More of my Blog (New Entry)

[Tokoz]

I guess some people actually enjoy this stuff, so I'm posting one more. Most of the really funny stuff though I think has been posted.

I Can Dress Myself Drills /Tuesday 6 May 2003
I think the most memorable thing about getting ready to fly out was learning just how much faith our leaders place in us as soldiers. I'm a big boy. I'm thirty three years old, a faithful husband for over 13 years and father for almost 12. I don't know exactly when I first learned to dress myself, but it might have been before some of these sergeants were born.
So why were we doing dressing drills over and over and over?
Let me first explain a little bit about military uniforms. There are standards for everything. If one item of dress is worn, then there are other items of dress that must be worn with it. So if you remove your kevlar helmet and put on your boonie hat (looks like a desert sand fishing hat), then you have to remove your flak vest (bullet-proof vest for those civilians that seem to think that it would actually stop a bullet) and the load-bearing vest that's attached to it.
With all equipment on I weigh 229 lbs (as opposed to my normal out of the shower weight of 175). That's a bit of equipment. I have with me my M16A2 with M203 grenade launcher, seven magazines (sans ammo), a protective mask with all attachments and decon equipment, two quarts of water, and my helmet.
Sounds like a lot, but it?s not hard to put it all on, really it?s not. But the first thing they had us do was put on all our gear for when the buses arrived. Once the buses got there, they had us take it off. When we got off the buses we put it back on again, only to take it off again so that we could work baggage detail.
I lost track of how many times I put on and removed that extra gear, (Yes, I kept my desert dress uniform (DCUs) on the whole time, it was just the equipment that was being changed out.) but my word, it got old fast. I'm told the reason was so that we would have to keep track of all our "sensitive items" (pronounced "you're in big trouble if you lose them because loss is not authorized.") but since it was all attached anyway, I'm not sure what their worry really was, if it wasn't that they simply were not confident in my ability to dress myself.
That pretty much sums up the trip to Kuwait. I was on baggage detail, so I was one of the people assigned to load and unload the baggage. In one of the few nice moves I've seen in the Army, that put me in Business Class for the trip out. On a 747, that is very nice.

[Tokoz]

I'm told that people who worked in a "Dilbert" corporate environment can almost appreciate this entry as much as anyone who has served in the military.

Constant versus Change/ Wednesday 28th May 2003
Today I am reminded that change is one of the few constants in the Army. There is another though: stupid meetings. Today I got to see more of either than I really cared to see.
We are no longer in charge of co-ordinating religious services for the entire area. That was one of the first things I learned today. It fell back where it belonged with our brigade chaplain. But for one whole day (almost) we were important.
The morning started with another battalion commander playing sergeant incident. I walked into the compound after doing physical training (PT) in the morning. The Command Sergeant Major (CSM) told me that the battalion commander wanted to see me. This is not a good sign in most cases, but delaying it definitely makes it worse.
Turns out that he wanted to tell me not only that I needed to clean my HMMWV, but how I needed to do it. Again, it?s not the job that?s the problem, it?s my job to clean my HMMWV and it?s his job to decide on the standard that must be met on cleanliness, but. it?s just not how things are done. I shouldn?t have joined the Army. I don?t like things to change.
The only other high point of the day was the BUB (Battle Update Brief). It?s a meeting where important information that has come out concerning the battlefield in the last 24 hours is updated. Normally my chaplain shields me from such trauma, but today he conveniently found other things he needed to be doing, and sent me in his place.
There is supposed to be information that I need in these meetings. There is information that we might need to put out in these meetings as well, although that?s a pretty rare situation.
Normally these meetings, my chaplain assured me, only take about 30-45 minutes. But, as I said, the one constant in the military is stupid meetings.
I?ve never heard so many people try so hard to come up with something to say, when it would have been so much easier to simply say, ?I have nothing to say.?
Summary of the important information put out in the meeting, by section (If you don?t know what the abbreviations are for, don?t worry about it, you?ll still get the point):

S1: ?I have nothing important to say.?
S2: ?Weather for tomorrow is important, but I can figure out how to take ten minutes telling you about it. Other than that, nothing important to say.?
BAS: ?I have nothing important to say.?
Chaplain: ?I have nothing important to say.?
S4: ?I have nothing important to say.?
S6: ?I have nothing important to say.?
A: ?I have nothing important to say.?
B: ?I have nothing important to say.?
C: ?I have nothing important to say.?
D: ?I have nothing important to say.?
S3: ?I have nothing important to say.?
XO: ?Tomorrow?s missions are:.?
CSM: ?Straighten everything up. It?s a mess.?
Battalion Commander: ?I have nothing important to say.?
Now for how it really went. I?m condensing beyond belief to be able to fit this in one post.
S1: Five minutes or less to say ?We have people in this battalion.?
S2: In addition to the ten minutes on the weather add some more minutes telling us, ?Brigade has some new forms they want us to use, here?s what they are, but I haven?t figured out how to get enough copies to start using them, in fact I don?t even have enough copies to give you any, and most of them don?t really apply to us, but I want to explain them to you anyway.?
BAS: ?They were supposed to have some supplies for us that I was supposed to give out to you, but since they don?t have those supplies yet, it doesn?t apply to you and I?ll tell you what we can do about it once I figure out why we don?t have these supplies.?
Chaplain: I actually told them, ?No new issues.? ie, ?I have nothing important to say.?
S4: ?There?s an Iraqi selling us ice for $3.00 a block, the going rate is $2.00, but he?s nice and can get us X number of blocks per day, and since we don?t have anyone else that can supply us at the moment we are going to use it.? We actually had a very long discussion on ice, and the size of blocks that it comes in and where the $2.00 a block ice was coming from and how it was different. You get the picture.
A: ?We cleaned weapons and found other interesting ways to make it so that I have something to report.?
B: ?We also cleaned weapons and found other interesting ways to make it so that I have something to report.?
C: ?First, we thought about cleaning weapons, then we gathered all the soldiers together to clean weapons. We lined them up in ten rows of ten each and issued them a cleaning kit that had in it: 2 brushes, and a tube of graphite. Then we cleaned weapons. After we cleaned weapons we talked about how we will clean weapons tomorrow.? Well not that exactly, but this one did drone on and on. This company is detached from the main area, so he also had to explain to us how he was going to make sure that his soldiers got some time out of that place, etc. I think, although I didn?t time him specifically, that he took half the meeting.
D: ?We also cleaned weapons and found new and interesting things to be able to say for the sake of hearing the sound of our own voice.?
S3: ?I want to talk about what C talked about.?
XO: ?Missions for tomorrow are.?
CSM: ?Some soldiers are not blousing their boots correctly.? Blousing is how the boot meets the trousers. You?re supposed to tuck the trouser leg into the boot, or at least make it look like you tucked it in. Some soldiers are not doing that. It sounds anal, but the sergeant major was well within his lane to bring it up. He didn?t even really take that long.
Battalion Commander: ?No new issues.?
And thus ended the hour long meeting. I?ve included all of the information that pertained to me in the first run down. The second just gives you a little bit of an idea on the rest of the meeting.
Meetings though in the Army never change, they are always more about looking good than doing good. At least though, in a world of change, you can rely on that one constant.

[Tokoz]

Don't know if I posted this one before or not. It's a little crass, but most people do find it pretty funny. Especially people that have been in the Army.

Are We There Yet?/Tuesday 20th May 2003
Many times when I've been to the field, I've commented to my fellow soldiers, I guess just as proof that I have a weird sense of humor, that it could always be worse. How? My friends always ask me.
You could be out here with diarrhea, I'd tell them. Where there are no toilets, at the risk of sounding very crass, you really don't want any kind of stomach problems. But what I didn't know, was just how crass most soldiers are.
The convoy from Camp Pennsylvania to Baghdad is approximately 20 hours long. There are two stops of more than 2 minutes. All other stops are completely random and just long enough to set up enough security to change drivers.
As we left in the early hours of the morning, I had no idea that within about eight hours of us leaving, I would be worshiped with near-hero status in my battalion. If guessing that it would happen couldn't be done, then guessing why it would happen was completely beyond me.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because to be honest the whole thing is so incredibly embarrassing I wouldn't even mention it if it wasn't for the fact that a few people in my unit are reading this blog and would miss it if I didn't mention it.
I was driving for most of the trip. I got diarrhea. I was desperate to get to a toilet, but there wasn't due to be one for hours. Diarrhea doesn't wait hours. You're lucky if it waits minutes. Well with nowhere else to go, when we made one of our famous two minute stops, I created a "roman chair" out of the side of my HMMWV and went right there by the side of the road.
I was so embarrassed and hoped that no one saw me, but apparently enough soldiers did. Everyone at our next stop had to comment to me on how impressed they were that I was brave enough to do that.
One of our leaders even told my chaplain, "Well, Rossi wasn't the first person in the battalion to take a ---- in Iraq, but he was the first to do it on the side of the road."
If you have to achieve immortality for something, I hope it is for something else.

[Tokoz]

I'm not sure anyone reads these, but people keep asking for me to post them. This one is really popular with the people at VA. It's about 2 weeks after I started showing the first signs of PTSD, and it's an attempt on my part to swing things back the other way. The story about my chaplain is funny too, that's why I posted it. :p

A Change of Perspective/ Tuesday 3rd June 2003
One of the first times that I went to the field with my current chaplain we had something really funny happen, and current circumstances remind me very much of it.
He had not been issued a protective mask (gas mask) yet, so he had to borrow one from an NCO that wasn?t going with us to field. There were a couple of weird things about the mask he borrowed. First of all, it was a vehicular mask, which means that it relies on a vehicle?s air filters, instead of having it?s own. Our HMMWV doesn?t have an chemical filtering system built in.
Secondly, it had prescription lenses in it, with no way to remove them. (For you military people out there that might be wondering, the inserts had been glued in. Don?t ask me how. I?ve often wondered if the chaplain was just saying that because he didn?t know how to take them out and didn?t have the courage to ask me.)
As we were approaching one of our companies, with the brigade chaplain in the back seat, we saw a soldier in his mask motioning to us that there was gas in the area. I stopped the vehicle and we all donned our masks. My chaplain commented that he hoped that they weren?t using tear gas, as he didn?t have a real filter. He also commented that things looked really weird. This was the first time that he had worn the mask.
Well, the visit ended up being a short one, under the circumstances, so I started to turn the vehicle around. ?Look out!? my chaplain yelled suddenly.
I obediently stopped the vehicle, wondering what it was I was supposed to look out for. He then had me back up before proceeding to turn around. It wasn?t until I was done when I asked him what it was I was avoiding. It was a water truck that I had been at least five feet away from. I didn?t say anything, but I heard the brigade chaplain in the back suppressing a laugh.
Now that I was turned around I started on down the road. There was a little curve, to avoid some trees on the way out. ?Stop! Stop!? my chaplain shouted as I was doing the turn. I stopped. But since I didn?t know why I was stopping, I had to ask.
?What?s up, sir??
?You?re about to hit that tree!? he shouted again almost in a panic over how close we had come to collapsing the front of the HMMWV in.
?What tree, sir?? I asked. The only tree I could see was again quite a distance away.
?That one!? he said.
I was at a total loss because the tree he was pointing out wasn?t even in my path.
The brigade chaplain came to my rescue, ?D,? he said, calling my chaplain by his first name, ?Close your eyes until we can take the masks off. Those inserts are messing up your vision. Your assistant is driving just fine.?
Depression can be a lot like wearing the wrong prescription (I know I alluded to this earlier) glasses. You see things as being obstacles in your way, even when they aren?t. And it sometimes takes someone that can see clearly to gently call you by name and say, ?Trust what other?s see, not what you?re seeing at the moment.?
The things that happened today that have me so upset and depressed, I can?t even trust to be real, so I?m not going to write them today. Maybe later if they prove to be real live trees in my path, I will, but until then.

[Rover]

I'm not sure anyone reads these, but people keep asking for me to post them.

I'm glad you are posting them and I hope you will continue.

[Y]

[C`gan]

Keep them coming. Some of this is absolutely hilarious, but all of it gives us more of a clue of who you are (or aren't).