iraqistan

For the past three years I have taken it upon myself to organize joint events between my Company (and assorted others, since for some reason I can never get enough people from our limited personnel resources together at one time) and the German Bundeswehr. Usually it is fun days of guns, glory, and sometimes simulated assaults on Vietnam-looking forests.

Today, however, it was a road march.

There is what is called a German Armed Forces Proficiency Badge, or GAFPB. I have no urge, nor a need, for one, but officers can wear it and ammunition for shooting expeditions is expensive. I therefore decided to take the time to try and help organize one for some of my company. The primary event in the GAFPB is a road march. Participants strap on a 25 pound or so rucksack and head out for various distances along German roads. The maximum is 30 kilometers for a men’s gold award.

I am not competing, as I prefer my German marksmanship award, so I said I would ruck with the people in the rear and provide a ground safety element. That meant start out with the slowest, who usually only ruck 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) and then catch up with and finish with the fastest, who usually ruck 30 kilometers (about 18 miles).

I decided at the last minute to wear trusty boots that have never given me blisters before. The furthest I have gone in them, which did not occur to me at the time, is 10 kilometers. They were not so trusty today. Thank goodness for safety pins and alcohol pads and not being too squeamish to spill my own fluids. But enough about that, particularly since not all are as un-squeamish (not really a word) as I.

The boots were the least of my problems. Oh, I went out with the people that do shorter marches and prodded one particularly demoralized Soldier who had been cajoled into the whole affair by his Special-Forces-Candidate-and-Supervising-Coporal to complete the minimum distance. But I traded bags with him at one point and discovered that he had a series of weights in the pack, one of which had slipped and jabbed you in the base of the spine every seven steps. I counted: seven every time. I did fix it for him by the time he reached his turn-around point at 10 kilometers, but have a bruise the size of Madagascar (and roughly the same shape, if sideways) on my lower back by now.

They slowed me down a bit, so I had to catch up to the other Soldiers who were now several kilometers ahead. I met the trail end of the party about 4 kilometers later and turned to walk back with them.

I was at kilometer 18 when I realized that my foot was not in its socket, probably from the three times I had rolled it over the course of the march. The boots I wore, as I then recalled from the last time I had marched in them, are not as strong in the ankle as my new ones.

This is when common sense set in and when a Bundeswehr truck rolled by I hopped in for a lift forwards a bit. He schlepped me about 6 kilometers until we came upon my warrant officer, who is not quite used to physical training these days and was trying to figure out how to avoid throwing up, or at least how to avoid getting caught throwing up and put on a truck for dehydration. I hopped back out and opted to ruck the last 4 kilometers with him, common sense left behind once again as is my way.

I rolled my ankle again, which had the benefit of popping my foot back where it belonged, though my surprised and happy comment about such was met with my warrant officer asking me not to talk anymore as I was hurting his brain and that he now had confirmed I was, in fact, an idiot. He then almost threw up, so I wandered ahead to wait for him at the top of that hill. I made it, pestering him and humming Journey tunes, until about half a kilometer from the finish line when another Bundeswehr truck passed, which he stopped and asked them to take me again. They did.

My feet are now elevated, I took medication for my head and shoulders and legs and toes, and iced my bruised back. Everything is back in order.

That return to order includes my final dumb move of the day, which was to agree to do this all again in about three weeks.

I figure next time, I will wear my other boots and be just fine. My warrant figures that maybe next time I will realize the error of my ways.

How little he knows me…

I think I figured out the problem with Germans today:

It is impossible for them to play a reasonable game of Scrabble. This has clearly driven them insane.

There is a word posted at our front gate, and most gates to various national and international bases in the country, that I maintain should not be posted at the location because people will get into car accidents trying to read it. I counted it at 23 letters. Impossible to fit on a Scrabble board. Most of their long words are combinations of shorter words, so it is possible to spell in seven or eight letter incremental add-ons, but the board is just plain not big enough, nor are there enough letters. Particularly the “V”. Germans like those, as well as “S”, “Y”, and “F”. “Q” will still have to sit this one out and have to wait for the Arabic version.

Today I was editing a report which involved an open meeting which was quite possibly over 30 letters long. One would have to tape together multiple Scrabble boards in order to even attempt to build the thing. Put it on a triple word score and it may as well be game over, especially given the “V”s and “Z”s.

My local national regularly amuses himself on our long car rides to various locations by talking to me about inane topics, and frequently translates portions of our conversation into German. I am unsure yet if this is for his general amusement or my general torture, though I am beginning to suspect the latter. His favorite part is to say something in English regarding an agency or some military event or some such and then say, “In German, the so-called…” and then insert random syllables of umlauts and grunts. He then, no matter how often this happens, mistakes my pained look for questioning confusion and repeats himself slowly, as though encouraging me to learn whatever word it is that I would have no reason to ever use in a sentence again. I usually interrupt him about halfway through the word (about 6 syllables or so) to tell him I really don’t care and to just continue on before I forget what we were talking about in the first place.

He finds this insanely funny, and will then tell other Germans that we meet about it. I have told him that this is how wars start, but he never listens. Yesterday, luckily, the person he was trying to tell was more interested in telling me all about a previous deployment he had with my local national years ago, when my local national (a marathon runner) decided to ask to run up the side of a mountain outside of the safe areas as “A birthday present.” The scariest part was that his command let him. He still defends it to this day, though I pointed out it would be like me telling my team leader that I wanted to head to Fallujah from Baghdad and saying, “Nah, don’t mind me, I’ll just walk.”

Clearly, he is a man in need of a Scrabble set for his birthday this year.

Okay, right. So turns out when you are getting something for free, a recession really might put a cramp in your style when the free-ness makes no money and goes bankrupt. And when that free-ness is, say, a blog taking up server space, sometimes there is unexpected down time when bankrupt happens.

But my loving and compassionate friends who know WAY more about computers than I do (and actually make use of their very expensive educations instead of running off to join the military like i did) got it all fixed, so back in action now. As soon as I am less lazy (and have not the 14 hour day that I had today) I will update with the notes I took over the past month or so, backdating accordingly.

For now, though, the cat is trying to eat my dinner, so updates are for later while I save my meal. She’s like the privates: give her a taste of something good once, she wants it all the time and whines until she gets it. This is why I never feed the Soldiers corned beef…

One of the first things they teach you at these little non-commissioned officer schools is the concept of backwards planning. You find out where you need to be and when, then work backwards to figure out how to get there and all of the time until you get to something inane like what time to wake up. Everyone in the human race does this in some sense or another, consciously or otherwise.

Which only stands to prove that Big Army is not human.

Big Army seems to do forward planning. Many days, it seems like no planning at all, or perhaps reaction planning when they realize something was supposed to be done last week.

Hypothetical situation, a unit faces a small, short-term deployment. Under normal circumstances, very easy. When do they have to be there? What equipment do they need to bring and how can it get there? How long will it take to move the equipment and the Soldiers? How long will train-up take? All leading back to when does the Operations Order giving them the direction to move get published and previous orders.

The Operations Order, OPORD, is the lifeblood of the Army. Without it, nothing would happen and everyone would sit around twiddling their thumbs and staring at each other. Since I know enough people paid to do that already, it would be a travesty if OPORDs ceased to be. They are what tells a unit to get up and go and how to get there. They tell them what needs to happen and who needs to do what to whom to make it so.

That is, unless someone forgot to backward plan so the OPORD shows up a week after the first items should have already been completed. Those items will still be listed there, clear as day with the “done by” date, which was typed in with precision and gusto by some training shop clerk who is probably embittered that they are stuck in the training shop instead of doing whatever it is they came into the Army to do but now figures “What the hell, may as well do what I can here” and ensures that everything goes into the OPORD exactly as the Commander whispers it into his ear, and which was also a week ago but he didn’t think he should point that out to the Commander.

When things show up overdue in an OPORD, panic tends to ensure. For me, that involves a phone call at some random hour with a midly panicked officer on the other end trying to figure out how to fulfill every obligation on an OPROD that should have been published three weeks prior. Luckily, my job bores me, so I tend not to get excited about much and just figure out how we can best help them. I usually also take the opportunity to get everyone else spun up by making requests with short deadlines with full knowledge that the request probably will not be fulfilled in time. It’s becoming almost a hobby, since I have been working with aviation recently and no pilot plans more than a day in advance. This apparently carries through all the way to whatever mystic Army Pilot In The Sky that controls their orders, because every day we reinvent the wheel as something new pops up that should have been taken care of yesterday.

So while I sat through several classes all about the training cycle and backwards planning and predicting contingencies and all that rot, all it seems to have done is ensured I get up on time for work.

Once I get up, though, everything is subject to change.

Warrant officers can be amazing creatures. They are supposed to be technical experts… eventually… and appear to spend most of their time getting to that expert status daydreaming and finding other ways to occupy their time. This may, in fact, be what they are becoming expert at, I am not sure. I cannot become a warrant myself because I was told I cannot be forced to road march for 10 kilometers. This is because I have a doctor signature saying it is at the very least strongly advised against. They denied my waiver exactly one month after I completed my most recent 10 kilometer road march. They said that while I could do it, they could not force me to do it, and it was called a “forced road march” on the description of the activity, so I was counted out.

But I digress. If warrant officers are in fact trying to become technical experts at finding other ways to occupy their time, someone really ought consider the promotion status of some of the people I work with.

Just today I was sitting in my office and yelled a question to a nearby warrant officer, who sits around the corner. He yelled back an answer, but I had the window open and could not hear him over the roar of American muscle cars passing by. I yelled again to tell him I couldn’t hear him, but didn’t catch his response. Finally, when the light turned red outside, I mentioned offhand that we should just get some cups and string.

While prior to my interruption he had presumably been happily wandering his way around unrelated sites on the interwebs, this comment spurned action and motivation such as I have rarely seen in the Army.

His first quest was for cups. He found some, questioned if that was sugar or crystalized milk in one, and decided it was good enough. They were the last two disposable cups we had laying around, so he figured it was all meant to be.

He then tore apart the office looking for 5-50 cord, a strong and common rope used in the Army. I had just brought my coil home, so there was none. He went to another office to get some. No luck there, so he returned to continue turning our supply room upside-down in his quest.

He decided he would not rest until we had adequate means of communication via cups and string.

Actually, it turned out he would not rest until he either set up our new communications system or until he realized that a light bulb had burned out in my office. Whichever came first.

While looking for string, he came across a bulb. He observed that one of mine had burned out. Fascinated, he immediately stood on my desk and tried to install the light, which he could not get to work. In his mission, the cups fell from my desk where he had absently left them and onto a chair, which he subsequently used to get down from my desk while shaking the bulb to determine if it was the socket, the bulb, or him that was not quite functioning properly. When getting down, he stepped on the cups, breaking the last two potential earpieces that would not require a trip to the shoppette across the road.

He was devastated, having broken the cups and me still sitting in the partial darkness, until I handed him a Rubix Cube he had left in my office some days before and sent him back to his desk. I even had the forethought to ask him my question when I could hear a response before I left him there.

I am going to talk to the command about him getting promoted in advance. He is clearly ready.

All dumb people should have warning labels. Big, bright, easy-to-read warning labels printed right on their foreheads so when I approach them I know exactly what I am in for.

They don’t have to worry about discrimination. People still buy cigarettes despite those warning labels being on the package for many years. Then again, I don’t see how someone could be chemically addicted to talking to the clinically dumb.

Today I had to explain to one of my Soldiers exactly why he couldn’t wear his windbreaker out if he was going to talk to anyone outside our office. Really, he couldn’t wear it if he was going to talk to me, either. I had to explain that anything that you would find printed on the mudflap for a commercial semi-truck is not something that should be emblazoned on the sleeve of someone who claims to be a professional and someone whom I am supposed to trust to talk to people well above his rank. He didn’t seem to get it. I kicked him out of my office and told him if he wants to talk to me further he will need to remove his jacket so I can talk to him without the image of two naked ladies sitting back-to-back staring from his sleeve. He seemed sad that I didn’t like his new jacket.

These warning labels may yet save society from the stupid. Or at least save me from putting my head through a wall…

Last night I had an odd dream about someone showing me new sneakers they had just bought. For some reason, I woke up and had something of an epiphany:

I just don’t care.

Why the shoes (I can’t remember who was in the dream showing me the sneakers, as though that would somehow make it relevant) made me realize this, I am not sure, but it felt liberating.

I have spent an awful lot of time in the Army caring. I still do care, at least about some things. I want my Soldiers (the ones that put effort in) to get something out of it all and do well for themselves and for the Army. I want to succeed at my job and still stay in the field. I want my reports to be right and for my office to have a purpose. I still want and care about all of those things.

What I don’t care much about anymore are things that the Army doesn’t care much about either. The Army wants to send me to a school that could end up cajoling me into staying in for another go? Okay. They don’t because of some inane reason they just came up with five minutes ago? Okay, too. I finally realized that I don’t really NEED much from them anymore, never really did, only I was the one that kept forgetting that whereas they had not. I could get out tomorrow and be just fine. I’d like the school, sure, not just for outside career development but to maybe stay in, but do I really need it? Nah. That makes it all a nice surprise if they actually keep their word and send me this time.

The feeling I got from this realization was completely liberating. I actually worked more today because of all of this, to the point where I think I annoyed people in operations from the absurd number of reports and odd questions I had for them today.

Speaking of surprises and oddities on a completely unrelated note, I happened to be in a main train station the other day and saw several things which both scared and intrigued me:

1) Lots and lots of mullets. The mullet is coming back in Germany. Not as though it ever really left, but I counted at least 20 professionally groomed and long (in the back only, of course) Kentucky Waterfall hair-dos in about five minutes of standing in the middle of the station.
2) A guy in a full Ernie (Sesame Street) costume but without the little screen in the mouth of the costume so you could see the guy’s face. It looked like Ernie had eaten a man and hadn’t fully gotten him down yet, like a snake trying to take on a mouse too big for it to get all at once. Disturbing.
3) A guy in a penguin suit. No real explanation, but there he was, following Indigestion Ernie around. He had the screen in his costume, but may have been too short to see out of it properly as he bumped into things repeatedly.
4) A clown in full get-up exiting an extremely small Fiat. I have no idea how his shoes fit in there, and that actually puzzled me more than anything else for a good while.

Germany is strange a strange place. Luckily, I have at least found mental liberation for a short while. I tend to get sucked back in all the time to caring and trying again, but at least for now I can enjoy the finer things in life, like counting German mullets and seeing if Ernie is about to cough up a man like my cat periodically does her hair.

Today as I stepped outside I had some sort of odd post-traumatic deja-vu feeling that I was back in Mosul.

This was not because anything traumatic happened in Mosul; I was only there for a few weeks before I escaped southwards. However, it was January at the time.

For those who are unaware, the sandbox is not all made of sand. Mosul, in fact, is fairly dirty but not terribly sandy at all. Not only that, but winter sees some combination of rain and snow. When I was there, it was rain. Oodles of rain. I spent my several weeks in the north slogging through streets which lack drainage, presumably because who needs street drainage in what is supposed to be desert. It is also cold, though it wasn’t so cold you were really shivering, just cold and wet enough to be really irritating. The best part about it was that from my temporary lodging to the place where I was temporarily working there was a single street to cross. That street became a muddy, foot-deep river rather rapidly on day two in Mosul. I did not see the sun in the north again, come to think of it, and recall being very annoyed at that river twice each day when it required crossing.

Today felt exactly like those days in Mosul. We haven’t seen the sun in several days already, and it has been irritating, on-and-off rain consistently. About the only difference is that here there is drainage, so instead of a river of mud and sludge it is a river of springtime German snails. Less damp, but more crunchy. The snails come out and stay out until the fall at the slightest inclination of damp weather, lining themselves up like slimy kamikaze pilots on their suicide mission of trying to trip me as I stumble down the path half-asleep to my car at 0530 in the morning. They fail, and all they get is squashed.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling all day today of being back in Iraq. It being German protest season and most of my time in Mosul also saw frequent stormings at the gate only made it more difficult to convince myself I wasn’t sitting in Iraq.

Oddly, though, it somehow made me feel more at home.

People often ask me why I didn’t come in as an officer, or why I have yet to put in an officer packet. The answer is always the same: I hate politics and the politicians that go with them. Most officers are politicians just waiting for their chance to vote on something or get bumped to another position where they can exert more influence on the masses. I don’t fault them for their job, just like I don’t fault members of the U.S. Congress for voting on 1000-plus page bills they are given three hours to look over, but I certainly do not want that job for myself.

As I wander up the ranks, I have found that it is not all officers who are the politicians. I knew this, but a piece of me did not want to admit it. I have seen evidence of it in myself lately, as a matter of fact. I do not write emails or anything else when angry, for instance, because it usually leads to trouble. This has actually led to less overcrowding in my email sent items box, which is something of a little bonus. If I do draft something when angry, I have someone read it over before I send it to anyone to ensure that I am not about to get myself demoted.

The funny thing about the Army is that you can’t quit. You have to wait for your time to be up, and even then they have wily ways of getting you to stick around longer than you thought possible. My husband, for instance, has only been a civilian three months and just the other day joined the reserves because he needed a school or two that he didn’t get from the Army on account of being constantly sent off to map out sand dunes or whatever it is he did for three of his nearly six years on active duty. The lack of ability to quit, however, does not always stop me from trying. Just the other day I informed my warrant officer that I was done, and he had to take the phone away before I called my first sergeant to inform him of the same. I then drafted a two week notice, figuring that the reason he would not let me make the call was because it was too sudden. He left for an assignment, however, before I could hand it over, so he will see it when he gets back. I have a feeling it will be like the other notices I have given on departing, however, which have all been dutifully ignored by my supervisors.

This notice was drafted on a particularly political day. The details involve a class, bitter people, and over-reaction. Put simply, The Usual. But the past is the past, they say it will all be fixed later. I also have a lovely bridge in Brooklyn if you are interested. For you, my friend, special price.

I am not a politician. When I don’t understand something, or when something doesn’t make sense, I am usually the one asking about it. It makes people grouchy, but I have found that usually they only get grouchy when they don’t have a decent answer other than hurt feelings, which isn’t really a decent answer at all. For the number of feelings I hurt whenever I try to get something done or whenever I ask a question, I could never hold elected office as a career. Plus I just don’t like babies that much, nor do I have an affinity towards bold pantsuits and red ties.

But I was angry, and now I have to wait to sumbit my two week notice until my warrant has had a chance to look it over and probably throw it out and tell me it’s all okay and I will get the course I was suckered into reenlisting for. Me? Well, I’m no politician, so I will just let the rest of them play their games until moving on to someone else’s gig. In the Army or outside of it, the ball is back in their court. My intentions were made known (another reason I cannot be a politician, as I am a terrible liar about my intentions) to my first sergeant; what they choose to do is up to them. For now, I’m going to do the first politician-like thing I have done all week: absolutely nothing.

This weekend, in my ongoing efforts to make the German Weather Gods listen to me, I decided to complete Spring Cleaning. Seeing as I had yet to unpack from the field, and hadn’t cleaned terribly much before I left anyway, there was a good amount to do. Today, as it turned out, my plan worked and it has been mostly sunny and getting close to 60 degrees. It appears I have found the chink in the German Weather Armor: standing on my balcony in pyjamas sweeping cat hair from my rugs. My neighbors were most entertained. Hopefully they will leave their thanks in the form of baked goods on my doorstep.

Unfortunately, it all came about three weeks too late. There is a saying around these parts: no matter what the weather anywhere else, if someone is outside in the field at Grafenwohr it will rain there. I would like to amend that statement to include things like snow, hail, sleet, mixed cold precipitation, and so forth.

Let us take, for example, the day that I had to run the grenade launcher range. The M203 is a simple weapon. I haven’t fired one in a few years, but coincidentally nothing on it has changed: just don’t shoot the ground in front of you and you should be fine. It is very hard to shoot the ground in front of you. That, naturally, did not stop not one, not two, not three, but four people from hitting the ground remarkably close to them because they showed up to my range from other companies with absolutely no idea which part was dangerous. This was demonstrated in particular by one person, I think from our sister company which will remain nameless, who shot the sandbags he was leaning against. Twice. These were paint rounds for training, so no injuries were incurred, though he was a little more orange when he left my range than when he arrived.

But I digress. I got to the range and the weather was bleak. No surprise, since this was about day five in the field so far and each day we had been outside and each day it had done something nasty. It began to drizzle as I planned the range out with the warrant officer who was supposed to be in charge of the range who clearly wanted to be anywhere other than where he was at the moment. As soon as he went inside the small, unheated shack while I stayed outside to set a few things up it began to snow. Not little flurries, but outright snow in nearly the middle of March. I began to get cranky. Then my First Sergeant called. He called for no other reason than to giggle at me, asking how I was enjoying the weather. I have learned, somewhat, from mistakes made over the years to control my temper, but did offer to give him a grand tour of the range once he made it out there, but he should bring warm boots. He mentioned he might well get snowed in where he was, so I should just have fun. I hung up around then using the excuse of getting the Soldiers helping me run the range set up. He was kind enough to show up later, bring me soup, and order me indoors for twenty minutes around lunchtime so I could move my fingers again. I had been about to ask him to help hold up targets.

The snow did turn to rain later in the day, giving way to cold sunshine as we packed up to leave the range. That was how every day went. It rained if I was outside, perfectly fine if a bit cold the moment I stepped indoors. Because it was perpetually miserable, I did not get sick from the malicious weather patterns, only losing my voice a bit because three days in a row we had no voice projection system other than my loud mouth on two ranges. Much to my command’s dismay, I did not lose it enough to keep snide comments from escaping periodically. I tended to direct them in the general direction of the Soldiers, however, most of whom were kind enough to demonstrate the behavior that reminds me of all the reasons to get out of the Army.

The Soldiers had nothing to do with the weather. There are good ones, and there are bad ones. That is the same in every unit, just like every job. Some of these, however, were more like spoiled children. Somewhere along the line they turned into bratty pre-teens or some such, many of whom appeared to be in the middle of a growth spurt because they could not stop eating. One actually had the gumption to wander up to myself and the other staff sergeant as we stood on the machine gun range waiting for clearance to begin firing. She wanted to know if she had enough time to run to the “car” (We moved around in HMMWVs. She could have at least said “truck”) so she could get some food because she was “freaking starving.” It was approximately 1000. She had been on the range for about an hour. Furthermore, while asking us this question she was in the process of stuffing her face with gummy worms. She actually still had food in her mouth while telling us about her conundrum of how to in fact procure MORE sustenance to feed her. My comrade, who was in fact the Non-Commissioned Officer-in-Charge of that particular range, recovered himself quickly enough to tell her that in fact she did not have enough time so to go back to her weapon (which she did, pulling out her cell phone to send a quick text message as she did so, undoubtedly about how mean we were. Her cell phone made it two more days before I had it taken away from her). I, however, could not control myself for a good while and could not even imagine what my response to her would have been had I been able to speak. Between the ones like her, me having to put out standing orders as if they were brand new every day, listening (during the few times I couldn’t avoid it) to the Joes whine about everything under the non-existent sun, and assorted other “Joe” problems, I reminded my First Sergeant on a fairly regular basis that the unit has until Easter to get me into my May course because I was already kicking myself for having postponed the medical treatment that could spell freedom. I also regularly asked him about homicide prevention classes, but was told they were unavailable.

The field itself was the field. Ranges, a few well run and a few not-so-well run, exercises, training time, and spending a good amount of time reminding Soldiers that this unit gives it to them easy and requesting that they send me postcards when they get to the real Army to let me know how they are faring. I asked them this particularly since most of the complaints consisted of “But we might be late for chow!” and “What about breakfast?” and “But I am running out of clean uniforms and First Sergeant is too mean to let us do laundry!” The last one coming on day 5… with a packing list of 4 uniforms… I, I point out, used only 2 the whole time and that is because the first one finally got disgusting on the 20 kilometer ruck march I shouldn’t have been doing in the first place and got in trouble for convincing my First Sergeant to let me do.

So between it all, my shoulders suffered pretty badly, my ankle popped out only once, and I ran out of medication by accident so I was a little grumpy and spent more time drinking water and going to the bathroom towards the end, really it was nothing terribly new. The kids are all home safe still whining about their blisters, they all complained even though we got them the bays with beds this year and they had running water and two hot meals a day for free, and the cat is now back home to shed on the rug I just cleaned to appease the German Weather Gods.

Next year, maybe I’ll clean it off in late February. It may not stop the Joes from whining, but it might at least stop it from snowing.

The summary of the field problem is too long for an evening, more like a weekend, and last weekend I spent sleeping and trying to shower the feeling of being surrounded by joes off of me. Joes, for those unaware, is the term used for junior enlisted. In our case, hungry, whiney, and usually lazy joes with some exceptions. But again, a topic for perhaps this weekend.

Today I vaguely rememberd I had scheduled an appointment at Landstuhl for my shoulders. Given that over the course of the field problem I had successfully completed every task I was not supposed to do, I anticipated a good time. I was in for disappointment.

The whole day was rather disappointing, come to think of it. I felt like Wile E. Coyote today, with a perpetual rain cloud only over me. Literally, I point out, since the German definition of spring apparently involves snow, hail, mixed rain, and generally terrible weather, but only over the section of Autobahn on which I happened to be driving. I could actually see blue skies at all times during my trip, but was consistently getting pissed on by something dreadful.

I made it to my destination, but during the course of the trip my music player went out, freezing up. I blamed my First Sergeant, who has made it his mission in life to convince me to give up my early generation player and upgrade. He does have a point that about the only use I can get from my current one is to put it in a sock to beat people with it. I am adamant about waiting until this one dies, so I am thinking he rigged it somehow. Tragically, it took the first step on the way to Landstuhl, which meant several hours of terrible radio programming. Lucky for me the Germans also have a thing for Phil Collins, so all was not completely lost. The player booted back up again on the way home, saving me from succumbing to the wishes of those afraid of me wielding a music-player-stuffed sock, but was still traumatic.

I get to the doctor and explain the problem. He looks at my records. He smiles exactly zero times. I counted. His bedside manner reminded me of a cross between a mortician and a robot. He may have been a mortician robot for all I know, since no credentials were posted. He then said I am too young for the surgery my left shoulder would need, and if I were to have surgery on the right shoulder I would not be able to climb again. He said to try physical therapy and medication, which thus far has yielded no results, but other than that maybe rub some dirt on it and drink some water. The rest, he thinks, might be in my neck, which is not his department and which the neurology department has said is not her problem.

On the way home part of the road was closed due to road work. This portion of the road has been closed for awhile, and today I may have found the root of the problem: instead of a standard size steamroller, the Germans are using small, one-man push steamrollers. I didn’t even know those existed, but today I was proven wrong. They have made it approximately one kilometer in the month or so since I was last on that stretch of road. Today only one man was working, and appeared annoyed because it started pissing hail on him as I passed by.

I finally returned to the office to watch my Soldier lose a game of risk to my warrant officer. At least someone was productive today.

I am about to depart for the field for a few weeks. The excitement just never stops…

I dropped off my Soldiers a few days early, but had to man the fort since there was apparently an exercise they sent my warrant on that no one read the operations order for so he thought he would be gone one week but I think last count was a total of six weeks over the next few months.

Within the first fifteen minutes of my Soldiers being in the field and me not being in charge of them, one was already lost. As in, misplaced. Their NCO, who thankfully someone has since removed them from his control as far as I understand, misplaced one Soldier, two sets of body armor, and at least one helmet within fifteen minutes. I found all of it, to include the Soldier, who was a little distressed at having been misplaced, before the First Sergeant, luckily for all of them. He was already cranky with only one cup of coffee so far that morning.

The last thing I want to say before I leave an NCO out in the field with only two Soldiers under him (that’s roughly half a light infantry team, for those who are counting… and a team is the smallest unit Soldiers really come in) is “Please don’t lose anyone or anything else before I come back in two days. Please. Just that one favor. For me? Now go away.”

It’s going to be a long few weeks. In the cold. And probably in the rain. With a cranky battalion. And a cranky First Sergeant when I tell him tomorrow that even though I didn’t allow the doctor to give me a profile, it was on the condition “Okay, but you heard what the other doctor said about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. I will trust that you and your command will negotiate. You aren’t going to do anything stupid, right?” to which my response was “Stupid is relative, Sir…” I think he felt bad that he didn’t actually tell me what was in the injection before he shot it into my shoulder, only potentially in the correct spot (Comment: “Ooh. That’s solid. Must be the bone… hmm…”), and then another doctor gave me a whole list of things I couldn’t do AFTER they had given me the injection and didn’t like my response that I had to fire a weapon in two days. His only answer was that I could only fire if I could lift my arm that high, and he wasn’t all that positive that would happen in two days. They told me it was cortizone when they asked if I would give them permission to get it that day. Only it was cortizone plus other stuff that was going to give me a dead shoulder for roughly two weeks because they figured they may as well see if they can break up some of the bursitis. But cortizone was the main stuff, so it’s like the same thing. Only not really, and it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of my uniform yesterday evening because I couldn’t actually move one arm. The solution involved a wall, a door handle, and an open dryer door. It was complicated.

But I am off to the field. Hopefully, all of my Soldiers will be there to greet me. If not, well, I’ve gotten good at finding them and sheparding them back to the flock. Slightly easier than herding cats, but only slightly…

I have no concept of how I am going to convince myself that going to work Monday morning is a good idea. I have no idea how I am going to say to myself, “Self, get up! It’s another great day to be in the United States Armed Forces!” and then be enough of a sucker to believe myself and get up.

Last week began innocently enough. I got up, I met my Soldiers at the gym, and realized I had forgotten my water bottle. Not so good for someone with a wee bit of a dehydration problem, but I didn’t pay it much mind. Until I realized upon getting back in my car that in fact my water bottle, a rather expensive one I use for climbing and other activities I probably shouldn’t be doing anyway, was actually missing. I have a nasty inkling it is somewhere in the vicinity of Landstuhl. So I was annoyed.

Then I get a call from someone indicating that my unit is, surprise surprise, jerking me around with a course they promised. They appear to think I am fool enough to have signed for three additional years for only one class, particularly after a month of discussing only signing up for two additional years. They appear to have forgotten that the deal was in fact more than one class, regardless of what rumor has it some officers in my chain of command think of that class. Since I am not permitted to speak my mind about officers, we will just say that (according to multiple sources) this particular gentleman said something like, “That class? That class is silly. I know people who have been in 20 years who have the same experience they can get from that class.” Yes, Sir. See, that’s the point of the class: we won’t have to wait until we have been in 20 years to have that experience. Not one to point out the fault of those paid exponentially more, but it appears to my silly enlisted mind that might not be the smartest thing ever said. Between that and the unit’s insistance that I apparently requisitioned an inoperable brain tumor that had to be treated across the ocean because they don’t keep those kinds of doctors in stock in Landstuhl, I about had it and it was only 0930 on Monday.

And it went downhill from there. Rapidly. By the end of the day my warrant officer had run an intervention and by the end of the next day I was asking my Soldiers for empty glass bottles to make moltov cocktails. Firebombing was on my to-do list several times, but I rarely got that far down on my list on any given day.

Friday summed it up nicely. I found out early in the morning that our local medics were running a combat lifesaver class. Having deployed without that class, it has always been a source of bitterness and a large contributor to my eventual post-traumatic stress. Something about watching someone die when you figure you could have at least made him more comfortable, maybe even figured out how to get him out from under the front-loader, tends to make one itchy about medical awareness. So since one of my Soldiers is about to deploy (an endless source of drama, giving her 18 chains of command in which I am only included sometimes though she still belongs to me, but that’s another tale) I wanted to try for the fourth time in the past year to get her in. I found the medic I needed to find, set it all up, and then notified a few people in my Soldier’s 18 chains that might care. I had been told on Monday that because of her deployment she was not going to the field next week with the rest of us, so figured this was a perfect use of her time. Silly me.

Half an hour later, I get an email from my First Sergeant telling me to hold on the class, because now maybe she was going to the field.

I responded, “With all due respect, First Sergeant, you’re killing me.”

He called within about two minutes, pointing out that whenever he opens anything that starts “with all due respect” he knows something not so respectful is coming.

After some discussion, we figured out a mutually positive solution mostly involving him promising that I would not let her deploy without this class but she needed to be in the field. I didn’t argue, since I believe these Soldiers really need some combat skills practice more than half the things this silly “deployment” is sending them to, and tried to get back to work when he asked the fateful question, “So… uh… when was the last time you fired an M203?”

“Uh… we can give it 2005, but that might be a rough estimate. Been a long time… Dare I ask?”

“Oh! So you have fired one! Great! You’re running the M203 range in the field. Here’s the dates, at least right now, everything is as always subject to change. Oops! Gotta go!”

As I have mentioned, his favorite hobby is to say something he knows I won’t like and then get off the phone. This was certainly no exception.

That wasn’t even the cap to my week, but was one of the highlights. My entire week went something like that: try and help someone out or get something done that needs to be done, get told no and then handed something completely out of the blue that means I won’t get anything else done. My First Sergeant was not the only one doing it last week; it was something of a conspiracy among everyone that has any position of authority, it seemed. Then I spent half of my weekend doing PowerPoint presentations no one will ever look at for an online version of course I have to be in that I never intended to take.

And from my phone calls over the weekend, next week is only looking to be more of the same. Luckily, I go to the field on Friday, so at least then I might be able to hand over some of my current 12 jobs and get something done, despite the freezing cold. They won’t let me go to Antarctica, but they sure don’t mind sending me to the field in the rain and snow.

The retention NCO better stay far, far away from me this month…

First of all, if someone ever offers an arthrogram to give them a “better picture” of something in your body, and then they say, “You might feel this,” brace yourself. That means you won’t just feel it where they are shoving the needle, which is into your joint which they are actually trying to separate by pumping it full of chemicals, because they already numbed that part. Where you will feel it is everywhere connected to that joint. No “might” about it. The best part was when the Captain said before shoving the needle in that “sometimes we miss and have to try again, but we hope not!” Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sir.

Given that I am allergic to the stuff they were shoving into my joint, and then later in the morning into my arm en route to my brain, they also warned me I would have to stick around for awhile after the procedure to make sure I didn’t have a reaction. Oh, and driving would be difficult. For about two days. So would things like, say, getting dressed and washing my hair. Thanks for the memo.

And lo and behold, they were right. Driving home was an experience. I can’t wait until tomorrow morning when I have to figure out what I am going to do for physical training with my Soldiers… oh, and then wash my hair and get dressed.

But I did get my MRIs accomplished, fun as they were, and then got a call from the endocrinologist, who already had the results from Xenu, who is still kicking around in the vicinity of the carotid artery in my cavernous sinus making a general problem of himself and causing headaches like commentary from Tom Cruise about the benefits of Scientology.

Xenu is holding strong. No shrinking, but they don’t think he has grown, either. They had been hoping that the blood supply would have been cut off from the surgery and he would shrink on his own, but no such luck. As such, they can’t really do anything with me until after the next MRI, which won’t be until roughly next August, or given the MRI scheduling backlog maybe by the year 2017. Then they can figure out what they want to medically chapter me for and just how badly they want me out. That process can take anywhere from six months to a year, mostly consisting of the joyous practice of sitting around waiting for things to happen. So I will remain in Germany until my current “Get-Out-Of-Germany Free” date of May 2010, after which I still will have a year of wandering around wherever they send me next should they still not have made a decision.

Ah, Xenu. All the drama of daytime television packed into a neat little egg crammed into my temple. If only he were a little more photogenic without me having to glow in the dark…

It is not a good idea to shovel the walkway, which has been described as “half the way to Tibet” as well as critiqued by Germans delivering furniture as “A lie… you said it was on the second floor… this is more like fourth,” with two bad shoulders.

It is an even worse idea to do so in sneakers with frostbite. Having been kicked out of the gym this morning as the base shut down at 0605, I popped into work, got some things accomplished, and then attempted to get my car back up the hill to my house. I was moderately successful, indeed providing amusement to my neighbor who watched me try to skid my car into my garage without hitting my landlord’s car or the wall. While it appears the Germans may not plan for snow, what with perhaps two plows in town, I grew up in the northeast so he was sorely disappointed with my skillful navigation.

I have no idea how I am going to get the car back out tomorrow.

Then I joined him shoveling, as Germans get in trouble if their walkway isn’t shoveled. Bad idea, though I hope sooner rather than later to get full feeling back in my arm. Particularly since now it can’t decide if it wants to snow, rain, or neither, so it has settled on both with a freezing combination the cat doesn’t know what to do with despite repeated requests to be let onto the balcony.

I love this country. Really, I do.

Not the brightest bulb in the box, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, a few ants short of a picnic… there are a million phrases that seem to come to mind lately when talking to one of my Soldiers.

There are those I have come across in my days who are both a recruiter’s dream and an NCO’s nightmare. Tragically, I keep getting those Soldiers when I am an NCO. They are the ones who desperately need to join the military for one reason or another, but they are horribly suited not just for the job for which they are signing up, but quite possibly for the military in general. Since becoming an NCO, I have had at least four or five of these delights grace my presence. I would love to go back and find their recruiters. Not to give them a hearty punch in the mouth, though that might be nice, but really just to give them back their recruit.

One of my Soldiers recently lost his car keys. Actually, I misphrase. He lost his car key. The one car key for the family car. The one family car for his entire family. He, or rather apparently his wife, lost the key in a small town approximately forty minutes away while he was on his convalescent leave recovering from knee surgery by walking around local tourist centers. The car remains in the town, most likely with a substantial number of angry German parking tickets stacked neat and orderly, as is the German way, under the windshield wipers. The family took a taxi back home.

This was mentioned to me off-hand as I was getting off the phone with him the day before he was to return to work. He seemed put-off when I told him he had better call around and get the shuttle schedule, as the free inter-post shuttle would be able to get him to work relatively close to on time. For some reason, he appeared to think I was just going to swing by and get him.

I am, as an NCO, obligated to do some things for my Soldiers. I have to make sure they are at physical training, I have to make sure they have time to eat and bathe and work, and I have to make sure they have a means to get to their medical and other appointments on time. I am not, as it turns out, obligated by any regulation to schlep them around in my personal vehicle for two weeks, particularly when they live across town and about fifteen minutes out of my way.

This Soldier was also rather perturbed, it appeared, when I told him he would still have to be at physical training in the mornings, though I would pick him up for the time being. I then told him he would have to bring his stuff to shower at the gym, because I was not going to take anyone home in between. He did not react well to this news. He did react interestingly, however, when I asked him if he had considered renting a car. The thought, it seemed, had not even crossed his mind. I could actually smell the smoke as his brain slowly started comprehending what I had said… then I think the hamster had a heart attack, as his eyes went blank again and he asked me what time I would pick him up after the weekend for physical training.

This is the same one who nearly cries when I tell him he will most likely head to a tactical unit following his current assignment, who argues he can’t possibly give a briefing because he is an extreme introvert, and disdainfully asks why I don’t just demote him or chapter him out whenever I tell him how he screwed up this time. I tell him not to tempt me so; it’s not really polite.

I have an insatiable urge to find this fellow’s recruiter, or to at least take him to some local high schools and say to the class, “If this is you, please find another career… the military needs warm bodies, but not lobotomized heads. If you insist on joining, please allow me to provide you with a list of jobs that will keep you far away from me.”

I have seen that the military can make one dumber. My concern is that I am not sure how much more some of these people can take… or why they keep sending them to me.

This week I will be taking yet another trip out to the wonderful world of Landstuhl, Germany, for some MRIs.

What’s that, you say? Why yes, it is indeed true that naught but a little more than a week ago I took the three-plus hour-depending-on-traffic drive each way to do the same exact thing. It appears I have failed to tell my tale of woe.

Actually, it was pretty simple. I drove out there. I got there nice and early, because I was only scheduled for two MRIs: one on the dome with the tumor and one on the left shoulder which they think might be harboring a torn rotator cuff from Iraqi times of yore. However, I had recently decided that racing my Soldiers up a rock wall was a good idea and dislocated the Clinically Disgusting right shoulder, which they now think possesses a Torn Something Else. The doctor made a phone call and the lovely folks at the MRI clinic recommended I get there good and early and they would try to squeeze in a third MRI.

So I got there three hours early, knowing that the clinic schedules about a month out. I wander in and the nice lady at the desk looks at the system and says, “Uh oh,” and then gets up. I figure, using my powers of deduction, that this is not a good sign and wait patiently. Then there is some deliberation between the nice lady and an Air Force Tech Sergeant, who tells her to check with the radiologist. After more behind-the-scenes action, the Air Force Major running the joint calls me back to his dark little office.

He explains patiently that I am allergic to MRI contrast. I tell him I know this, but no one seems to have cared previously. I get a rash, maybe some bumps, maybe a bit itchy in the hands, but no big deal. He says that since the contrast is going to the brain, I should probably be medicated. Having no idea if they medicated me or not in the hospital, I tell him I will be happy to go to the pharmacy and pick up some anti-hystimines if it will make him feel better. He then says that the right shoulder, seeing as it has been rather feisty about staying put lately, needs some sort of fancy-schmancy MRI. Actually, he didn’t say that, but I have no idea what the thing is called. He informed me it would involve injecting contrast into the joint, it would not be comfortable, and they could not do it today. Oh, and also, Walter Reed had not sent my previous MRIs anywhere, so he had nothing to compare my brain with and therefore could not have examined Xenu today. Since I was not medicated, my joints remained contrast free, and Xenu’s modeling photos were lost in the mail, I therefore should reschedule with the front desk and make my way home.

He did seem to feel rather bad about the whole thing and made sure the front desk coordinated my return visit for a time at least moderately convenient for me, which is to say I only had to shuffle my schedule minimally to accomodate the one day they had available before the end of the month.

So bright and early Thursday morning, though not so much bright as just plain early seeing as I expect to be through the nearby state of Baden-Wuerttenberg and into Rhine-Pfalz before the sun makes its lazy way above the horizon, I shall once again brave the German traffic and weather patterns in my efforts to determine my eligibility to remain a dedicated member of this Big Green Machine. Given that the warranty on my parts appears to be running out, it might be prudent of me to read the fine print on any service and labor extensions offered.

Yesterday I received a cryptic phone call from none other than my illustrious First Sergeant, who seems to find it an enjoyable game to test my blood pressure capabilities.

Phone call went something like:

Him: We need to talk.

Me: That’s never good. About what?

Him: Re-enlistment.

Me: What? Whose?

Him: Yours.

Me: What? Didn’t you just goad me into that less than a year ago? I didn’t even make the E-7 list! *interjection: I am a few months short of qualifying for the promotion list for the year*

Him: Yet. Oh, and there might be a deployment coming up.

Me: What? *interjection: I am not deaf, but I believe I did say either “what” or “huh” more than usual during this conversation* I’m supposed to medboard soon. You know they won’t let me deploy.

Him: We don’t know that. Yep, so, re-enlistment. Oops. Gotta run. I’ll call you later.

And off he went. His absolute favorite means of getting off the phone is to rile me up, confuse me, and then tell me he will call me back and hang up before I can ask any other questions. Then usually something happens that makes him cranky and I don’t hear from him until the next day. Predicting this, I had a little conversation with my husband in the interim.

My husband and I have not had it easy. We have been apart most of the marriage, neither of us are terribly sane, and we went through a particularly rough patch early on that saw separation papers. But we mended old wounds, forgave old sins, and are much stronger for it now, which is lovely and not something most military couples can say. But we still remain on separate continents at the moment, which does put a bit of a damper on Friday evenings. So ideally, wherever I would go would be somewhere he would eventually rent out the house and come join me.

Now, therefore, comes the question of should I be such a sucker, what would I get from this reenlistment?

So I came up with a list of places I would go, in agreement with my husband whom it would be nice to see more than twice a year. Not a single one of them is an easy task, and on purpose. The Army does make me tired on a frequent basis, so I like my revenge. One, a periodic assignment that comes up for Antarctica, is actually impossible because the Army knows I have frostbite (but really want to climb Mount Vinson… and they give me plastic boots, so I don’t see the problem). That was number two on my list. Number one was for a unit I didn’t even know the proper name for, so figured my loose description would daunt them and they would leave me alone, hopeless and frustrated. I underestimated my First Sergeant. He knew who they were, and might know how to get me there. It is in the general east coast area, a distinct improvement of only a three hour drive instead of an eight hour flight to my husband, and it is in the field I have desperately tried to get back to. I, probably foolishly, made the promise that if he could get that in writing, I would negotiate with the doctors to continue this debacle I call my Army career. Oh, but I did keep my head long enough to point out that nothing would happen until I got back from the class I intend to attend in May. I’m no fool… I have to cash in still on the promises from my last reenlistment fiasco.

He’s no fool either, as I have long suspected. He knows my reenlistment window doesn’t even open until May. I strongly suspect he just wanted to see what I would bargain for this time to allow him time to have something waiting for me upon my return.

As for the deployment, more details revealed I wouldn’t have time to sneak around the doctors for it, so it was tossed out the window for now to join my Soldier’s old coffee and my warrant officer’s frisbee, which hasn’t made it out the window yet but will once he lets his guard down long enough for me to steal it and chuck it out there.

So it appears, as Lewis Carroll (mostly) wrote, that the time has come (yes, already, the First Sergeant said) to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax (and re-enlistment), of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.

The trouble, it seems, is that each time I say anything along the lines of “When pigs fly,” someone seems to chuck one out a window at me.

My life has finally come to this: I have to buy my cat elastic mice not for her sanity, but my own. I find that watching her play with a mouse made primarily of elastic bands is much more entertaining than what I have to deal with on a daily basis.

I am starting to buy them in bulk.

The other day my Soldier went in for surgery. No big deal, some knee problems he has had, oh, roughly since time began but coincidentally didn’t bother him enough until he realized he didn’t have to run if he got himself a profile from a willing doctor. He failed to realize that I don’t accept “Old Man Knees” as a diagnosis and kept sending him back until finally they determined he had a torn meniscus in both knees and a little minor surgery would get him back in action. The “back in action” part seems to bother him more than anything else, or so it appears from the grumpy and skeptical looks he gives me when I mention it to him.

There are simply people in this world who should have joined the Peace Corps or Americorps or Habitat for Humanity to contribute to society instead of the military. I, as I have mentioned, am a big fan of mandatory service requirements, but not everyone is made for the military just as not everyone is made for college. It is just as much a waste of time and money to have someone who only goes to college to drink and party and has no idea what to study as it is for me to have to babysit someone who joined the military when they don’t like to do physical training and clearly should have at least gone into a job field where they don’t have to, say, deal with people. If you join the military, why is it so hard for you to comprehend that I am going to want you to be physically fit? I am not a big person. I do not want to have to carry someone 30 pounds overweight to safety because he doesn’t like cardio. And if you join a job that implies contact with people, don’t expect me to believe you do your job just fine when two breaths earlier you told me you were an introvert who is scared of rank and, in general, groups of people.

It is in my job description, as well as the job description for the sister job of my official title, that we deal with people. Human is even in one of the titles. What introvert looks at that job title and goes, “Yeah! That one!” Because I know what the recruiter is saying, instead of convincing them to become, say, a pharmacy technician. They are saying, “Thank goodness this guy won’t be MY problem in a field like that…” while he snickers filling out the paperwork. And then the Army keeps sending them to me.

This comes up, and forces me to resort to elastic mice, because this week I had to give this person his quarterly counseling. Normally I have to provide three sustains and three improves in our little blocks of goodness. I had real trouble coming up with the sustains. I think I had three moderately not-as-mean sentences, so I counted those. The counseling took over three hours. There is a saying about excuses that I frequently use that is not for polite conversation. He gave me plenty and I believed maybe one. There is also a not so polite saying about sympathy my first sergeant has used from time to time. The Soldier failed to find mine during the counseling, despite me explaining where it could be found in the dictionary.

And that was more towards the beginning of the week. The remainder of my time these days is supposed to be spent juggling my regular work duties, of which there are many, with an online version of the first phase of my next non-commissioned officer academy. My warrant officer was kind enough to remove even the spoon from my coffee mug for fear I might try to jam myself in the eye with it while watching the online lessons. There are only so many classy videos about sexual assault you can watch in a day. I have finished, in three weeks, one fifth of the course, which puts me woefully behind schedule and my warrant and my first sergeant are threatening to tie me down and force it on me. I point out that it does have the benefit that it makes anything and everything else at work immensely more interesting.

And so, to keep what little of my sanity remains, I spend about three dollars every few weeks on elastic mice. The cat is only entertained for several minutes unless you jiggle the thing around, but that is still several minutes of my day I am not considering checking myself in for anger management classes.

It’s looking to be a long year. I am not sure that I feel this way every year, courtesy of my failing memory, but another long year is about to be spent in not-so-sunny Germany.

Speaking of my failing memory, before I forget, I paid a visit to the neuropsychologist recently. Her diagnosis? I’m bored at work. No kidding. Pure genius. She had no explanation for why I am forgetting everything else in my life and can’t focus on things I used to enjoy, such as reading, but reasons that things I forget that are work-related are because I am bored at work. She gets paid for that. Amazing.

The year, as it were, is being extended on account of my schemery. Not sure if schemery is a real word, but I will go with it. The endocrinoloist still wants me out. She has mentioned this on several occasions, even going so far as to call me with test results that told her nothing just so she could point out that they told her nothing and she wants me out. However, my best laid plans are finally in effect.

After three and a half years of half-hearted attempts, someone finally got around to saying that perhaps my shoulders would benefit from an MRI, since they are getting worse each winter and are now popping out on regular occasions. I do it to make my Soldier ill, which is certainly a regular occasion because I call it good training. They did an attempt at physical therapy about a year ago, but gave up because no one actually knew what was wrong, so finally the same doctor that said perhaps my persistent headaches warranted a second look and an MRI said the same about my shoulders. But this is the Army. Not only are MRI appointments about a month out, but heaven forfend I have to have one thing looked at while getting treatment for another, so this can take awhile.

Allow me to explain something about Army Medicine: If you want them to be successful, you can’t confuse them with too many maladies at once. At Fort Bragg, that was actually policy, that you could only be seen for one thing at one time. So if, say, you had the flu but were at work and fell off something and broke your leg and sprained your wrist, only expect to get your leg looked at. Then maybe the flu, if you could get another appointment, and I’d suggest just putting an ice pack on that wrist because quite frankly by the time you get a third appointment you would be hard-pressed to prove it was more than a bruise.

So my dilemma, obviously, is that I came back from Iraq a little bit broken and with a strong desire to escape Fort Bragg. I had anxiety. I had headaches. My ankle still bothered me after being “sprained” three months before. My shoulders hurt. So I had to prioritize, and then ended up with frostbite and gangrene, so more priorities. The shoulders fell further and further back because hey, at least they weren’t turning colors. Then when I finally did get them looked at, no one even took an x-ray, and then eventually the physical therapist left my duty station and I ended up with an intergalactic battlelord in my brain.

The benefit to all of this, however, is that this effectively stalls any imminent departure. They can’t effectively kick me out while receiving treatment for anything, so now they have to wait until someone puts my shoulders right. And the head doctor to figure out how to stop the headaches. And for the MRIs to finally say Xenu is behaving appropriately. And not all at once, mind you, especially with the bulk of my appointments being all the way across the country. So now I can get another class that I reenlisted for last year, visit Poland and perhaps another trip to Rome and Prague, and enjoy beer that is cheaper than water for at least another year or so. I have schemed my way, with the help of a faulty medical system, into delaying my departure long enough to make it mutually beneficial to the Army and to myself. I even have a Captain and a Major, both fully degreed medical personnel, in on the plot.

I am starting to wonder, however, just what I am going to have to break should I want another class and have to delay this further… I’m running out of useful limbs…