Blood and Bone

It happened shortly after 7am, almost at the moment of my platoon's arrival at the Transload site. We pulled up in the trucks and heard it – two explosions, in quick succession – and saw the darkly curling smoke rising from outside the gate. I went with six soldiers to see what had happened. We drove up to the gate from the inside, unlocked it, and went outside. We locked and loaded our weapons and went outside.

There were two Iraqis who had been wounded. That was what you saw first, these two Iraqis slumped up against the concrete barriers that form a wall around the site itself – bleeding. Blood, real blood, does not look like blood in movies. It isn't all one color, for one things…there are darker bits where it begins to dry, and deep red runnels that trickle down a face and drip off the chin. It drips like a leaky faucet. Three of my soldiers are combat lifesaver qualified – they began to work on these two wounded. One had a deep head wound, moving and speaking in a drifting, distant way that made us instantly suspect a concussion. The other had lacerations to his scalp, his arms, his calves…blood dripped into his eyes and made wet tracks in the dust on his bare feet. These two had been dragged to this location by the rest of the crowd. The explosion had happened 50 meters farther up the road.

I left my three soldiers with the Iraqis and went up the road to see the site of the explosion. There was an infantry unit already there, and their medic was talking care of yet one more wounded person, who I never saw – by the time I got up there, they had already trundled him into the back of a vehicle and taken him to the hospital. I turned the corner of the concrete wall and saw it – a truck, completely blown out by the force of whatever explosives it had been loaded with, with another truck behind it, on fire.

The infantry unit's platoon leader came up to me and gave me a status report – two dead, one wounded. "Three wounded," I said, and I pointed back towards the gate. "There are two over there." I could see over his shoulder one of the dead Iraqis. He was lying on a stretcher with his arms at his sides and blood on his face. He didn't look like he was sleeping. "Listen," the lieutenant said, lowering his voice. "Do you have something I can cover him with?" We were already starting to generate a crowd.

"Where is the second body?" I asked. He pointed behind me. You might have missed him at first, if you weren't looking. All you could see of him was his arm, slung over the side of one of the cargo trucks – he'd obviously been sitting in the back with the cargo when the explosion had gone off. "We'll have to move him." I said. "Well, they won't do it," the other lieutenant said, meaning the Iraqis. "They say half of his head is gone."

I got the rest of my platoon out there and had them isolate and search the drivers of the trucks from their vehicles, then search the vehicles themselves. They moved the two casualties to the street, waiting for a vehicle to arrive that could take them to the hospital. The translator told us they didn't want to go to the American hospital. "It's free." I said. Then they wanted to go.

We took a stretcher and went to the vehicle with the dead body. Two of my soldiers climbed into the back with him, and grabbed him by the shoulders to roll him over. "Oh gross," one said. "His brain just fell out." We rolled him out of the truck and onto the stretcher. He was very fat and very heavy. It took four of us to carry him. We laid him by the other body, and then rolled him off the stretcher, onto the ground. We needed it to carry one of the wounded, whose leg had been hurt so he couldn't walk. There were brains on the stretcher, and a lot of blood. The infantry medic looked at the stretcher and shrugged. "He can't walk, so he won't complain."

A body without a face does not look like a person. You look at it, and you think to yourself, something isn't quite right here, but your brain won't let you see at first what it is – then you realize that the dead guy is missing the top half of his head, torn off neatly above the eyebrows. One eye had popped out of its socket and lay on his cheek – the skin around the wound looked rubbery and fake, like a Halloween mask. "We're bringing someone over to identify him, his family is here," said the infantry lieutenant. "We need to cover his head first," I said. "His family will freak out if they see him like this." I looked at the medic, and he looked at me. He shook his head. Finally I asked him for a pair of gloves. I took the body's head, and I wrapped the top part in cloth so you couldn't see where it was missing. He looked like he was wearing a turban. Except for the eye. I couldn't do anything about the eye.

We brought the family over – brothers of the two dead Iraqis. They lifted the sheets and started to cry, horrible gut-wrenching tears and I remember thinking, "Wow, are they overacting," as if it was a movie, or a TV show. You always see people on CSI or Law & Order identifying victims and sobbing, screaming, shouting, saying no, no, no and in real life, I guess that's how it actually is, too. We put the bodies into body bags, which are now called Containers for Human Remains in Army speak, because I suppose that sounds less upsetting, and loaded them into cars the family brought. Once we'd taken pictures of the bodies, once we'd gone through their pockets and gawked at the man with half a head, there was nothing left for us to do, so we didn't need the bodies anymore. They were no longer evidence.

After the bodies were gone, the explosive ordnance disposal team showed up and did their thing – we stood around guarding the Iraqi drivers while the team made sure the site was secure. Then we let the drivers go back to their trucks, and we went back inside the Transload site, and opened the gate.

My soldiers still had blood on their hands and on their uniforms, and we had to open the gate, we had to let the vendors in to offload their cargo, so they could get paid, so the Army could get paid, so everyone could get paid…including, I guess, us.

Charlie Mike, motherfuckers.

Naive

From years ago: This was how the conversation started: at dinner, nervous because I am remarkably perceptive even when my crystal ball is on the fritz, I twisted a napkin in my hands and started talking – filling the silence, mostly – about the things I most wanted to do…one of which is to go to the storybook castles in Germany. I wanted to see them, these odes to fairy tales written in marble and glass, the last gift of a mad king to his countrymen. I wanted to stand in the halls of Cinderella's Palace and close my eyes and listen for the sound of a glass slipper on the cobblestones, the scuttling of mice in the wainscoting, the soft weeping of stepsisters who lost their eyes to greed. Who are you? He asked me, in disbelief, in dissatisfaction, his mouth twisted as if I had said something obscene. I opened my mouth and closed it again because I couldn't think of a single thing to say.

I was watching my DVD of Jim Henson's The Storyteller today, and it got me thinking. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, which enjoyed a brief run on HBO in the late 80s, hie thee hence to Amazon.com…the DVD contains nine episodes based on some of the more obscure stories of the Brothers Grimm, lovingly fleshed out by the Creature Shop and the wizards behind Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. I love fairy tales – dragons and little people and the everyday reality of magic, reflecting the mundane back at the reader like a carnival mirror, like truth with a twist. I couldn't explain my fascination to that long ago significant other, couldn't explain why I held on to my battered copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, couldn't explain the rush of love I felt for that long ago little person (who put gold stars by the stories she loved best) whenever I opened its pages.

The episode I watched today was called Hans my Hedgehog, a sort of precursor story to Beauty and the Beast. In it, a young woman and her woodcutter husband (fairytale husbands are always either woodcutters or millers, and their wives are always barren…it's a hard life to be a minor character in a fairy tale) are desperate for a child. After trying for years to have a baby, the wife blurts out one evening that she doesn't care what her baby looks like, he could look like a little hedgehog, and she would love him anyway. Now, anyone with a passing familiarity with the world of fairie should immediately know that making such rash statements inevitably leads to unintended results. In this case, the wife did have her baby, and just as she wished, he looked like a human-hedgehog hybrid (imagine changing those diapers!). Long story short, the boy was ostracized for his monstrous appearance and eventually ran away into the woods to live among the animals, with only a few chickens and a goat for company (who do not care what one looks like as long as they are fed with passing regularity).

Rule #1: If you suspect you have wandered into a fairy tale by accident, do your level best to not wish for things, at least not in front of open windows or suspicious pieces of garden statuary.

Some years passed, and one day a King got lost in Hans' woods. Kings in fairy tales always have a truly rotten sense of direction. Anyway, Hans finds the King, takes pity on him, and shows him the way out of the woods and back to his castle. The King, who's a good King, luckily enough for our Hans, wants to repay the kindness done him, and asks Hans what he wants. Hans replies (pay attention, gentle reader, this bit is important) that he will take the first thing that greets the king when he arrives home at his castle. The king, thinking the first thing to greet him will be his faithful hound…uhm…Fido, immediately agrees. Giving up Fido seems a small price to pay for being led out of the darkness of Hans' forest – fairy tale forests are not especially nice places at night. Funny things happen there, Kings tend to go missing and reappear as White Stags…fair maidens get lost and end up living scandalously with seven men of suspicious stature…young princesses ensconce themselves in trees to knit shirts for their brothers who are under an enchantment…so you see, our King was quite grateful for being led out of the woods. He rather liked being a King, and rightly assumed he'd like it much better than being a stag or sharing a bachelor pad with a pack of midgets.

Rule #2: Avoid getting lost in the woods unless you are a pedigreed young princess, fair of face and noble of bosom. Stouthearted lads need not apply – too often they'll end up under an enchantment to a wicked witch/ogre/mother-in-law and perhaps turned into some unpleasant woodland creature. Not a bunny though. Can't recall a single case of a prince turned into a bunny. Usually a frog, or a raven. Wicked witches are seldom creative.

Well, the King heads for home, whistling a little "my-bacon's-out-of-the-fire" marching tune as he went, when lo and behold, what is the first thing that comes rushing out to greet him? Not faithful Fido, who'd gotten into a ruckus with the cook's cat and was lying in the garden with an injured paw; no indeed, the first thing that rushed into the King's arms was his beautiful, nubile, conveniently marriageable daughter. (This is another common facet of fairy tales – if someone wants the first thing that greets you when you come home, it's a basic tenet of magic that the thing will end up being your son, your wife or your jailbait female offspring.)

Anyway, the daughter is a saint and obviously on some sort of mood-enhancing drug, as she accepts her fate with the calmness of the chemically cushioned, rather than behaving as a normal teenage girl would and pitching a fit. Can you even imagine that conversation taking place sans valium?

"Oh daddy, I'm so glad you're home!"

"Yes, me too, sugar dumpling…uhm, sweetheart, I have some news. Both good and bad."

"Yes, dearest daddykins?"

"Well, the good news is you won't have to marry Prince Charming after all."

"Oh good, I thought he was a frightful bore…but what's the bad news, oh paterfamilias?"

"…"

"You made a deal with some creature in the woods and I'm going to end up marrying him, aren't I."

"Well…"

"You're an asshole, daddy."

Anyway, Hans shows up to collect his bride, and they get married. It turns out though that our boy Hans is under an enchantment and is able to shed his hedgehog pelt every night to reveal the uber-hunky Prince-body beneath. If his dear wife can stay silent for three days about his nightly wanderings in the nude, she'll get to keep him in his true form forever after.

Rule #3: The Brothers Grimm must've had a pretty dim view of women's ability to keep their bloody mouth shut. Fully half of their stories hinge on the princess keeping a secret, which she's never able to do. So, if you find yourself in a fairy tale, and under an enchantment, and the breaking of this spell will only happen if the beautiful heroine manages to avoid being a big fat blabbermouth…hate to break it to you, but you're pretty well fucked.

So, like all women this Princess is a huge gossip and accidentally lets it slip to her mother that her husband isn't quite what he seems. I thought this whole scene was pretty hilarious, because you can do some serious reading-between-the-lines about previous mother-daughter post-marriage conversations. The mother is clearly quite curious about hedgehog sex, something strongly hinted at in the original story. The Brothers Grimm were a bit pervy, let me tell you. Anyway, Hans disappears in a snit because his wife is a faithless nitwit, forcing the intrepid bride to go after him. On foot. In iron shoes. Nevermind that she's a friggin' Princess and probably could've borrowed Daddy's carriage for the weekend…for some reason nobility in fairy tales is equal to lengthy walks in impossible footwear. Iron shoes…imagine the blisters.

Ultimately because fairy tales believe in happy endings, the Princess finds Hans, and he's so bowled over by her constancy that the enchantment is broken and they run off to live happily ever after. One has to wonder if the Princess is happy with her all-human husband, or if she ever has a hankering for hedgehog lovin'…or maybe that's just me.

I think the thing I love most about fairy tales is there are rules that one follows like a road map to a happy ending. If you're a good person, if you're nice to people (even the ugly ones), if you're kind to animals and share your food with strangers you meet while traveling, you'll be rewarded. Nothing is capricious, nothing is left to chance. If you're in love, that's reason enough for an entire adventure, reason enough to brave a dragon or a giant for their treasure horde, to face down an evil wizard and his host of impossible tasks, to wind your way through a maze of hallucinatory landscapes until you find yourself in the center of the story, back in the arms of your other half...the ending of a fairy tale is always a foregone conclusion. It's how the hero or heroine gets to that ending that's the really entertaining bit.

Rule #4: Nothing is impossible if you believe, and you try, and you're willing to walk a really long way in ridiculously uncomfortable shoes.

Until next time...

A Giant Mess-O-Potamia

Daily Non-Sequitor: The NCOIC of the dining facility, with whom I am on friendly terms from my stint as officer-in-charge of the DFAC guard, gave me quite a compliment at breakfast this morning. I was standing at the fruit bar, loading up my environmentally-unfriendly styrofoam to-go plate (as it happens, Iraq has a far different take on conservation than Americans -- their country is littered with unexploded minefields and their rivers are clogged with refuse and human waste -- the entire place smells like an overturned porta-potty. The non-biodegradable contents of their local landfills are probably the least of their worries) with melon and steadfastly ignoring the chocolate muffins, who were not so much calling my name as setting it to music and flashy choreography -- when in the middle of the muffins' Broadway-style dance number, this young man came up to me. "Ma'am, I don't want to scare you or weird you out," he began...and let's face it, ladies. When a man starts a conversation in this manner, are we not automatically weirded out? No matter, he plowed gamely on -- "Ma'am, I just wanted to say that I think you are extremely pretty...and you know how some people just brighten your day? It's very stressful here but I see you, and you brighten my day. I'm always happy to see you." Then he walked away. I shall take this in the spirit in which I hope it was meant and be flattered...but if some anonymous person starts nailing camel spiders to my door, it'll be game on.

I got my leave date yesterday afternoon -- for you interested parties, I leave here the 27th of August, so give or take a few days of travel time, I'll be back in the States sometime in the neighborhood of September 1st. Those of you interested in basking in the glow of my company, let me know, and plan on being in the DC area the first two weeks of September.

I thought I would take this opportunity to upload some pictures, as I find myself lacking a blogspot topic (other than a discussion of the new Supreme Court nominee...that is forthcoming. My suspicions that W has 666 tattooed somewhere on his person are deepening.) and certain people have been asking me, with increasing lack of patience, for pics. Hopefully this will satisfy even my most ardent stalk -- uhm, readers.

This one is obviously me. On second thought, it might not be so obvious. Dressed just like this with my uber-hard-core-ness in full display, I am often mistaken for a boy. I'm at the Transload site, in full-battle-rattle, as we army types like to call kevlar + flak vest + goggles + earplugs + MOLLE pouches. Getting used to the Army as a female really wasn't that difficult -- just the accessories are a bit different.

These are tanks. I don't get to drive tanks. According to the Army, you need a penis for that. (I assume it must act as a rudder.) Actually I'm not so jealous of my tank-platoon-leader friends anymore. Since this Army is kinder and gentler, and we technically aren't fighting a "war" out here so much as conducting rather ineffective damage control, tankers are not allowed to shoot their main guns. Apparently the collateral damage would be too great and commanders live in horror of getting their pictures on CNN for killing an assload of Iraqi children...nobody wants to get on CNN for ordering a modern-day Mai Lai. In any case, since tanks are swiftly outliving their usefulness at least in the Baghdad AO, most of the tank platoons out here have turned in their tanks for armored hummers.

This is a quite lovely picture of Camp Liberty in the evening. Honestly, it can be pretty out here -- there's a certain desert oasis charm to Baghdad. After all, it was once the cradle of civilization, sitting smack between the Tigris and the Euphrates, which should be ringing some bells for all of you who were forced to sit through World Civ in high school. This is modern day Mesopotamia, the home of Babylon and one of those so-ancient-it's-been-turned-into-a-parking-lot Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens. Apparently the Garden of Eden used to be here. You'd think the Tourism Bureau would put up a sign or something. Apparently the Tigris and the Euphrates used to overflow their banks and flood the river valleys with silt in the manner of the Nile, but unlike the Nile they didn't do this on any kind of predictable schedule. If I recall correctly from AP Humanities, this made the people of ancient Mesopotamia a bit skittish, and the Gods they worshipped were as persnickity and capricious as the rivers themselves. Imagine you're some ancient Babylonian...you've been doing your thing, going to your temple regularly, sacrificing your best goats to Enlil or Enki or whatever it was devout Babylonians did, and BAM...the river overflows and destroys your house, your dog drowns, your kids are eaten by crocodiles and your wife runs off with the carpet salesman. If that's the sort of cultural heritage that modern day Iraqis rise from (as opposed to Americans, whose culture is deeply rooted in both Grecian independence and Roman ruthlessness) Saddam Hussein must've seemed rather unimaginative. The man eats doritos in his underwear, for crying out loud. One loses a certain sense of menace in such circumstances.

Until next time...

Why I Make the Big Bucks

Daily Non Sequitor: "I want to be on you." This is what Grady says when he's trying to be funny, which is often. Being funny is Grady's thing, it's his signature, as much a part of his essential personality as his habit of getting out of answering uncomfortable questions by telling the questioner they're looking lovely today and have they lost weight. Grady works in the S2 shop, which is Military Intelligence (haha -- oxymoron) and I think all the plotting and tracking and intelligence gathering might have made his brain go a bit odd. (He's not the only one, of course -- all of his little S2 minions -- and Grady has several minions -- are just as cracked as he is) Grady has the perfect face for humor -- he looks a bit like Pee Wee Herman's love child, if Pee Wee Herman had a love child with Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. I probably shouldn't let Grady read this entry.

Officers say a lot of things. The Army has catchphrases, as you remember from a few blogs ago -- and one of these is the patented smartass answer whenever someone praises an officer for doing something obvious. That's why they pay me the big bucks. What you mean by saying this is that you understand you have just totally shocked your subordinates, who were prepared to be entirely underwhelmed by your performance in a command position, and you are subtly letting them know that you are in fact able to breathe without being reminded. (When an NCO compliments an officer for doing something right, that generally should be taken as an expression of polite surprise, similar to what you say to a potty-training toddler who remembers to go in the toilet as opposed to his pants.) I'm not an idiot, you fucktard. That's basically what you mean.

Random Tangent: Another funny thing people say is "I'm fucking this monkey, you're just holding the tail." This implies that someone is attempting to step on your toes and run your operation. You are politely...or not so politely, as it were...reminding them that you are in fact in charge and they need to go sit in a corner before they hurt themselves. Why you must do this with a crass allusion to cross-species sodomy, I am unclear. Perhaps I missed the memo.

The last few days have been a bit rough -- as I think you all have gathered by the fact that I haven't updated my blog in over a week now. I spent this morning crying in Jamie's office...Jamie is the Battalion Maintenance Officer. He prefers the title HOMO, which is Head of Maintenance Operations, but nobody can call him that with a straight face. Admit it though, knowing what you know about the military -- a guy saying, perfectly seriously, "I'm the Battalion's HOMO"? That's comedy gold. Anyway, I got a little weepy in Jamie's office because over the course of our Change of Command Inventory preparation, it has become apparent that my NCOs have no idea where half of our equipment is. Let me back up.

Can we agree that the Army has a lot of stuff? The Army is also anal with this stuff, in the manner of an autistic 6 year old who will immediately know if you've moved one of his GI Joes six inches to the right of his bookcase. As a commander, the Army entrusts you with some of its stuff but it makes you sign for it, so it knows exactly how many 1.5" widgets it gave you to turn the widget-screws on your M12 Decontamination Apparatus. If you don't give back exactly that number of 1.5" widgets, along with all the widget screws and anything else involved with the day to day operation of the M12 Decontamination Apparati, of which you have three (if you are me, say) then you had better break out the checkbook 'cause momma needs a new pair of shoes.

Anyway, realistically the only time we actually CHECK to make sure we have everything we're supposed to have is when we do a change of command -- if there are any discrepencies between what we ought to have, what we think we have, and what we actually DO have, well -- somebody is going to be paying through the nose. This is supposed to build character. Long story short, my NCOs tell me that we are missing quite a lot of stuff. I spent the morning crying in Jamie's office because I am quite sure I will end up paying for a lot of it -- to the tune of 1000 dollars, if my most dire predictions are correct...and when it comes to money, I'm fucking Nostradamus.

Man, something funny had better happen soon -- I'm leading a convoy tomorrow. Barring death or dismemberment, that ought to provide some pretty good laugh lines. Until then, dear reader...

BOHICA, bitches.

UPDATE: We reconducted our platoon-level inventories, and I'm not missing nearly as much stuff as we originally thought. It looks like the Army will NOT be supplementing its 2006 budget with a healthy chunk taken from my paycheck. Ha, take that, Pentagon!

Why did I join the Army?

In answer to the usual question...

I was born on September 10^th, 1982, almost 5 weeks early. 21 inches long, extremely skinny, and afflicted with a bad case of jaundice, my unfortunate appearance was that of an underfed Purdue oven roaster. (This resemblance to a plucked chicken would continue until high school, when I discovered snickers bars.) I was my parents’ first child, which might explain my mother’s reaction to the initial symptom of impending motherhood. When she went to the doctor and he delicately suggested she might be in the family way, she answered, “Oh no doctor, you don’t understand. I’m dying.” My father was ecstatic and my mother less than enthused when it became apparent that rather than leukemia she had caught herself a parasite – the 18 year version. My grandmother took my parents out to lunch in DC when, three blood tests and a hissy fit later, my mother had finally accepted the news. My mother remember, "Your grandmother and father drank champagne and discussed name possibilities. I sulked and drank a Sam Adams." This must be why to this day I can't stand the taste of that particular brew. I must associate it with subconscious rejection in the womb.

My parents met at the University of South Carolina, where my father was studying pharmacy (having picked up the major in preparation to marry a girl who later dumped him – kudos to Dad for sticking with the hand he was dealt) and my mother majored in journalism. My father is 6’4”, large framed and dark, my mother is petite and pale. I take after him in build and my mother in coloring, with my Scottish granny's red hair and temper. Luckily, my ancestors are all attractive people and the combination of their features in me is not an unpleasant one. Ugly children tend to screw up your holiday pictures, so my parents really won the genetics lottery with all three of their offspring. I got my father’s height, which has always been an asset in sports. Growing up I was extremely active, which has served me well especially with the chocolate addiction I've been feeding since discovering cake at my first birthday. Unfortunately, I also inherited my father's lack of coordination, which has left me at a disadvantage for any activity involving a ball, field or referee. Any sport ending with "ball" was a disaster waiting to happen. I had the nickname "Bam-Bam" on my peewee soccer team, not for my lead foot, but for my unerring knack for kicking the ball into my teammates' unprotected genitals. When I was nine, we moved to a new neighborhood where the local pool had a thriving swim club, and I discovered my talent for sports ending with "Ing". It's very difficult to injure your teammates (accidentally) in sports ending with "Ing". I swam competitively for seven years, year-round, until I got to high school and discovered where my true talents lay: on the river. My boat won Nationals my Junior year. Not that I'm bragging, or anything, it just has bearing on later decisions.

I took it for granted that I would row in college, because after winning Nationals one begins to think one's shit does not stink. 18 year olds are brilliant at taking things for granted. So are 22 year olds, come to think of it. Anyway, there's something magical about visiting college campuses as a recruit. It's like being a celebrity, even when your sport is as relatively unknown as rowing. When I was offered a scholarship from Duke University’s crew team, it was like getting an offer from the pros. All of my friends were so jealous that if envy were acid all that'd be left of me is teeth. "Duke?" They would squeal. "Oh my god, you could date a basketball player!" Flattered, excited, and thoroughly convinced of my own awesomeness, I didn’t stop to think about what I was getting myself into. Rowing in college was a completely different animal than in high school. I'm a healthy 5 feet 8 inches tall, which in the world of high school rowing is enormous. When I got to college, for the first time in my life I was shorter than the majority of the people on the team. The coach focused on recruiting girls who stood at 5’10” or better, so it became very hard for me to remain competitive. I stuck it out for two seasons, even trying "lightweight" rowing when it became apparent that I couldn't hack it with the bigger girls. Lightweights in college must weigh less than 135 pounds during the fall season and 130 pounds during the spring season: on my frame, this made me look like an extremely muscular heroin addict.

After my sophomore year, with my health and my grades suffering, I realized that I had stopped enjoying the sport at all. At first, quitting the team was not an option because of my scholarship. I needed to find a way to finance my education without the NCAA money, or I would be forced to transfer to a Virginia school at which I could pay in-state tuition. I didn't want to transfer. I loved Duke. I was 19, I had a tight-knit group of friends affectionately known as the Dawg Corps (despite the name they were really quite attractive), and I was active in my sorority. I was dating a KA, for God's sake. I was happy where I was.

It was at this point that I received an email from the recruiter at the Duke Army ROTC department, offering full scholarship opportunities for female athletes. This seemed like the answer to my prayers. In hindsight, it was a little creepy that just as my problems were started to become complicated, this email appeared out of the blue. Had they been tapping my phones? Invasions of privacy aside, I met with the cadre to discuss my options. I didn't know anything about ROTC, other than that occasionally they had to wear uniforms to class. LTC Ernest Sherrill, the head professor of military science (PMS) of the program, and the man I would soon realize was the coolest NCO alive, SFC James Cook, explained it to me.

For those of you who don't know, the Army is broken up into three broad classes of soldiers: enlisted, non-commissioned officers, and commissioned officers. Enlisted soldiers are the rank of specialist or below and perform the majority of the technical jobs in the army. If you've ever seen a recruiting video, all the bad-ass scenes of the soldiers decked out in camouflage rising out of the water ready to engage and destroy the enemy…these are probably enlisted soldiers. Enlisted soldiers will, if they don't do something stupid enough to get themselves kicked out, eventually become non-commissioned officers. NCOs are the backbone of the Army, responsible for day-to-day running of a unit and individual training of soldiers. Officers are made one of three ways: either they graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, applied as an NCO or civilian to the Officer Candidate School, or they graduated from an ROTC program. There's a rivalry between all of these different officer groups. West Pointers are the golden children of the Army, get preferential treatment for duty assignments and school slots, and are often referred to as "ring knockers" for their tendency to favor other Pointers over non-Pointer peers. Pointers tend to be lifers, and are the most institutionalized members of the officer world. OCS graduates are the smallest pool of officers in the Army. They usually have the most interesting backgrounds, as they often came from either the enlisted side of the house or from civilian jobs. They also spent their entire tenure at OCS getting the shit kicked out of them, so they sneer at Pointers and ROTC graduates for getting an easy ride to a big paycheck. OCS graduates tend to be early retirees, as they often are halfway to the 20-year mark before they switch over to the officer side of the house. ROTC is the easiest route of the three, and graduates of ROTC programs are often looked down on because they so often turn out to be worthless. ROTC graduates tend to be the "four-and-out-the-door" crowd. We make up the largest group of officers in the Army. Draw whatever conclusion you wish from that. Most of the enlisted soldiers already have.

The ROTC program is relatively simple. It's an extra class you take in addition to your major requirements in college. It teaches its students about the Army through leadership classes, weekend overnights in the woods, and a three-day field exercise once a semester. The cadet rank structure mirrors the Army's; freshman year you're a private, so you can pretty much be a huge moron and you will be forgiven as long as you maintain a suitable grade point average and can pass the PT test; sophomore year you're a specialist, given slightly more responsibility; you're an NCO your junior year, the watershed year in the ROTC program, the year that you're ranked against all other cadets nationally so if you suck it's really going to screw with your career track; senior year you're an officer and thus do exactly what officers are supposed to do: you plan training and supervise. You also make coffee. This is good preparation for staff time. After graduation, you owe the Army four years of active duty plus four years in the individual ready reserve (IRR). IRR used to be a pretty sweet deal: you'd sit on your butt with chances being slim to none that the Army would call you back into service. Ever since the invasion of Iraq, though, IRR soldiers have been called up left and right to fill gaps in personnel strength. I'm sure a lot of newly minted ROTC cadets are wishing they'd read the fine print a little more closely right about now.

I liked what I heard about the ROTC program so I signed on the dotted line. My friends and family were a little baffled, and less than thrilled. Sarah, one of my best friends said, "Honey, you can't be a soldier. You wear Victoria's Secret underwear. There's got to be a regulation against that." My mom sobbed, in one of her best foot-in-mouth moments, "I raised you to be a scholar, not a soldier!" to which my Dad's best friend, a retired Army Ranger retorted, "I consider myself to be both." Pink underpants and scholarly ambitions aside, I saw no disconnect between my career path and my personality. Surely the two could mesh; there had to be a place for bikini waxes and sparkly toenail polish in between the battle dress uniforms and drab color schemes…didn't there?

Being in ROTC was an interesting experience at Duke, which is an extremely small, extremely liberal university. My sophomore year, just after the 9-11 attacks, some anonymous wit posted flyers all over campus with pictures of the burning Twin Towers and the caption: "join ROTC and you'll get firepower just like this!" The campus buses had "ROTC out of Duke!" graffiti. We had to wear our uniforms once a week, and professors could get a little hostile if they were ideologically opposed to the military with such an obvious statement of support paraded through their classrooms. You try wearing BDUs to a class entitled, "The Culture of Protest in the 1960s" or "Gender Identity and Alternative Lifestyles." I am not making this up; I took a class on religion in American life my junior year and had the professor ask me point-blank why the military hated gay people. For the most part, I never had much of a problem with wearing the uniform once a week, except that the boots are hell on a pedicure. My sorority sisters used to love to borrow my camouflage pants for Halloween costumes or Greek Week dance routines. My practice of loaning out bits of my uniforms to the girls for these occasions used to piss off some of the boys in the program who thought it was disrespectful to the military to see scantily dressed Chi Omegas in camouflage pants with "Major Hooch!" or "Private Parts!" nametags running around the local bar scene.

I always just thought it was funny. Made for some great pictures, anyway.

Army-Speak, Decoded

Any sociologist will tell you that groups tend towards homogeneity – it's a herd mentality beaten into us by distant mammalian genetic roots. Those who stood out of the pack for any reason – different coloring, odd behavior, deformity, body odor – were ruthlessly culled by either the alpha leaders or the relentless predators that stalked our primordial forebears. (As apelike mammals, we're two-time losers in the genetics lottery – mammals weren't the big dick around the waterhole until the dinosaurs went the way of the do-do; and apes, being primarily vegetarians are a threat only to the unwary. And carrots. Ultimately, humans weren't at the top of the food chain until we developed fire and supermarkets.) Anyway, it was in the best interest of our rodent-like antecessors to stomp on the "unique snowflakes" and eat their young, a practice I understand still takes place in High Schools around the Nation.

The Army is a brilliant example of herd mentality.

We dress alike, we eat alike, we wear our hair in similar styles, and we sound alike. For some strange reason there are only two accents in the Army -- Redneck and New Yawka. (Stay in long enough and though you may have grew up in Long Beach, even your family will swear you spent your youth picking bollweevils out of the cotton with Cousin Cooter.) The Army has its own distinct language, one that you pick up unconsciously, much like a toe fungus or social disease. I've been in the Army 14 months, and already I've forgotten how to speak like a civilian.

I was talking to one of my friends last night, and we were IMing about the usual things – work, our respective days, etc – and somewhere in between the playful banter and half-assed marriage proposal, he had to stop and ask me to translate something I'd just said. That's when I realized…the Army has taken over my mouth. I cuss more, I use more TLAs (three letter acronyms, baby), I drop obscure phraseology into everyday conversation…it's invasion of the body snatchers, except my eyes haven't gone spooky blue and I don't sleep in a pod at night like some escapee from Cocoon. I am an American Soldier. I am a warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army values. Fear me, bitches.

Anyway, the point of this blogspot then is to translate for my friends and family some of the more common instances of Army-Speak that may creep into my speech from time to time. In no particular order:

1. High Speed. This can be a noun or an adjective. Common usage: "Where you headed, high-speed?" or "He's so high-speed he's a danger to himself and others." It usually means something positive, especially when paired with "low-drag". It means you're a stud, a go-getter, a future Captain America, mission first and people always, halleluiah Praise God. A person can be high-speed, some particularly cool Army toy or training scenario can be high-speed, or perhaps some new piece of technology recently written up in one of our jingoistic publications. Sometimes, and this is my personal favorite, the term is used in a derogatory fashion. When used this way – for example, "The door opens the other way, high-speed," – it essentially means "asshat".

2. Good Frikkin' Night/Doggone/Daggone/etc. Example: "Get your daggone butt in gear, private, before I'm forced to motivate you!" These relatively toothless swearwords are used primarily by "schoolhouse" NCOs. These are NCOs who spent the bulk of their career as Drill Sergeants or Instructors at Basic, Advanced Individual Training Course, or Officer Basic Course, collectively referred to as the Schoolhouse. In the Schoolhouse, it's against the rules to swear at the students. It's a kinder, gentler Army these days – we are molding the future fighting force with a firm and steady hand, not brass knuckles and a bullwhip. If you ever hear "Good Frikkin' Night" or similar drop from the lips of an acquaintance, dollars to donuts you have yourself a genuine former wearer of the Brown Round.

3. Blue Falcon. Blue Falcon is a nice way of saying Buddy Fucker. These are the dickheads who go pawing through the MRE box looking for the best meal, who sleep with the wife of a deployed person, who get pregnant to avoid deployment, who take the last cold soda from the cooler and don't put any more in, etc. We have whole cadences devoted to the Blue Falcon – my personal favorite verse goes like this:

You hear the chopper coming

It's hovering overhead

It's come to get the wounded

But I jump on instead

I'm a Blu-u-u-ue Fal-al-al-al-con

4. Charlie Mike, Tango Mike, Charlie Foxtrot, BOHICA, FUBAR, SSDD. Some of these you may recognize, especially thanks to military movies like Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down. The Army LOVES acronyms – everything is an acronym. We publish whole TCs (training circulars), FMs (field manuals), and TMs (training manuals) with lists of relevant acronyms, because much like the individual characters in Cantonese, there are far too many for any one person to ever memorize them all.

FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

Dude, if you want to go to the PX you're going to have to drive. My fucking truck is FUBARed.

SSDD – Same Shit, Different Day

My girlfriend always wants to know what I'm doing over here – it's just SSDD.

BOHICA – Bend Over Here It Comes Again

Oh fuck ma'am, it looks like another BOHICA mission.

Charlie Foxtrot – Cluster Fuck
When the Colonel came out to our site, he brought all of his little minions with him. It was a goddamned Charlie Foxtrot.

Charlie Mike – Continue Mission

When the IED hit our truck, there were no casualties. We called it up to higher and they were just like, "Charlie Mike, motherfuckers".

Tango Mike – Thanks Much

Dude, can I get my Maxim back please? You're drooling on the cover. Tango Mike, asshat.

5. Squared Away. This may be used as a verb or an adjective. "Square me away, Sergeant," or "That soldier is really squared away". The phrase "let's get this squared away" means essentially the same thing as "tighten up the shot group" or "lean forward in the foxhole". It means to fix a problem. When used as an adjective, it means that things are running smoothly, or that a soldier really knows what they are doing (synonymous with high-speed, used in the non-sarcastic fashion).

6. Kiwi Injection, 4^th Point of Contact. Usually used together, ie "I'll give that yahoo a kiwi injection in his 4^th point of contact", or separately as in "My commander has his head shoved straight up his 4^th point of contact." Let's break this one down. Kiwi is a very popular brand of boot polish. When a soldier is climbing an obstacle, he or she is instructed to keep three points of contact…either two feet and one hand, two hands and one foot, etc. Your fourth point of contact is your rear end. You're intelligent people, I'll let you work out this one on your own. Sadly, since the new combat boot does not need to be polished, I think this phrase may go the way of the buffalo.

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. But drop these in conversation, and you too can sound as hardcore as the stone-faced killers in the United States Armed Forces. Until next time:

Charlie Mike, motherfuckers.