Bus Stop

          It's hard to explain to people why staying in the Army is ever a good decision.  Of course it’s easy to explain why it’s not. I can give you five or six reasons before you can say “stop loss”.  My justifications would range from absolutely heart-breaking to the completely trivial.

           I won’t bore you with those.  However, I saw something this morning that reminded me of what I do enjoy about the Army, amidst what Soldiers simply refer to as “all the bullshit”. 

          There’s a bus system here on the forward operating base (FOB).  All the big FOBs have them.  Ours is terrible.  Normally, two buses sharing the same route end up 100 feet from each other and stay that way for an entire shift.  I’m not sure how this happens so often or why no one can seem to fix it.  Cities across America have mass transit consisting of thousands of buses, bus stops, traffic lights, and passengers, and they have somehow managed to create a schedule to keep it all on track.  Our FOB has two buses driving in a two-mile circle and somehow they manage to bunch up EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Thanks, KBR, for another wonderful use of my tax dollars! 

          But, hey, it beats walking.  When I got off at my stop this morning, a Private saluted me immediately.  I thought he was getting on as I got off but instead he stood there at the position of attention and addressed me with the appropriate greeting.  “Good Morning, Sir,” he said.               

          “What’s Happenin’?” That is my customary greeting, although decidedly inappropriate.  

          “Sir, do not forget your ID card on the bus.” 

          “Ok, I won’t.  Good lookin’ out, man.”  I was confused. 

          “Or what?”  A second voice came from behind the soldier.  A Staff Sergeant; I hadn’t noticed him at first.  He was clearly the private’s squad leader.  

          “Or you will have to stand here, and remind people about their ID cards for a week,” said the soldier, a touch robotically. 

          “Ok, good tip.  Thanks a lot,” I read his name tag, “Private Johnson.” 

           “You’re welcome, sir.” 

          I walked the rest of the way to work smiling and thinking about what I had just been made a part of.  We call it “corrective training”.  It’s a disciplinary action that is meant to reinforce good habits in a Soldier when he has committed some sort of offense.  The days of hazing and arbitrary harassment are long over.  Today, punishment does not have to necessarily fit the crime, but it must somehow be related to the crime.  So if you forget to shave, you might wear your razor tied to your wrist, or if you don’t get to formation on time, you might spend all day on the parade field shouting out the time of day and using your arms as a human clock.  In this particular case, the kid obviously left his ID card on the bus and was now being correctively trained in order to keep such a fate from befalling him or any other passenger ever again.  It’s well within the regulation and while it may seem harsh, it was refreshing to see that his squad leader, who had no doubt come up with the idea himself, was sharing in this exercise, disregarding his personal agenda, and not asking a soldier to do what he would not be willing to do himself.  

          Ok, it might sound like I’m going all Toby Keith on you here, but I’m really proud to be in an organization that does stuff like this.   As a civilian I would have loved to see some of my fellow employees held to the fire after making the same bonehead mistake twice.  And I would have respected any supervisor who would care about me enough to pull no punches, and share in my misery as I learned a lesson. 

          In the Army, stories are more important than medals.   And this private may not stay in for a career, but he won’t soon forget this experience and will tell his friends and family about it someday.  He’ll remember his squad leader’s name, the bus stop where he was standing and the way he felt as he reminded hundreds of people to double-check their ID cards.  If we’re lucky, soldiers like him will stick around long enough to carry on these time-honored leadership techniques in an organization that thrives on them.

          I got off the bus again the next day and there he was.  I greeted him with a smile this time and called him by name. 

          “Good morning, sir.  Do not forget your ID card on the bus or you will have to stand here, and remind people about their ID cards for a week.” 

          “That’s some fine information, Johnson.  I appreciate it.  How much longer you gonna be out here?” 

          He glanced sheepishly at his squad leader, standing stone-faced nearby.  He dropped his salute and told me sadly, “four more days, sir.” 

          “Well,” I smiled, “See ya tomorrow.”  

So what is it, exactly, that you do over there?

          I’m an Iraqi Army advisor these days.  In a nutshell, all that really means is that I drink a lot more tea than your typical soldier.  Officially, I assist and mentor Iraqi Army engineer leaders in their operations, organization, training programs, and anything else that will keep them from just sitting around and doing nothing, which is what they would really prefer to do.  It’s a bizarre job to be stuck with and results in many strange relationships with lots of Iraqi men who appear to enjoy kissing me on the cheek.  The Iraqi Army is pretty used to advisors running around but, in general, I imagine we get pretty annoying.  I personally advise a man named Colonel Latiff.  He’s about as disagreeable and uninspiring as men can get. Luckily, he seems amused by me and that’s probably why he lets me into his office at all.  At first it seemed every meeting we had created the type of atmosphere you’d expect while making small talk to your prom date’s father while she finishes getting ready.  Nothing says uncomfortable like, “I hope I get to sleep with your daughter…”
          Imagine every day while you’re working in your office that some guy just invites himself in, sits down beside you, and asks you a bunch of stupid questions that you really don’t have time for.  (I guess this might sound like your boss.)  Anyway, this guy is half your age and doesn’t speak your language very well; he’s just muttering gibberish and some interpreter is actually having the conversation with you.  Even ignoring the negative feelings you may already be harboring given the fact that his army invaded your country years ago, the relationship still seems a little invasive and insulting.  

          What’s worse, as a combat engineer, my job is to get the Iraqi Army to conduct daily clearance of the roads throughout the province.  This means they need to get into their armored vehicles and drive around real slow looking for bombs.  The Americans have done it since the war started.  I spent a year in Baqubah myself watching things blow up.  We’d like to stop doing these missions ourselves so that we can go home.  It makes perfect sense for us to give this job over to the Iraqis and that’s why I am in Latiff’s office daily explaining how I can make his Soldiers proficient in this task.  The problem?  Colonel Latiff drives his car to work every morning on these same roads.  If he didn’t see a bomb on his way into work, why would he need to send out a clearance patrol once he got there?  I guess he’s got a point.  And before I breach a number of operational security regulations by going into the threat assessment applicable to my specific slice of this lovely country, I’d like to sum up in a single phrase our reasoning for these missions and the basic guidance I give to my counterpart as an advisor: it’s complicated; just fucking do it.      

          Although I’m sure not all advisors share the same kind of flowery Mid-Western vernacular when speaking with Iraqi Army officials, this type of work is done all over Iraq by soldiers like me ranging from young non-commissioned officers through Lieutenant Colonels.  Early on, the role was considered particularly undesirable, yet in the last two years, it has grown in distinction.  Now even commanders not specifically assigned to advise Iraqi personnel go out of their way in order to find someone in an Iraqi uniform and at least get a picture taken with them.  All it took was 3 and a half years of flailing around in this desert shooting the wrong people and dog-piling naked prisoners to figure out that maybe we should change our approach.  

          Whatever the Iraqi people think about US troops and their brilliant civilian bosses back home, they were lucky that General Patraeus showed up and made thinking cool again.  All of a sudden counter-insurgency started to actually counter the insurgency.  Leaders were expected to read a book or two about protracted warfare before they were allowed to fight against it and almost everyone learned to say hello, goodbye and thank you in Arabic.  Bush called it the surge; I call it a revolution in common sense.  

          Although I risk being labeled as some kind of genius, I’ll let you know that, in college, I took the opportunity to learn about Arab culture, politics, language, religion etc.  I took Arabic, and while my GPA suffered, I think it set me up for success given my career choice.  It doesn’t take an enormous leap of intuition to consider that once you get to a foreign country you may discover a need to ask directions or at least insult someone in a way that they can understand.  I don’t claim to be an expert, though.  There is a lot about this place that blows my mind (no pun intended).  The treatment (and inexplicable concealment) of women is number one on my list of absurdities followed closely by the complete disregard for toilet paper.  I’ve often stooped to a level so vulgar as to suggest that after the occupation, we should have pulled out, air-dropped a few million tons of Charmin Extra Soft for them to experiment with, and then returned several years later to introduce democracy.  Now for THAT you can call me a genius. 

          But we never conducted Operation Bottoms Up (what? You thought I wouldn’t name it?)  We got Patraeus instead and with him came an ever-increasing emphasis on coalition units getting the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to do their work for them.  My battalion is no exception.  As the officer in charge of our numerous partnership endeavors, I am blessed to observe exciting and hilarious scenarios on a daily basis.  With all of our differences, the American and Iraqi military share some unique qualities seemingly inherent to the business of war: among them the ability to work less efficiently than any of their civilian counterparts, to turn almost any simple task into an ordeal, and to somehow place unnecessary emphasis, down to the most infuriatingly minute detail, on the least important aspects of any operation. 

          It’s not a job for everyone.  The cultural divides, language barriers, and man-kissing get a little cumbersome, but the tea’s good.

The Program

          It’s hard to follow a story so full of hilarious groin-related jokes, so I’m just going to stick to something a little more mundane. 

          In the military, preventative vehicle maintenance is kind of a big deal.  To all those who serve, that’s clearly an understatement.  I really don’t believe I can capture its importance accurately, in text.  I’d have to invent a word to describe the kind of excitement and seriousness that commanders demonstrate when talking about their “programs”.  Perhaps emphasusiasm would work.  In fact, I might be able to get a few of my bosses to believe that’s actually a word.

          All joking aside, it is pretty important.  I think soldiers started taking it seriously once their horses proved ineffective against machine gun fire.  However, it’s critical to note that most of this emphasusiasm (wow, pretty catchy) is placed on the program itself and not necessarily the business of fixing trucks. Army maintenance is so convoluted that even pencil-whipping takes a lot of work.  You need ten signatures just to drive away.  Once you hit the road, you’re not safe from the insanity.  Literally, on military posts all over America, a team of civilian contractors is paid with YOUR tax dollars to pull over random vehicles and check the expiration date on the iodine bottle in the first aid kit.  I wish I were exaggerating.  I’ll warn you not to spend too much time thinking about it, your head will explode. 

Now for the vignette:

          Today one of the Staff Sergeants (SSG F) working for me had a typical Army maintenance experience that was too good not to share. 

          We have one Hummer for the section.  It has four wheels.  Each wheel has a brake.  Brakes have three parts: The brake, pads, and rotors.  Pretty basic stuff, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind.  We had our front brakes “fixed” today.  This poor guy spent all day in the motor pool waiting on this repair.  Most of the work was done by lunch but he lost most of the afternoon as well while all the double checkers checked on the checkers of the guy who supervised the guy that actually installed the brakes.  As he drove out the motor pool exit, he sailed past the stop sign and just kept going.  Were it not for some quick thinking and a jerk on the e-break, he would have gone right into a concrete barrier.  We’re in Iraq, there’s a lot of concrete stuff. 

          SSG F limped the vehicle back to the mechanics and patiently explained his problem with the new break job: trouble not so much with the go, more with the stop.  The mechanic looked at him, looked at the truck, and decided he needed to test drive it.  Leave it to someone in the Army to test drive a vehicle that won’t stop. 

          SSG F (who’s a saint really; I would have strangled someone at this point) said “I told you the problem.  Why would you need to test drive it?  Just check the brakes you replaced.  It doesn’t stop; it doesn’t take a mechanic to figure that out.”  Needless to say, SSG F lost this argument and, completely aware of what would happen once they started driving again, braced himself in the passenger seat while the mechanic took off down the road. 

          They blew through a stop sign a hundred meters from the motor pool going 30 mph.  SSG F has a seat belt burn because the e-break got jerked again.  The mechanic’s reaction?  “Yeah, there’s something wrong with this thing.” 

          Turns out, they forgot to put pads on one side of the front breaks.  I wonder if anyone even noticed the extra parts lying around after the truck rolled out of the maintenance bay.  Or maybe the mechanic wondered to himself why one set of breaks seemed to go on so much more snugly than the other.  He was probably too busy initialing something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the crotch story...

          I guess you could say that I've come to the blogoshpere reluctantly, not to mention 5 years behind anyone else with an opinion. I've read that most blogs average a single hit each day. Probably by the lonely little guy writing it. I imagine that sad state could only be made worse if a lot of people actually read what was written. Because those people turn out to be jerks and they write things about the author and don't take into consideration the fact that his mom might be reading it as well. And with the courage inherent to anonymity folks will say anything. And while most people are terrible at all sorts of things, it seems every human being is an expert in hurting feelings. So with that in mind, I've created this little forum for my thoughts, and hopefully everything I ever write will be universally regarded as accurate, insightful and hilarious. I just don't think that it's too much to ask. 

          The incident I refer to occurred on the Yahoo sports NFL blogging site. If you check it out and sift through the comments you'll understand that I was probably asking for it. I attacked the Pittsburgh Steelers, beer and the United States military in less than 300 words. Not sure what I was thinking. And I'm not sure the author did much to help me out. He posted my thoughts directly out of an email, ignored a major typo and got rid of a well-timed reference to the Pittsburgh Steelers as jerk-offs.  Check it out here:  http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/A-report-from-Iraq-Watching-the-Super-Bowl-vs-?urn=nfl,138435#remaining-content

          So here we are, blogging on my own terms.  I'd like to stick to a common theme, and that's a peeling back of the veil of misperceptions concerning the United States military.  My buddy Ashton gets mad at me for talking about this kind of stuff.  He enjoys the "Myth of the Army" and points to its utility in helping guys with crew cuts get laid since WWI.  I understand the risks, and I move forward with caution. 

          My first

 entry needs what we in the military call a "vignette".  Because what better way to solve a problem or answer a question than by telling a little story?

           ...  

           There I was, standing waist deep in a Florida swamp with my M4 tucked into my shoulder, when it occurred to me that I must look like a serious badass.  My patrol cap was pulled low to shade my eyes.  My sleeves were rolled just below my elbows and black operator gloves cradled my weapon ever so gently.  My face was smeared with dirt and what was left of my sweat-streaked woodland camouflage facepaint… no, lets call it WAR PAINT.  Paint made just for war, for killing, for being a badass, and for being sneaky. 

          I was probably working on less than 25 minutes of sleep over the last 48 or 72 hours. The brain starts to really mess with a person at that point.  You don’t have to be a soldier to understand this concept, that is, assuming you’ve ever been really tired. So the notion of how cool I looked entered my mind and flitted away the same way half a dozen other images might have.  This was 2005 and I remember that those days were marked by the fact that I got a Kelly Clarkson song stuck in my head for, literally, two or three months.  No joke.  “Since You’ve Been Gone”:  I couldn’t stop singing it to myself.  I was absolutely nuts. Either way, the image of me wading through this water with all my accoutrement was cool and I thought it would make a nice recruiting poster, but then I considered the reality of my situation: 

          Here I was in Ranger school, a thing I had volunteered for.  The Army’s most “elite” leadership assessment.  A place where soldiers come from across the Army to spend

 62 days in the woods sleeping little and eating less.  The instructors say, “We can’t shoot real bullets at you so we make it stressful in other ways.”  Yeah, well there comes a point where you’re so tired and/or hungry that a real bullet would taste great, and feel even better.  And I’ve been to war, and the least controversial thing I can say about today’s combat is: “there’s plenty of food”. 

           But I’ll try to stay focused on Ranger school: where there is no food and even less fun.   For those unfamiliar, it's a school where young leaders are tested on basic infantry skills under harsh, stressful, and hungry conditions over three phases in Ft. Benning, Dahlonega, GA, and Eglin Air Force Base, FL.  It's a place built on "no excuse" type leadership and everyone there gets a real kick out of the high failure rate.  It's a lot of walking around with heavy things, shooting blank ammunition in the woods, and being generally cold and miserable.  there's a lot of grunting as well if I remember correctly.  Most people who go are concerned with only one thing: finishing.  So its 62 days of “suck” with a few hundred of your closest Alpha male, Neanderthal, brainwashed, smelly, dirty, hungry, whiny, asshole friends. 

          My point is this: here I was looking like the Army’s poster child, a warrior, a hero, captain f-ing America.  But I felt like a bag of crap and I was hallucinating from all the being awake.  What’s more, this particular stroll through the river is memorable for me because of what had happened an hour earlier.  We had begun our evening’s mission with a zodiac raft movement down this nice broad lazy river they have for us down there to paddle around on.  The boat movements are terrible just like everything else at that school.  The Army can always suck the fun out of a perfectly good recreational activity like boating (or camping, hiking, sky-diving, whatever).  The instructors force you to sit in the boat in the world’s most uncomfortable position: One foot tucked into the rope that runs alongside the raft, and the other one sandwiched in between the pontoon and everyone’s rucksack lined along the center section of the boat.  It’s miserable on your legs and feet. Ironic that the one time in Ranger school when you don’t have to walk somewhere, they still figure out how to make your feet hurt.   

          As we were boarding the raft, I ripped my pants.   

          And that’s how misery sets in; it only takes one simple inconvenience to send you down a long spiral towards absolute, uncontrollable suffering.  Often it’s hard to pinpoint the event.  This one was easy, because my pants really ripped. 

          Army pants are notorious for crotch failure.  They’re made (like most federal clothing) by blind people or criminals.  Either way, the stitching is decidedly imperfect.  I was already sporting the small hole below the fly that occurs with regularity.  Such rips can be a nuisance if you need to sit on a bar stool, but in the woods it actually adds some welcomed breathability.  As we boarded the rafts, I had to throw my leg over the side of the pontoon and because my leg was soaked in this nasty cold water, the hole became a rip, then became a tear and finally turned into a shredded mess from the crotch down to my mid calf.  Underwear was an unnecessary luxury to most of us so to say the least: I was exposed. 

          It's funny how a man's priorities can change.  A minute before I tried to get into that doggone raft, I would have given away all the pants I owned in exchange for a cheeseburger.  Once the reality of a near pantsless boat ride in my immediate future set in, I rethought the intelligence of this theoretical swap and actually wished for a moment that I had the aforementioned burger simply because I could then trade it to one of my buddies for a new pair of pants. 

          Not like I had any time to change even if I had a new pair available.  So I just pulled myself onto the raft and got as comfortable as I could.   

          The boat ride was no picnic.  My efforts at nonchalance failed as soon as the first Ranger instructor got an eyeful of what I had decided to lay on the pontoon for everyone’s viewing pleasure.  I wish I could recount exactly what was said but I think I blocked it out of my memory.  I’m pretty sure there was some shouting from boat to boat and I think there was a megaphone involved.  I already said that the water was cold, so there were no doubt some references to size and whathaveyou, but I’m not going to embarrass myself anymore with the details. 

          I guess I was glad when we finally stopped paddling and I could spend the rest of the night in waist deep muck.  The embarrassment disappeared but it was replaced by the concerns of what might be in that river and what it could do to me.  I didn’t catch anything permanent, just the occasional waste high branch to the nether-region. 

          Although I run the risk of wearing out my metaphor, I feel it’s important to emphasize the symbolism of my predicament.  No organization is perfect, that’s a given.  More specifically, no organization is what it seems.  Just like people, groups like the military have hidden misgivings and vulnerabilities beneath a polished exterior.  The Army is no exception.  As a physically exhausted and mentally drained young ranger, I appeared to an objective pair of eyes to be the epitome of toughness, stoicism and focus.  But my mind was filled with the most basic selfish thoughts that centered on my own discomfort and need for sleep, food, attention, and unripped pants. In addition to these thoughts, my physical vulnerabilities lay beneath the literal surface of my environment where the source of my manhood lay exposed, cold, and no doubt unhappy and terrified himself. 

          Four years later and the symbolism of this memorable predicament couldn’t be more appropriate.  I feel like my entire military experience has followed a similar track.  There’s always a hardcore outer shell of badassness surrounding the gooey center of absurdity.  I’ve looked for bombs along desert streets, but mostly just wanted to see the farm animals.  I’ve negotiated with Iraqi military officials about combined-arms operations and “Christmas versus Ramadan” in the same conversation.  I’ve given briefings to Colonels, only to be critiqued on my choice of font.  I’ve expedited my time on an IED site by intentionally detonating an artillery round with an unlucky robot, because my driver needed to get back and pick up his laundry.  And my Improved Outer Tactical Vest has a pouch in it where I keep my Skittles. 

          It’s not the movies.  There are no true badasses (maybe Chuck Norris).  But everyone gets cold, scared, tired, slow, cranky, etc.  Coincidentally, those types of stories are always the funniest, and the most human.  They’re the only ones I’ll ever tell.