My favorite breakfast foods

These are the things I think about in the early morning as I walk to chow. The things that I can't have, and that the army thinks I don't need.

Belgian Waffles
Whipped Cream
REAL Orange Juice
Cranberry Juice...gods I miss cranberry juice...
REAL Maple Syrup

Grapes. On the vine.
Corned beef hash.
Smart Start cereal.
2% milk

Real scrambled eggs...or even just fried eggs over hard...

What they give us, that I won't miss, but will probably experience over and over again:

Strange, acidic bacon
Rubbery ham slices
Scrambled eggs that feel like jello and taste like cardboard eggs
raw greasy potatoes
syrupy orange juice
stale waffles

Someday, I will have the things I miss about breakfast. And I will have champagne and orange juice. And I will be content with breakfast.

There Is Only One Thief In The Army...

Everyone else is just trying to get their stuff back. Or so the story goes. I've dealt with thievery in the army before, several times actually. I've always recovered my things, either through firmly stating my point of view, or wildly gesticulating and threatening strange and archaic methods of torture.

I suppose I should stop this blog to comment specifically to the Army readers out there. Often, I think, everyone suspects that this blog will be a light dose of the Army, a fairly anesthetized, orderly, friendly, and sometimes downright humorous look at life through camo colored glasses. This is no la vie en rose though, and tonight will perhaps set that more misanthropic perspective.

We have been quite busy with our MRE duties, and life within the company has experienced some recent shakeups as well. Today was no exception and after spending a very late night doing Army things (including the issuance of our J-List (chemical warfare uniforms)) I found myself awake bright and early for a convoy. Our mission? To recover our platoon toolkits from FOB Westbrook, meet up with IA (Iraqi Army, here played by US soldiers) Engineers, escort said IA Engineers to checkpoint Zulu, conduct reconnaissance of checkpoint Zulu, inform the IA Engineers on how best to move some structures from point A to point B, and then Charlie Mike (Continue Mission) back to our home away from home.

The mission was entirely successful, in fact, according the OCs (Observer Controllers - basically referees) they had never seen a more successful convoy or approach to convoy operations. They hit us with armed insurgents, UXOs (unexploded ordinance), IEDs, and a boggling map of our approved routes. We tackled and conquered each of these events with aplomb, and returned to our AO (Area of Operations) with a feeling of victory.

We arrived to some bustle of activity at the motorpool. Our convoy arrived. Another convoy was preparing to leave. We moved to our AAR (After Action Report) area a short distance from our trucks while the other convoy finished it's last minute PCCs and PCI (Pre-Combat Checks and Pre-Combat Inspections) and road out, and another group of soldiers forming another convoy fell in on the trucks we had just used. As we finished our AAR we fell back in on our trucks to remove our last items of equipment, sign over gear (gunner's restraint harnesses and pintle mount), and then go back to the barracks. There, my feeling of sunburned calm shattered.

I had lent my Garmin Foretrex 401(r) to my squad leader, the TC for my vehicle prior to the mission. I fixed the GPS unit to our radio mount, and we used it throughout the mission to call in 10-digit grid coordinates to our battalion for our reports. It worked flawlessly, and I've used it many times since coming out here. The Foretrex was a Christmas gift to me from my parents prior to the start of the mobilization. They had asked what I wanted for a gift, and the only thing that I could think of that I needed, and didn't just want, was the Foretrex. I can be a bit sentimental a times, and so I programmed the Foretrex with the coordinates for both my family's home and my girlfriend's home prior to leaving, so that I could always turn it on, and see an arrow pointing towards home or my heart at any time, anywhere.

When we returned to our truck (an HMMWV 1151) it was missing. I say missing here, to indicate that I didn't first think that there was anything malicious by it's absence. I quickly asked my squad leader if he had it, and then the members of our truck, and then the members of the convoy. Everyone knew what I was talking about, but no one had touched it. At this point, I realized that it wasn't missing. It was stolen. I wanted to stop the next convoy from rolling out, but missing an SP time is a cardinal sin in the army. Perhaps a greater sin than stealing from the people who for the next year will be watching your backs and making sure you come home safe to your loved ones. I'm also just a Specialist. I haven't the authority to stop a convoy rolling. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rant. Already, I could feel my vision narrowing to a blood-red circle. My blood seethed in my veins, and my heart hammered, and my knuckles cracked as I imagined the tattoo I would soon beat on the culprit's flesh. I have made my mistakes in life, but I have never been a thief. I would never steal from a battle buddy, break the Army Values in such a way, damage the very Warrior Ethos that defines us.

That was 6 hours ago, and through years of Law Enforcement experience in Chicago and in various other places around the country, I know that the chances of recovering my GPS from the Blue Falcon that took it from me, a Blue Falcon from my very own company, are slim and none.

These are the people I am going to go to war with, and right now I have more of a grudge against them than I do any Iraqi or Afghani. Thieves in the army. I want to weep for disbelief, and as the minutes pass into hours and the gift my family gave me remains stolen, the storm within me grows. Where is the camaraderie that I thought existed here. A new mantra forms in my mind the longer I wait, a mantra from the comic superheroes I read about growing up who defended good, defended the weak, defended the defenseless:

Come on God, answer me. For years now I've asked you, "Why are the innocent dead and the guilty alive? Where is Justice? Where is Punishment?" Or have you already answered? Have you already said, "Here is Justice. Here is Punishment." Here. In me.

The Massive Update part 2

I realize that this is weeks late, but it's definitely time for an update, as we're completing our mobilization shortly, and going home on leave in less than a week. We left off at Range 100, a muddy quagmire of broken hopes and shattered dreams; though the army calls it a gunnery range.

Sleep was minimal, and sickness was rampant. We spent most days trying to sleep when we could, which was rarely as there were so many details ongoing. Ammo detail, fire detail, etc. Some of us drivers determined that the drivers could have just driven in blocks of time for all of the gunner crews and the remaining drivers could either sleep, or just not be there at all. Alas, we're not the ones in charge.

These are the remaining videos taken at Range 100. In one of the videos I discussed with two other soldiers about medication that we were all to receive because someone in the tent had come down with some undiagnosable illness. When we returned to the barracks we were never given the medicine, so I can only assume that we're not sick.










After completing that range, we engaged in normal Army activities. Waking up too early. Eating bad chow. Taking endless classes about things we've discussed and studied and been tested on time and time again. We also were finally able to do PT for about a week and a half, and it was very good. We would spend several hours a day going to the gym and/or track to run, work on cardio machines, lift free weights, or machine weights, and in my specific instance primarily work on the exercises that we're tested for on the APFT.

On one of the more or less free days, I was able to go and visit my Grandfather's final resting place. He passed away in February 1988 and I wasn't yet old enough to attend the funeral, so it was very important to me to finally say good-bye, and take some time to have some private conversation with him about life, the military, and family. He is buried at the Ft. Bliss National Cemetary and served on CVE-71 Kitkun Bay as a Radioman during World War Two. I still remember him sitting in my first bedroom and telling me bedtime stories of his time during the war, and trying to figure out if it hurt when he got his tattoos. I have plenty more than he did now, and as I've learned more about the history of Navy tattoos during the second world war, I can only imagine his experience as a young Sailor running through Hotel street in Hawaii with a bunch of his mates, lining up in the bars there for their three shots, drinking them as fast as they were poured, and then moving on to the next bar, and finally, a tattoo parlor. His stories of the war were incredible, and I think that if he could, he'd tell me that he's proud of my brother, my cousin, and myself for joining the military.

Soon after we were told that we're all validated for deployment. The final exercise for us was a base defense iteration conducted at night just after we started MRE. I have no idea what MRE stands for. Initially we thought that it was going to be a class on how to eat field chow (Meals Ready to Eat) but it turned out to be a construction project held at a nearby FOB where we would tear down old tents and then replace them with ABM (Automatic Building Machine) Quonset huts. The base defense was conducted over two nights and tested our ability to hold and secure a FOB (Forward Operating Base) while staffing QRF (Quick Reaction Force) ECP (Entry Control Point), Vehicle Search, Personnel Search, BDOC (Base Defense Operations Center), ECPCP (Entry Contrl Point Command Post), Guard Towers (9 of them), and also Casualty Evacuation teams, Medical Tent, Coalition Forces Entry Control Point, and I think one more station, if not more than that. All and all it was very well coordinated and we completed the practical test in only a few hours.

I was stationed in Tower 2 (ECP overwatch) and I was thrilled that it had been completed so well, so quickly, as I was part of the team that was working on the building construction earlier in the day - so it made for a 20 hour day all told.

The MRE training (construction, not eating!) continued and our morale suffered for it. The reason was that it was about this time that we realized why our training here was so spotty. Apparently (and this is all according to PNN (The Private's News Network)) the battalion headquarters that we fall under did not go to RTC (Regional Training Center) with the rest of the companies that fall under the battalion. RTC was actually our mobilization training, and many of the other units here that fall under our battalion also attended RTC. We were all actually validated GO at that time. Battalion needed to conduct it's mobilization, and mobilized the rest of the battalion to come with them. Maybe it was supposed to be a team building exercise. The exercise did have some positives, those soldiers who needed to be validated were able to do so, but for those of us who were already validated, there has been a lot of hurry up and wait.

The MRE was further complicated by the absence of building materials. The platoon began running 24 hour operations on the job site, generally waking up around 0500 the squad selected for the job site would get to the convoy staging area at 0615. At 0630 a convoy brief would be held, and then the convoy would roll out the gate at 0700. The job site is about 6 miles away, but the average time to reach the FOB/job site is an hour to four hours. The reason for this is that the OCs (Observer Controllers) set up ambushes, mortar attacks, and IEDs along the roadside for us to react to. They're all simulated, so no one actually gets hurt, but if there are 'casualties' taken during the mission it prolongs the entire event. Sometimes very little work is actually done, and other times, due to lack of building materials, no work can even be done. It's all very tedius, and as we're all validated already, we just have no interest in it.

Gratefully the MRE is over on the 18th, which is only two days from now, and 2nd Squad Jackals have the day off today. Sort of. There does seem to be a lot of running around going on, but it's like watching a relay race on a track - lots of movement, but everyone ends up right where they started. Today being the 16th tomorrow should be our squad's last visit to the site. My fingers are crossed.

Last night I turned in my M249 SAW to be validated. I'm ecstatic! It was absolutely filthy from use and we weren't told why we were turning them in, but once the weapon is validated it can no longer be used for blank ammunition, so I won't see the weapon again until we're boots on the ground!

So we're really pretty much done here. A couple days left of construction, turning in the rest of the weapons, and then going home for a few days! I also saw a road runner today, and got to feed it, which although against the rules, was too good of an opportunity to pass up!

Interim

I think that I may be slightly feverish. I'm keeping an eye on it, but my throat has a tickle that it doesn't normally have, and I've felt like sitting down a lot more than usual today. Perhaps it's the PT that we've been doing - a new muscle strengthening program, and the Chief definitely putting us through our paces running!

It's an interesting feeling to be here. Especially nights. The stars, and just the location in general are constant reminders of some of my earliest, and most cherished memories. My first plane flight, now these many years later is just a shadowy sense of impressions, a bright window, what feels like a too dark plane interior; chairs that appear too large in memory, but now that I have traveled in them during my adulthood, I know they are far too small. My mother's face - hard to believe that she was about my age then. My first time in the saddle, on a horse named Cutter. The tram into the mountains. Later, but still in my early youth, walks around the block at night with my cousin Jamie and our fathers while I snapped her suspenders and played like the child I was, the stars overhead so brilliant and so close I felt that I could just reach up and pluck them from the sky, or live amongst them like le Petit Prince.

Being here is like having my life come full circle; my earliest memories of life, some of my fondest memories of a life that has been well lived, pedal to the floor, and here I find myself, beneath those same stars. Every cactus I see reminds me of discovering the nature or cacti spines in my grandmother's garden. A trip through the scrub brush and blowing sand reminds me of hiking out to the sanitarium and getting trapped by rattlesnakes. So many memories here, so very well worn, and now I am steeped in them like a strong tea. Today, standing outside a sand colored building waiting for a class on Arabic I received a call from the same cousin whose suspenders I snapped, who I pen-palled for years, who I haven't seen in over a decade, and who today began her return to the United States, her deployment finished just as mine begins.

The night sky has so often been a friend to me. It seems not that long ago that I would sit on a boat lunch with my family in Wisconsin and track the satellites across the sky. Even more recently, and more wonderful were the nights spent with my family on the shores of Assateague Island watching meteor showers as we lay in the sand, the rush of the waves hissing across the beach. There, too, I'd wake up early with my dad and arrive at the ocean just as the dawn crested the horizon, steadily erasing the stars in the East as it pushed the candied pink sky before it; sandpipers ran with the waves, stabbing their beaks into the strand and feasting on crabs; sharks' fins slice through the water alarmingly close to where I had frolicked in the surf just a day before, and jellyfish dry out where they washed up during the night tides...So many memories beneath the sky; and so much hope held within.

The Wolfmoon rose a few nights ago which had special significance to me as well. I had just written a haiku about the moon and lovers far apart, and then the Wolfmoon swells to fullness, the brightest moon of the year according to legend. There is also the wolf connection - for me they are the noblest of creatures, looking intelligently at the world through their human eyes, silently laughing at us two legged creatures and our follies. They know that the seasons will always turn, the moon will always rise, and as they range far and wide they, and they alone are truly free.

Now this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,
And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

- From, "The Law for the Wolves" by Rudyard Kipling