian?”

            “NO DRILL SERGEANT!” yelled the platoon as JT continued to fail at trying to display a poker face.

            “Keep it up privates and tonight we’re going to have a religious experience.”

            Game over.  We wanted no part in getting smoked inside the barracks.  One night we lined up in the hall with our backs to the wall.  We were then told to lean forward and touch the other side of the narrow hallway.  There was a catch.  We had to hold ourselves off the wall with just one finger per hand while another private at the end duck walked under us.  Religious experiences with drills were never heavenly.

            While on an FTX, or Field Training Exercise, I had to set up a dry place to sleep in the rain with my poncho.  It was pitch black outside, but as scouts we were trained to have light and noise discipline.  I failed at both disciplines that night and paid the price at the hands of ole DS Anderson.  I pulled out a flashlight and rummaged thru my gear.  Out of nowhere, Anderson pops out of a bush in the middle of the woods.

            “Hand over that light, private,” Anderson ordered.

            I handed it to him and he immediately threw it 30 meters deeper into the woods, down a hill.

            “Low crawl, go.”

            I just looked at him as if to say, “Where did you… what the hell, man?”

            “10, 2,1,” there was something seriously wrong with his count down, but it was like when a parent is angry at their child and tells them they have ten seconds to go to their rooms or there will be a serious ass whipping.

            I was halfway thru some lovely thorn bushes when Anderson got bored and told me to maintain light discipline and get some shuteye.  Sweet.

            Despite teaching us various forms of torture, DS Anderson was great to us.  He wasn’t fond of mass punishment like other drills.  It was very rare that he took us to the Pit or smoked us in the barracks.  Other platoons seemed to be out there daily.  We’d always sneak to the windows of the barracks to watch other platoons get smoked.  It was a sick entertainment that we direly needed.  Our troop was Echo Troop.  It consisted of four platoons.  I was in fourth platoon on the third floor along with third platoon.  They made several trips to the Pit. 

One day two members of third platoon were caught with a large bag of candy inside the barracks, which was not allowed.  The two culprits were told to sit on the edge of the Pit in nice comfortable chairs.

            “Alright privates, we’re going to have some fun until these two blue falcons finish their bags of candy!” their drill stated.

            “Kuh-kaw! Kuh-kaw!” the platoon chirped back.

            A 'blue falcon' is a guy that screws over other people.  Everyone knew the bag contained way too much candy for any two people to finish in one sitting.  The smoke session commenced as the platoon was ordered to start low crawling from the opposite side of the comfortably sitting privates and move in their direction.  Low crawling consisted of a private lying on his stomach and one side of his face firmly planted on the ground, or sawdust in this case since they were in the Pit.  The only way to move forward was to use one arm and one leg to drag their own body.  Low crawling was developed to move low to the ground while under fire or suspicion of an enemy presence.  Its quite uncomfortable and slow moving, usually causing multiple scrapes along the entire body from the terrain.  About ten minutes into the smoke session, the two buddy-fuckers were puking their brains out and our entertainment was over.  Thanks again 3^rd platoon!

Onnnnnn the First Day of Basic Training My Drill Sergeant Gave to Meeee.... a Marine with jokes.

Reception was the place I stayed at while waiting for my number to be called to officially start basic training; a holding facility, if you will.  My number was 060 and it was at that moment I realized I was just a number in the masses of soldiers our country has produced.  I’d have to work hard to become more than just a number or even worse, a dead statistic that the average ignorant American wouldn’t give a shit about.   

            Reception was every man for himself and we had absolutely nothing to do except stand in formations for hours waiting for something to happen or for our number to be called.  I remember being called to a formation at midnight and we got to see the sun rise together while some guys fell on their faces as they fell asleep standing up.  How romantic.  This went on for over a week.  If we weren’t in formation or in line for chow, we would be in the barracks.  People wouldn’t hesitate to steal from one another.  I wasn’t surprised when I later found out how many men joined the army to avoid jail.  I found a couple of guys that could be trusted and we watched each other’s backs.

One soldier, Nguyen, was a soft-spoken Vietnamese man who had a lot of pain in his past that he didn’t want to reveal.  He looked like a smaller version of the Asian bad guy in all the 80’s movies, especially the ones with Jean Claude Van Dam.  It’s always nice to have a diesel-looking guy on your side.  Nguyen left the barracks room one day and this guy, Crapp, started rummaging thru his locker.  I screamed at Crapp to get out and hoped that we wouldn’t have our numbers called to be in the same basic training platoon.  I wasn’t so lucky.  What a dirt bag.  He claimed he wasn’t going to take anything.  So why go into another person’s locker?  Now he can add shameful liar to his resume.

The other was a former marine, Reece.  Reece was white, thin, light haired and confident in his knowledge of how the military worked.  He could tell if someone was legitimately allowed to bark orders at us or not.  Some guys at reception had been their longer and would yell at newer guys like myself to get out of the way or do push ups since they knew we’d listen to anyone with balls at that point.  Reece protected us from that.  My team was set.  Picking a good team was something I did well.

Reception was also a place where guys can decide to make a run for it or not.  A lot of people get to reception and realize they made a huge mistake or realized they were clean and sober enough to see they signed a contract.  Reece came up to me in formation one day.

“Vance, did you hear about last night?” he asked.

“Nah, what happened?”

“Two dudes wanted to get out of their contract so they arranged to get caught blowing each other in the cleaning closet.”

“No way, that’s too extreme man!”

“Shhhhh!” an annoyed soldier hissed as we spoke in a formation where speaking wasn’t allowed.

“Oh fuck off, ya narc.  Nobody’s going to check on us for hours,” Reece said forcefully.

“Did you actually see it go down?” I asked

“No, but I definitely heard a drill screaming while dragging both of them off down the hall.”

It was the summer of 2004, when ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was still in full effect.  I was shocked two heterosexuals would go that far though.  Reece loved telling stories like that.  He told me about the jokes his buddies in the marines played on each other.  Reece said one of his buddies sent him a package with homoerotic messages on the box so when he went for mail call everyone would see the false evidence.  I found this hilarious.  There's nothing wrong with being gay, but when you're surrounded by a bunch of brutes during that sad time in the military... you became the outcast.  I wish I found it a red flag when he asked for my address.  Not my smartest moment.

Eventually I was in basic and a drill summoned me down to the front of the barracks.

“If you want this mail, private, you gonna have to earn it,” said the size large black drill with a Pepe Le Pew mustache and Louis Armstrong voice.

“Yes, drill sergeant,” and the push-ups commenced.

“Private, is your name Vance?”

“Yes, drill sergeant.”

“Get the fuck up.”

I got back to my feet, as the letter was mid-flight en route to a desk and the drill had already turned to walk away.  It was as if he didn’t want anything to do with the letter nor me for that matter.  I took that as a hint to grab my letter and go back to my platoon’s floor.  I looked down at the envelope and my face turned beet red.  I grabbed the letter and left as I noticed the two privates standing close to the drill were working real hard not to laugh.  The letter was from Reece and he was kind enough to put heart’s with X’s and O’s all over the envelope addressed from a manly name, like 'Big Chuck' and little notes reading 'I miss my main squeeze.'  The letter inside simply read, “Gotchya Vance!”  That son of a bitch.

Well played, sir, welllllll played indeed.

Nom Noms

  I'd Rather Not          

            We had a meeting with a chicken farmer who was wealthy by local standards.  Our retarded fucking lieutenant thought that because he was rich he would talk to us about “terrorists.”  Birdbrain never understood the difference between a terrorist, an insurgent or a militant.  We sat on the floor in the farmer’s “living room” and he gestured at us to eat the breakfast that was prepared on the dirt-covered floor.

“He want you to eat food,” our interpreter, or terp, informed us.

“I’m good, man,” I said.

“But now you’re rude. You must eat.”

“You know what’s rude? Dysentery. I will not eat this shit.”

            Spread out on the floor was sour cream and a sad attempt at over easy eggs.  The sour cream was made from a goat and it looked more like sausage gravy.  The eggs were undercooked and a bit on the watery side.  To wash all that down we could have chi, or tea, with more sugar than chi or warm river water with random floaters… mmmmmm… NEGATIVE.

“Sergeant Vance, we shouldn’t be rude,” Birdbrain said.

“Oh, well then you won’t mind going first, LT,” I glared back.

            Birdbrain had one bite and it was all over.  Not so rude now, is it?  If the local food doesn’t look right, it’s a safe bet not to eat it.  Common sense goes a long ways.  It goes a lot longer than “not being rude.”  That’s just how Birdbrain was wired.  Any local could invite him into their house and he’d go right in without any backup.  Never mind that it might have a torture chamber, machetes and a video camera broadcasting your beheading worldwide on Al-Jazeera.  We argued many times over how to do things safely and after he had enough of me advising him on how foolish he was and proceeded to ignore me, people got hurt.  In situations like eating bad food, I enjoyed telling Birdbrain to do what ever the hell he wanted because he got burned every time.

The MRE Challenge

“Alright Mitch, how many MRE’s can you take down in a 24 hour period?” I asked.

“A whole case,” he replied.

“Bullshit.”

“Aight, game on.”

            An MRE, or Meal Ready to Eat, is a specially packaged meal that will last a long, long time while still in the plastic.  That alone should raise some eyebrows.  It was great if you were starving or just bored out of your mind trying to stay awake during mission.  We typically rat-fucked them.  No, that’s not a sexual reference.  That term just means that we opened an MRE and took the food we needed for a certain time frame.

            MRE’s weren’t only used to quench our hunger.  Certain things inside those packages were remedies for issues you may have with few medical supplies available during missions.  For instance, if you were pissing out of your ass and desperately needed something to back up your bowels so you didn’t wipe yourself to death, you would grab the cheese packets.  The cheese in an MRE could back you up for days at a time.  Great success!  Or at least until you had stomach pain from being backed up.  At that point you would grab the gum packet or dry chocolate shake.  All you had to do was add the right amount of water to the shake and pow, instant ex lax.

            Mitch took the MRE challenge and if anyone could eat 12 MRE’s in a single day without crapping, it would be him.  He was a legit body builder always aiming to be 270 pounds of brute force and become the next Mr. Olympia.  In order to gain copious amounts of weight he would need to eat a lot of calories to keep up with his workout regimen.  A case of MRE’s designed to give maximum calories would be great, right?  The problem with eating 12 MRE’s from the same case is the lack of food selection.  Mitch had to eat everything in every meal.  That included the always-dreaded “Southwest Breakfast Omelet.”   A stench filled the area as soon as the packet was opened and it looked like regurgitated Play-Doe with green and red chunks placed sporadically that were allegedly “peppers.”  Good luck, buddy!

“Times up. How many?

“Eleven.”

“So close!”

“Yo, I just couldn’t do it, man.”

“How’s the stomach?”

“I need to get to a toilet.”

Crooks!

            Although we were working out of a COP, we still encountered a lot of characters that weren’t in combat arms.  We didn’t always mesh well with these types.  Of course they are nice to have around when you need someone with a specialized job in order to fix things.  Night vision techs would fix our NODS while listening to heavy metal or screamo for hours on end while inside a small metal conex, or container.  Mechanics worked their asses off fixing our Strykers in extreme heat and would roll out with us to fix something, putting their lives on the line.  Then there were the cooks.  Is it nice to have cooks?  Yes.  Is completely great to have cooks? No.

            The cooks on COP Cobra asked that we send soldiers to help them out between our missions.  We did so even though our guys didn’t have much time off in the first place.  After listening to some of my soldiers gripe about how the cooks are making them do all the work, which included heavy lifting and cleaning some nasty equipment, we investigated.  Sure as shit, there were our soldiers doing all the work while the higher-ranking cooks were sitting back, getting fat.  That ended our ‘Helping of the Crooks’ mission.  Then they retaliated.

            On certain days, the cooks would claim they were being over worked and set out MRE’s or Jimmy Dean packages.  After being on a mission that lasted several days and coming back to more crap-tastic chow, we gave them the coup de grau.

“Time for a raid gentlemen,” I suggested.

“Sergeant Vance, I know where they keep all the good shit,” Glenn said.

“Like what?”

“Like those Gatorade shakes that they’ve been stingy with,” Courtney added.

We filled our bellies with ice-cold chocolate milk shakes in a can courtesy of Gatorade that night.  That coupled with cigarettes and shit-eating grins was enough to make us think we just had a good day.  It was the small things like that, that allowed us to make it another day without going crazy.

            For any other day they closed shop we just went to the hodgy stand.  This guy was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.  Say what you want about my claim, but pizza is the single most important invention of our time and this man brought us a little taste of home with his creative Iraqi pizza stand.  Fresh fruit, fresh chicken, oven roasted pita bread and if you’re not in the mood for pizza, which is a travesty in itself, then go with the gyro, which I controversially pronounced ‘euro.’  Bon appétit.

Mythical Bowl of Creatures

“You missed it, man,” Courtney said.

“What did I miss?” I asked.

“You know that pregnant camel spider I caught?”

“Yeah?”
“We tossed it in a box and lit it on fire.”

            When we got bored, we got creative and perhaps a bit demented.  Camel spiders were a thing of legend before I actually saw one up close.  There were stories and pictures of gigantic creepy crawlies that would get you in your sleep, but they weren’t that bad.  Don’t get me wrong; camel spiders are nasty to deal with, just not to the epic proportions you’ve probably heard about or seen in seriously obscured photographs.

            A typical camel spider is the size of a pack of cigarettes.  The ones I encountered didn’t crawl like most spiders.  They leaped!  This is the part that freaked me out.  You’ve got a hand-sized spider 15 feet away and he’ll close in on you real fast with quick leaping ability and jumps of 2-3 feet at a time.  On top of that, camel spiders weren’t poisonous, but they had two pairs of interlocking fangs that would tear into anything they grabbed onto making for an unpleasant encounter.  They also made a hissing noise that sounded like a cat’s, but since they are much smaller than cats, it came off as a whispering mini hiss.  True story.

Girls, don't be screaming at your computer now.

            Courtney came up with an idea to trap one without getting messed up.  He took a concertina wire glove and thru it within striking distance of the camel spider.  Being territorially threatened, the spider leaped and latched on with his four fangs.  The C-wire glove is made to protect the hand from sharp objects, so once the spider bit into the glove, Courtney had just enough time to shove him into an empty Gatorade bottle before it could get loose.  He hit the jackpot, as this was no ordinary camel spider.  It was a pregnant one and a little bigger than the others we caught.  We must destroy this beast before it gives birth to more vermin!  How?  Burn it at the stake!  The crowd watching was probably much like the crowds during the Salem Witch Trials screaming, “It’s the devil!”

“There’s like, these things coming from under the ground,” Gonzo said.

            What Gonzo was referring to were scorpions.  It was late at night when the rains came.  White platoon had two soldiers manning an observation post, or OP.  We were responsible for that OP a few days at a time to over watch a checkpoint that was blinded by the trenched hills where the Iraq/Iran war raged during the 1980’s in eastern Diyala Province.  It was a dry place, but with a pathetic river running thru it, there was room for life.  Albeit not the kind of life you want to see in the middle of the night.

            The rain would bring scorpions to the surface in drones.  Our guys had to do what they could to stay off the ground.  We just lit the area with chem lights to keep an eye on things.  There wasn’t a lot we could do for scorpion bites with minimal scorpion kits back at COP Cobra.  The funny thing about scorpions is that it’s the small whitish-pinkish-translucent… ish looking ones you have to worry about instead of the big ass black ones.  The black ones can still kill, but the little guys kill faster with a higher dose.  So how can bored soldiers turn this into a good time?  Trap one and toss it in the burn box with a camel spider to see who wins.  It’s only natural, right?  The scorpion wins every time with a venomous strike from the tail as the spider focus its attack on the front claws.  Fatal mistake.  Then we burn both of them.  “It’s the devil!”

Chris Hall up at the OP... land-o-scorpions.       

“Whatchya got there?” I asked Wai-Tai.

“I saw that lizard crawling on the T-wall and thru a rock at it,” he replied.

“One shot, one kill!” White Toast proclaimed.

“Hell yeah,” I added.

“After it fell I tossed it into the ‘Mythical Bowl of Creatures’ over there.”

            Wai-Tai put a bowl next to our sad campfire on COP Cobra and as critters popped up, we hunted them and added them to the bowl.  We found foot long lizards, scorpions, camel spiders, hedgehogs and field mice.  At the checkpoint we found even more.  We took on wild dogs as our pets, watched foxes circle our perimeter and birds half the size of a human torso nosedive to catch rodents.  We fancied them the “Birds of Pandora” since they carried such strong colors of red or green and looked like they would be one of James Cameron’s creations from Avatar. 

The bowl itself after two capture/kills.

            At night we turned on huge lights to keep the perimeter well lit at the checkpoint.  This is where the action was.  I had never seen so many insects in such a small place.  It rivaled the house raids we did in Baghdad where we entered a house and the floor appeared to move because there were so many flies.  Insects rose from the river towards the lights and it resembled a snowstorm with zero visibility, only it was 120 degrees.  Bats, smaller birds and bigger insects would swoop in all night until their stomachs could hold no more.  Darwinism at its best folks.

Had to give your eyes a break with some cuteness... my homegirl Roxy and I at the checkpoint.

UGS! And not the Boots with the Fur

“So what’s Uganda like?” I asked the Ugandan guard.

After a short pause, “AIDS,” he affirmed with a head nod.

            At Combat Out Post, or COP, Cobra we were undermanned and running too many missions to also pull guard on the perimeter.  In situations like this, we contracted Ugandans, or Ugs.  That way we didn’t have to worry about asking the corrupt Iraqi army unit stationed with us.  Insider attacks would have sky rocketed.  Ugs are a great bunch to watch your back and do you know why?  Of course you don’t.  It’s because they had more disdain for Iraqi’s than we did.

Ug guard post.

            Every Ug had very dark complexion, shaved or short hair with minimal facial hair growth and were devout Christians.  While Iraqi soldiers sported long pinky finger nails to snort cocaine and American soldiers were sneaking off to get high or drink on their down time, the Ugs just relaxed around a fire and stayed out of trouble.  They dawned tan desert boots, pants, and shirt with a black protective vest and black helmet.  They preferred to dress like Americans in movies and not actual soldiers.  Soldiers have bloused pants with boots tied and the laces tucked in as where the Ugs liked to wear their boots like Americans wear their Timberlands with laces only strewn half way up and the tongue sticking way out with unbloused pants.  Thanks a lot Hollywood. 

They were always friendly and approachable with us, but damn, if an Iraqi tried to enter COP Cobra without the proper credentials and didn’t heed to a search, those Ugs wouldn’t hesitate to man handle them.  I saw an arrogant Iraqi general refuse to allow the Ugs to search him and they raised their AK-47’s in an extremely aggressive posture.  The search commenced.  They knew their job well and didn’t bend the rules for anyone.  If they were spooked by anything at night while scanning the fields around the COP, they would just start shooting.  There were probably a lot of dead animals in those fields.  Perfect mentality for perimeter security and they had the most important thing that the Iraqi’s never earned… our trust.

            White platoon would be prepping for a mission near the gate and out of curiosity and boredom we’d ask the Ugs to educate us on anything from their culture to why they would do this particular job to learning the language to why the hell they ate so many bananas.

Ugs chillaxin' after a shift.

“AIDS?”

“Yes, its beautiful country, but AIDS is everywhere.”

“So why would you come to this shit hole?”

“I saving moneys to go someplace nice in da Europe.”

“How long are you guys here for?”

“Some stay months. I stay 2 year now. They forget me.”

            Apparently it was a common occurrence for whoever was in charge of the Ugs to lose track of whose turn it was to go home on vacation.  An American in that situation would lose his shit, but these guys keep working since the alternative is to go home to “AIDS” I guess.  Not an ideal situation for any human being.  These guys just kept to the rules and did their job day in and day out.

“What’s the language you speak?”

“Swahili.”

“How would I greet someone in Swahili?”

“Mizooloo. click”

“And the proper reply?”

“Mizooloo.”

“Again?”

“Yes, it means many things.”

“I’m so confused. What’s with the clicking noises you guys make when you talk?”

“Some tribes have meaning behind click. My people use it like you would use a sigh or laugh or sneer. Not a real word. Its affirmation that shows your level of interest in person or conversation.”

“You use big words.”

“Mizooloo! click  Hahaha!”

“You’re silly.”

God bless the Ugs for protecting us in the most dedicated of ways.

Hey Kuwait, Nobody Likes You

Flying into Kuwait, I was in awe of the oil fields that I had only seen on TV.  My sense of adventure kept my forehead glued to the plane window.

“Welcome to Kuwait,” Drew sarcastically said passing by as he slapped the smallpox vaccine scab on my shoulder.

            “What the fuck, man?  That was on my smallpox shit,” I whined.

            Drew turned to look at me, his eyebrows raised and then he turned away quickly.  I turned to see what he was looking at.  Yep, it was our squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Peterson.  He was just looking at me so I smiled, awkwardly nodded and turned back around and walked over to Drew.

            “Thanks a lot asshole.”

            “You’re the one that said it.”

            Kuwait was the final training spot for our unit in July 2006.  We would acclimatize while checking our equipment and making sure we were all on the same page for every situation we could think of.  You know what’s awesome about Kuwait?  Nothing.

            Stepping off the plane and onto the tarmac I thought, “This plane’s engines need to be turned off.”  There lies the problem.  The engines were off.  As I walked off the tarmac towards the buses it felt like an angry hairdryer was glued to my face.  I had a hard time opening my eyes with the heated wind and bright sun leaning on us at 120 degrees.  That’s quite extreme considering we left Fort Lewis, WA at about 55 degrees then Maine then Germany en route to “The Sandbox.”  We had to wait to get on the buses, so we gathered under some tan netting and hydrated.  I was in the shape of my life a couple days earlier, but with a slight hangover, jet lag and smallpox vaccine symptoms kicking my ass I had a hard time breathing in that climate.  I thought “There is no way I’m going to make it a year in this air and fight a war.”

            Our days were long, but simple.  We would get up around 3am to avoid the extreme heat while working out.  Then we’d eat, hydrate and go straight into training until about noon.  Then we’d hide in the tents where the temps were at a nice, cool 95 degrees.  Guys would clean weapons, do classes on scouting, play cards or sneak off to the port-o-john with porn to rub one out, which was gutsy because you could easily become a heat casualty doing that.

Fighting fatigue from that damn smallpox shot along with an unnecessary anthrax shot, we made it to our home for the next few weeks.  It was a tent that would house about 85 sweaty, nasty dudes who would often forget they were about to enter a war zone with each other.  Being away from home, no women, no booze and training we didn’t need was the perfect equation for short fuses to fly off the chain.  On top of all that, we slept six inches apart on cots.  Of course there were messy fellas that didn’t believe in personal hygiene or keeping their 6x2ft area organized.  Real hard, I know.

           

This is only a small portion of our tent. Lucky me got to be in the middle.

            We would rotate a two-man guard around the clock on the Strykers and do maintenance.  This was a particularly annoying task considering the trucks were parked about a half-mile away and the path to them was nothing but deep sand.  I remember carrying my MK 19 to the trucks one day.  It weighed 75 lbs and the only comfortable way to carry it was to front carry it.  That equals a great arm workout since the walk took 15 minutes thru the deep sand.  While pulling guard on the trucks at night we would stare off into the black abyss of night and wonder what was happening across the boarder to the north.  We went to the range just one day.  The range consisted of us driving 30 minutes to the middle of nowhere, passing a herd of camels and shooting at paper targets set up in front of some sand burms.  Life in Kuwait got boring real quick.  To top it off we were introduced to a Middle East tradition, the sandstorm.

            One day while bored out of our minds at the trucks, we tested the theory that if you wet a sock, put a bottle of water in it and then laid it in a shaded area that the bottle of water would significantly cool down.  It might have just been a trick on the mind, but it seemed to work.  Simple things like this made us look like a caveman grunting at the discovery of fire, “ugh, ugh!”  While we were laughing at our own simpleton ways I looked off into the distance as the wind kicked up.

            “The hell is that?” I asked.

            We all stood slowly and looked to the horizon.  It was some kind of haze moving in our direction.  Haze my ass.  It was a seven day sand storm.  Sandstorms are the most annoying things on the face of the planet.  Even more annoying than Jim Carey’s “most annoying noise in the world” routine in “Dumb and Dumber.”  You can’t hide from it.  It has a sustained wind like in a hurricane, but much weaker of course.  Winds would consistently stay in the 20-30 mph range.  Sand would cover everything and weapons cleaning become difficult.  When it finally settled, we rejoiced.

The tail end of a sandstorm in Kuwait my second tour.

            The days continued and seemed to get longer and longer.  People in leadership positions, such as Breastos, tried to come up with ways to keep the rest of us busy.  Instead of succeeding, he only infuriated us with “hip pocket training.”  It was a term used to tell a guy in my position to pull a class out of his ass to teach the rest of the guys.  We all knew the material, but we had to look busy in the presence of rank that was above Breastos so it didn’t look like his soldiers were getting lazy.  We also  got sent to the trucks to “disappear” for a little while.

At night the temperature in the tent would actually drop to what it was set at, a frigid 65 degrees.  Some guys would bring their cots outside to sleep.  It doesn’t seem bad, but when you’re used to 120 degrees outside and 95 degrees inside, that 30-50 degree drop will shock the body quite a bit.  It got agitating as the time grew near to push north.

We were initially told we were going to Anbar Province in western Iraq, a desolate region.  Our “torch party,” or soldiers that went early to start our transition with the unit currently in that area of operation had already arrived.  It didn’t take long before rumors started to fly about our unit not going to Anbar.  I would always find a reason to get into our higher command’s tent to listen to radios and look at maps in order to get an idea of where we were going.           

 We were about to move north and be a part of the surge of American troops in Iraq at the height of the war.  The rumors floating around were Baghdad.  Fuck yeah!  To the center of the shit.  We were told not to talk about it so of course “Joe” was at the phone booth telling his girlfriend how important he was and where he was going.  I heard of one soldier walking out of the phone trailer and immediately being escorted off by the geeks that monitor the phones.  What a dumb ass.

            Wanting to keep as much packed as we could to be ready to move at a moments notice, we froze our asses off in the tent.  Thankfully it was on the first night of sleeping without fart sacks or puss pads that we got the word.  Off we went to get on the C130 planes for Baghdad.  For once the rumors were spot on.  My adrenaline starts moving thru my body like the constant flowing lava on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.  Here we go.  Fuck you, Kuwait.