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.