iraqistan

When people ask why I think I am surrounded by idiots, I usually have a tale to tell.

Yesterday was Monday. This was not a surprise. Everyone knew it was Monday, to include the Soldiers. That meant that, just like in most units that follow Big Army rules, it was time for the weekly vehicle preventative maintenance checks. This is commonly referred to as Motor Pool Monday, and I think it is the flow of the words that makes every unit I have ever known to recognize Monday as the day to check the vehicles and do other random tasks like count holes in the camo netting and repeatedly set up and take down G.P. Mediums (rather large tent structures) in the middle of a parking lot for no apparent reason. Go ahead: ask around to any other Army buddies you might have what a Monday in the Army means. I’ll wait… You back? G.P. Mediums, right? It’s always G.P. Mediums. Not really sure why that is… I just know that every commander seems to only be able to inventory them if they are set up in the middle of a large parking lot, all in a row, and that this act is performed repeatedly, somewhere in the Army (usually multiple somewheres in the Army), on any given Monday.

Anyway, so last week during these checks I very pointedly reminded the Soldier I placed in charge of our vehicles to play particular attention and ensure I am aware of any deficiencies. This is standard, but sometimes they need a little refresher on the obvious. By sometimes, I mean all the time. So the Soldier returns with the report that the wiper fluid was low in both vehicles. We, for some reason only known to the Status of Forces Agreement gods, are not allowed to add fluid to our own vehicles and one of them needed the brakes checked anyway, so that car was sent off to be repaired. We picked it up on Friday, so by Monday morning we once again had two vehicles and I could send them off to check them again. By the way, the wiper fluid is notoriously shifty in these vehicles, but can be checked via a tube which I showed them before. When the tube looks like it is low, it means the tank is getting low. The Soldiers know this, because they reference the tube periodically whenever they mention the wiper fluid. There are also indicator lights, but I have a rule that to the person responsible for maintenance, any random lights on in a car should never be a surprise, because they should know what to look for, having been shown during every previous Monday since time began, or at least since their time in this unit, which to me feels like since time began anyway.

Now that we are all caught up with the back story, fast forward to yesterday. The checks done, The Kids return and report that the vehicles look good. I instruct them to take the vehicle that was not repaired last week up to get repaired. They take the keys and leave.

Time Passes.

They return. They dropped off both sets of keys on my desk, which meant both cars returned with them. This is when the conversation got out of control.

Me: Wait… could they not take the vehicle?
Them: No, it’s not due for its routine maintenance yet!
Me: Did they add wiper fluid?
Them: No! Remember? I told you that had to be done at the dealership for some reason.
Me: But you were going to drop it off for that reason, right, so they could add fluid, since you said last week it was low via the tube you checked?
Them: Oooooooh. I forgot about the wiper fluid!
Me: You just told me about it last week… and would have just checked the fluids this morning. How could you have forgotten? Did the wiper fluid magically multiply so now it is not low?
Them: Maybe it isn’t low. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.
Me: But last week you told me it was low.
Them: Well, see, you can’t really SEE it.
Me: Go look again. If you can’t tell, check the manual. If it’s in German, bring the manual up here and the Internet will do marvelous things for you.

They disappear. I sit and wait, because I know that the manual will tell them about the tube and then they will recall previous lessons. They return a few minutes later, very proud.

Them: You can’t check it really easily! The tank is near the bottom of the block so you can’t really see it!
Me: And this helps me… how?
Them: The manual says it’s a matter of preference how much wiper fluid to have.
Me: I prefer to have wiper fluid. Do we have any?
Them: There’s no light.
Me: What?
Them: There’s no light saying it is low. You said before that on the other car a light comes on. There’s no light. We aren’t sure if there is a light on the newer car, though. I wonder if there is…
Me (interrupting the contemplation of the magical light I regretted ever mentioning): Sweet holy hell. What does the manual say?
Them: Matter of preference. We pushed the button and it works, though, so we have fluid!

Long pause as I hang my head and contemplate bearing the bitter cold and blowing snow for the momentary victory of chucking at least one of them out the window.

Them: So we should take the vehicle back up there, Sergeant?
Me: No. Just go away. Go away and leave me alone. I have a headache.

I had no G.P. Mediums, though that did not stop me from calling around and seeing if the local units had any to spare. All I wanted was for them to take care of a mundane task like maintaining two vehicles without giving me a headache… and now instead I have to maintain my composure.

This is a public service announcement:

If you have a problem with this site, or with anything my cynical and admittedly arrogant self has posted, you might want to go ahead and let me know.

Because my warrant, my former first sergeant, and several people in my battalion are all regular or semi-regular readers. They all know me personally, and they get to put up with me daily as it is. Yet funny thing is, they find it funny (and usually can identify the element of truth as well as the caricature). Much of the things on this gripe list I call my running rant are also running jokes and running commentary among all of us, and what I say on here I have frequently said to the people involved, or at least passed the nasty-gram higher to get told I might want to rephrase.

But if you have an issue, take it up with me. Don’t come up with some creepy fake address and have grammatical errors in an email sent to my warrant officer, because he just has the immediate reaction of calling me to giggle about it. Though thank you, because he did just have some minor surgery for which I have made fun of him for two straight days, so he probably appreciated the laugh.

If you think that because the idiocy of certain aspects of the Army amuses me that I am therefore a poor example of the NCO corps, ask one of my Soldiers what my safety brief is. No, actually, I’ll just tell you, so you don’t go and randomly contact other people. It’s a simple brief:

Don’t do dumb.

Do dumb things, you’ll pay the price. Don’t do dumb, you can go about your business. I check my dumb against people I trust, to include my warrant (when he isn’t out getting coffee or smoking) or my first sergeant (when we have one). I still do dumb every day, but I have learned since being a wee little specialist what is exceptionally dumb and what is just minor dumb, and try to stick with the latter (and really, I still don’t understand why if I am cold and my computer is warm that it is so entertaining to my warrant that I rest my head against the keyboard when it gets cold. I remind him that for me to close the window, I would have to get colder because I would get closer to the window, but he just asks me if I have taken my medication and wanders off to make a new cup of coffee anyway. He never listens to my logic).

So, dear readers, if you like what you see, go ahead and read through and learn to laugh at yourselves. And if you don’t, please feel free to call me an arrogant, cynical, snot-nosed, holier-than-thou NCO, though the recent psych test left it in the realm of “Excessively Assertive” which simplifies the whole thing. Just do me a favor and contact me instead of my warrant or others, particularly since in this instance you are clearly in the military and therefore supposed to be a brave Soldier. Afraid I might poke a little fun? You haven’t met my warrant…

This ends the public service announcement. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.

Some people are slow learners. I am starting to think that might be okay, so long as at some point they do learn.

I had a moment of success the other day. I am in charge of, on a good day, at least one complete waste of oxygen. It seems that the moment one improves, another one becomes more vapid in order to make up for the fact that there might be a few extra synapses firing elsewhere in the room. I prefer days that are balanced, when everyone has their share of idiot ideas, because if we all share the load it can be managed. Yes, I am included in this, particularly if I lose my temper or if I took my red pills. My stupidity just seems to be in the form of doing things like realizing that my computer is warm and using it as a headwarmer when everyone else gives me a headache. I think it’s therapeutic; my warrant says I should just get a hat.

At the same time, even though I know everyone else will contribute idiocy to make up for it, I still like breakthroughs of intelligence once in awhile. I think they give me hope that perhaps all is not lost with some of the people put in my charge. They are slow learners, but I think two and a half years later one of them might finally be getting it.

This one has, since being medicated to quell some of his more peculiar tendencies, taken to calling me “Boss” (which was stopped… fast) and sometimes calls his male Soldiers “Bud” (which I let go a few times only because it creeped out the Soldiers, which was most amusing to watch). He thinks it makes him more friendly and approachable. Really, it makes him creepy and unprofessional. His major issue is he doesn’t like making people upset, because he wants desperately to be liked. The desperation is sad, and the fact that he rarely will reprimand his Soldiers is just plain annoying. I think one of his Soldiers might like him, but only because he is nice and she doesn’t strike me as terribly bright. She might improve one day, but I am not expecting to see it in my lifetime. But most of the time he just lets things slide and tries to make up for their deficiencies in order to keep me appeased. He doesn’t want me angry, but he also doesn’t want to make his Soldiers upset. A conundrum when there is work to do.

Enter his cynical and somewhat disillusioned supervisor: Me. One of his charges, due to time in service, might be eligible for a promotion board appearance soon. This, I would like to mention, is a concept that should everyone lose sleep at night if only so I have someone to talk to from staying awake in my terror. As such, I need to do my most-senior-non-commissioned-officer-in-the-office duties and ensure she recognizes that I have a strong belief in standards being met for promotion, standards she knows but does not meet. She has a lot to improve on that he rarely enforces, but I want this guy to really start being a supervisor, so I asked for his input before her counseling.

I think he was thrilled that he could be mean without actually having to be mean, because I was going to do the actual mean bit for him. I had him put his thoughts regarding this particular Soldier in writing, so I could incorporate them into standards for her to meet. I expected little, and so was actually pleasantly surprised when he delivered some very astute observations. Given the opportunity, he actually showed a glimmer of potential. He noted most of the main problems with her, in short, that she is usually the one taking up the precious oxygen.

This being an important counseling, I told him that he will be present, but I am going to give it. In exchange, he provided the list of things I believe he would like to say to her, but would prefer the Big Bad Me tell her instead since I already have a reputation for letting them know when they are not meeting my standards. He is still not at the level of bravery it takes to actually communicate these things to her in anything other than a fatherly, kind way, which goes right through the space between her ears and doesn’t even pause to check out the scenery in her skull, but he is at least noticing what needs to be noticed at some level even if he does nothing about it. Still annoying, but at least he is observing. A huge sigh of relief can be heard throughout the ranks.

Basically, he is learning. It took him two and a half years, but he can finally identify some of the qualities needed in a good Soldier and recognize when those qualities are lacking. Baby steps, and very slow baby steps, but at least they are steps. I felt at least a tiny bit less nervous of leaving him in charge of a few Soldiers in the spring, which is something. I take my job very seriously, and had major concerns about leaving him as the head babysitter, whether I like the Soldiers I would leave him with or not. I still wouldn’t leave him alone with, say, any of my friends’ children, but we are working on it.

My concern right now is where the brain power he used is going to come from. My warrant already hides under his desk and sulks when the acting first sergeant calls and asks for him to do something, but that is his normal behavior. I have too much to get done in the next few weeks to go stupid on everyone, and I don’t think his Soldiers can take on the responsibility of more stupidity when there is already so much going around. There is the hope that this was a glitch, and all else will remain status quo while he actually learns something, but I have my doubts… particularly with as much paperwork as I have floating around the system at the moment. Physics says that energy is a constant, and I say that so is intelligence within the Army. He gained, so something else must lose… now it is just to determine where.

But where there is hope for him, perhaps there is hope for others. Perhaps this means that people in this machine I love to hate can actually get things together once in awhile, if only for a fleeting moment. Perhaps this could be a breakthrough in the world of Army Physics, and a new and better day is on the horizon.

Oh. Nope. Nevermind. False alarm. Just got the message that I have to resubmit every piece of paper I might have put into the system since September. Glad to see the system is up and running… had me worried for a minute there.

Hey, Germany, sorry to let you know so late, but it is winter. It does come around every year, and every year it is cold and there is snow and ice everywhere.

Well… Surprise! It is here. It has been snowing continuously for a week or two now, just like it does all winter long. Every year. Probably for a few millenium or a few million years, depending on who you ask. Point it, it shows up on schedule every year.

But every year, you seem even more perplexed than the cat at the white stuff coming from the sky. She goes and checks it out, puts a paw in, and wisely heads back inside for the rest of the season. You, however, stare at the sky and say, with some amount of amazement, “It is winter!” every day. Sometimes you use it as an explanation when I say it is freezing and I hate it, but most of the time you say it and sound a little perplexed, as though we all lived in Tahiti.

We don’t live in Tahiti, Germans. We live in Germany. January is cold and terrible and filled with snow and car accidents and you pulling me over just to check and make sure I have the correct tires on my car. Right on schedule, we got snow. It will be here until sometime in late March.

Maybe between now and then you can figure out how you could have possibly encountered a road salt shortage before the middle of January in a country that always has a cold and slippery winter. Winter is roughly from October until March here. It was actually pretty reasonable in October and November this year, so there is no excuse why my road - well, to be fair, not so much the road but the snow layered on top of the road - is covered with sand instead of something that will make the hill a little easier to navigate. The only excuse you have given me is a road salt shortage. Pardon me? A country on the latitude of Canada cannot properly figure out how much road salt they might need in a given year and do a little planning?

Winter, seeing as how it coincides with the natural rotation of the earth as it swings its way around the sun on a very consistent basis, should not come as a surprise. It is not like it is showing up to a funeral in June with a party hat on wondering where all the chicks are at. It is not hiding behind your couch on your fortieth birthday waiting to pop up and blow an obnoxious noisemaker in your ear. It waits until at least a few of the leaves change color and then hits and sticks around for a few months like your mother-in-law who begs to visit and then constantly complains she would rather be in Florida. If anything, it gives you warning with those sudden absurdly cold days in late August or early September that remind you to buy a better hat this year. It’s actually rather polite that way, except for that whole sticking around well past its welcome thing.

Get it together, Germany. I will not be here next year to see if you made any progress, but I will ask my friends who are stuck through another tortuous season with you. I will give you a hint: start collecting road salt in April this time. Sand on top of snow doth not good traction make. Little tricks of the trade those of us everywhere outside of perhaps Fiji learned ages ago…

Winter is already here, and just to tell you, it will be back next year, too. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Yesterday was a momentous day in the world of my unit:

They Accomplished Something.

It took awhile, don’t get me wrong, but they did something and they did it on time and we think they might have even done it correctly. The combination of those things is simply a feat, and a day which should be marked and celebrated unit-wide. We celebrated by going home early. Oh, wait, no… that was because of the snow. But it should have been because of them.

Let’s see… the story begins when I was recovering from having my brain vacuumed. I was sitting around somewhere in the States, happily medicated and checking my e-mail. I received a message. The message was that I had been unwittingly scheduled for a course in roughly a month that would require things like physical activity that would make my nose bleed heavily given my current condition. I think my nose stopped bleeding during physical training sometime around six months after the head cleaning, but the doctors were pretty specific about not doing stupid things until a set date in October. This course started before that date.

So I did the thing any good little Soldier would do: I forwarded the email and the message from the doctors to my first sergeant and mentioned someone should probably clear this up. He sent a message back to me agreeing, and a message to the correct person in the company to deal with it so I didn’t end up on the dreaded “No-Show” list.

The No-Show list is rumored to be some vast pit of hellish nightmares that makes people in the ranks of Sergeant Major and above very grumpy, as well as possibly taking you off the list for future schooling. I say rumored, because I saw no evidence of any of this. I did, however, see evidence that I was a no-show. I emailed that to my First Sergeant. He again tried to take care of it. Apparently, it didn’t work. That part is still a mystery, because everyone in my personnel shop and training shop mysteriously has amnesia for that particular time period when questioned about my paperwork. But no matter.

So I cruise about and get into the course, which is a required course for promotion, mind you, a few months later. This time, the course was online, so it was tedious and stupid and long and boring but at least I could complain loudly for three months.

Then I asked about the next part of the course. See, this particular course is in two phases, one which must be completed before the other (unless you are one of my friends who somehow did the second part without the first, thereby meaning he still has yet to complete the course but has so thoroughly confused the system that no one can get him into the first part now… but that’s another story). I completed part one online. Part two, I was told, would be scheduled by the Department of the Army, so I should wait.

And so I waited. I should have realized that any time someone says Mother Army is responsible for something I ought be wary and question fully, but I was naive and listened to my supervisors.

A few months later, I was medically cleared for just about anything, so I started wondering whether the Army had overlooked me for the class because they were waiting on medical. I asked. I was told to wait some more. I mentioned that I needed the course before the promotion board, which was coming up. I was told to wait.

Sometime in the fall, I called my Branch Manager, who was appalled that I had not attended the course and started making attempts to get me in. My unit, now clued in that I was not waiting, immediately started lecturing me about how I should have been asking for, nay, begging for, this course. I mentioned that I was told to wait. I was told I was a fool, and that it was my fault I had not gotten in. I was then, later in the same conversation, once again told that Department of the Army was responsible for scheduling the course. But it was still my fault.

Eventually, I got a course date: start date two months after the promotion board. So I needed a waiver. Again with the lectures about how it was my fault, but I was persistent. I called various elements I probably shouldn’t be calling to find out the waiver process. I wrote memorandums and dug up documents. I sent everything forward to my company, who sent it up to Battalion.

Battalion sent it back. They told my Commander to get me to put the blame on medical instead of on the unit. I did that and resent the memo. Battalion sent it back. They wanted more detail on who actually dropped the ball on getting me into the course. I did that, practically rewriting the first memo, and resent. Battalion sent it back. They didn’t like how it was ordered. I rewrote the whole thing and reminded them that board submissions closed in about three weeks. They finally got the hint and sent me a document to sign that already had the Battalion Commander’s signature. I pointed out that I could not sign it after the Battalion Commander, copied it to a new form, and sent it back to Battalion. They found the Battalion Commander to get him to once again sign the document (I can only imagine the conversation). Finally, they got it to Brigade.

Brigade, at 1900 Germany time on a Friday evening, finally sent the completed waiver request to Human Resources Command. They sent it two weeks prior to the closure of the board. They sent it over a month after we first submitted a memo, and over three months after I first began badgering them that I did not have the course and would need either the course or a waiver to be boarded for promotion.

Whether HRC will grant the waiver remains to be seen, as well as whether I get picked up for promotion even with the waiver. But HRC confirmed receipt of the request, which is a step in the right direction for my unit. Any time they accomplish a task I like to give them some sort of recognition, like a puppy that needs to be housebroken so he gets a treat when he does the right thing. Call me sentimental, but I want to encourage them to do things like, I don’t know, their jobs, every once in awhile.

I think someone put a tracking chip in my brain.

This evening I went to the pub, as I am wont to do, and had a few expensive glasses of water and some snacks with a few friends. Since I am driving and on duty, I had two reasons not to drink.

And so I hopped into my car around quitting time and eased out onto the road.

A block later, the familiar lights of the Polizei were flashing in my rearview mirror. I pulled over, and rummaged around for my documents. As I rolled down the window to the bitter evening, I saw a familiar face: the same Polizei who pulled me over nary a week prior. He looked at me a bit strangely until I pulled out my license and informed him that yes, indeed I was the person he pulled over recently. His partner wandered up and I gave her a friendly wave as she fed me the breathalizer, though this time neither of them were as surprised that I was stone-cold sober and only made me take the test once. In fact, they seemed to find it all moderately amusing, something to which I agreed since I could sit in my car and they were still wandering around in the bitter cold without wearing hats.

No apologies were necessary; after all, I had just left a pub after midnight and slid down the slippery road to get into my car. However, there were about three others, all Germans, leaving around the same time and each one got into a car and drove. I was the only one pulled over.

There is a theory that the Polizei sit in the parking lot near the pub and go Drunk American Hunting. The game is easy: head to the parking lot and park in a spot where one can observe several plate numbers. Call the dispatcher, who is probably just as bored as you, and have them run each plate. Wait for an American plate to turn up. Watch that car until someone gets into it and turns it on. Pull the car over. Rinse and repeat.

It is certainly a good way to make a quota, unless of course you pull over the one sober American getting into their car… twice in roughly a week. It’s like when you play poker and all you get is a pair of twos: you can still bluff your way through to try and make it worth it, but you are probably going to lose in the end.

I don’t know that these two were as amused when I called out “See you next week!” as they spun around to head back to their hiding spot near the pub. I am at least hoping that they made note of my plate number and will stop wasting their time. They have all month to make their quota… but they won’t have any luck if they keep playing the same hand.

It took me two years, but I finally figured out one of the strangest Soldiers I have had the misfortune of guiding.

He is not a bad person. He is nice, polite, respectful (Except when he smirks. I hate it when he smirks. Especially when he is wrong), follows directions well, takes criticism and tries to improve… one would think he is a model Soldier. Were he a private, he might well be.

Trouble is, he is not. He is, not by my doing, a Non-Commissioned Officer. But he has trouble leading others and generally doing his job because he seems to be a little afraid of people. I am not just talking about being scared of me, which he is, but he is nervous around just about everyone. In our field, that makes everyone else nervous around you. That is not so good. I’ve gotten calls after sending him to another office requesting that next time could I please send someone else or just go myself. I am fairly sure even the Germans find him peculiar, and these are people that still think acid-washed jeans are awesome.

I finally, however, figured him out today. I was describing a recent class I ran on questioning techniques, since it appears that some of the people in the office just can’t seem to grasp the concept that we are in the business of details. I was noting that he actually did fairly well when it came to tedious, meticulous questioning. Normally, when I make up stories to role play for Soldier training, I am not bored because I can mess around and make up things and try to see how observant they are. This time, I started getting bored sometime around the half hour mark of him getting the description of one of my made-up characters. He didn’t even get to the part where the guy was wearing a white, pleather suit and an ostentatious pinkie ring before I finally cut it short, the training having lasted longer than anticipated as it was and I was getting sleepy.

I realized that he can question. Boring, but thorough. That is good most of the time, naturally, in our line of work, but he was still stuck on the social aspect. Meanwhile, the other two in the training were still giving blank looks and twitching when they thought they might want to write something down. I mostly gave up hope on them already, though, so that was fine.

The social aspect of our job is when boring no longer becomes boring, encouraging the person to spew out everything as fast as you can register it and write it down. Me? I was bored. But there was something there, something I have been missing in the two years he has been in the office: he was, after all tedious and methodical. There are jobs in the Army that are tedious and methodical. Ours is not one, but I know several that certainly are.

Upon pondering this when discussing it with others, I figured it out: he was what I have now termed an “After the Bell” guy. In initial training for these jobs there is always a bell signifying when the end of one phase starts and another is to begin, so the hired role players can ensure the student gets the correct, allotted questioning time. If the student can’t figure out the role player’s scripted motivation before the bell, right after the bell rings the role player usually says something along the lines of, “Well, what I would LOVE is…” and drops a hint you would have to be on Mars swimming in polar ice lakes to miss. Even if this happens, this doesn’t always fail a student for the first part of the iteration; this is both a good and bad thing.

It is good because it puts the focus on questioning, which is the bulk of the job only because the student needs something to report.

It is bad because it convinces the student they are socially okay when they might not be. Then they bundle those people up and send them to me. It’s how my life works, it seems. It is also completely unrealistic and never allows the student to realize that real life has no bell in a social situation. Instead, they think they are the best ever at the job because they are a meticulous questioner and never totally failed the social parts despite being ineffective.

My guy, as I figured out during this exercise, was an “After the Bell” guy. He can’t walk up to someone and start a conversation without the other person wishing they had an appointment somewhere, anywhere, five minutes ago. He can’t pick up social cues to figure out what someone likes, and is visibly uncomfortable trying to do so. He doesn’t like the social aspects of the job.

He relies on the bell.

Once the bell rings, he can launch into asking questions and be fine, following up to the minute detail until the other person passes out from sheer boredom. Before the bell, he is awkward and really a little creepy. After the bell he is normal with the exception of being totally uninteresting. He has always insisted to me that he did well at school, and I believe him based on this assessment: the school is designed that way. We had someone in my class who smeared feces on the wall. Yes, that should scare people a little, but it’s okay: we heard she was kicked out right after graduation for being a little bananas. But it goes to show that just about anyone of any social skill level can still pass as long as they can meet the basic standards. He could meet the social standards without handling poo and could question people to the point of sleepiness, so he is a win in the training books.

To me, he is a win as an analyst. They can do all that questioning, bossing us around with their requirements, without talking to a single person themselves. They read whatever drivel I churn out and then tell me what I missed. He is a reports junkie and loves it. Plus, it would mean that he would get to smirk at me in his mind every time he churned out a requirement I might have to meet. I would concede to that victory to move him along out of this job field if that is what it took. I have started contacting some of my analyst buddies to help me out with smoothly converting him somewhere a little less… awkward.

I am starting to meet my quota as a non-commissioned officer. I have figured out what makes three out of four Soldiers tick, the fourth being new, and guided them as best I could to the extent they would listen to reason. Those that didn’t listen call on a semi-regular basis to express regrets. The fourth one is my next project, and she will be a doozy. I am tempted to just see if there is a deep hole that needs digging somewhere far away from anyone I respect and if that is, in fact, an Army position. I am working on it. This last one took me two years to finally figure out, having to rely on interactions with those of limited social skill sets which is never an easy task. But it served as a reminder that there is no bell to ring in most aspects of life, no way to just move on to the next phase without it being awkward and incomplete.

My own bell rings sometime within the next six months, though, moving me on to bigger and better things, or at least different things. There are a few bells rung in the Army, such as setting a specific date to change assignments. Good thing, too, because I still have no idea what motivates this unit and don’t think the extra few months are going to help. I can only hope that around the time the bell rings and I can move to my next station I get to hear their real motivations for the things they do. Should be interesting, and then I can leave the meticulous and dull follow-up questioning to the Soldier I am leaving behind.

The past week and a half or so the Army has largely left me alone. I do my thing, babysit a warrant and a few Soldiers, and occasionally get told that I am too angry because I sent snotty messages to my reports officer when he asks for another PowerPoint slide so he can show the Battalion where we are and what we do. Nothing out of the ordinary.

So that, naturally, means that it is Germany’s turn.

The other day it snowed. This being on the same latitude as Canada, one would think that this would not come as such a shock to the local residents. Tragically, one would be wrong.

0500, as it turns out, is way too early on a Saturday for a German to be out plowing the roads. It makes the Works Council (yes, there is such a thing… like a union but fewer mafioso and more whining) unhappy to think that the plow operators might have not had enough rest to sleep off the beer from the evening before. A reasonable concern, but doesn’t help anyone when the snow started the evening before. By the time they wander out into daylight, which is around 0800, there is a fine layer of ice under everything else. I like to think they are just trying to make it more fun.

So when I drove to my friend’s house to help her make cookies to send to Soldiers recently departed for points south, I noticed the roads were a bit slick for my 1991 rear-wheel drive beast. I confirmed this fact when I passed a Polizei sitting and reading a book in her car next to the scene of a flipped over and completely totalled vehicle. I then narrowly dodged being hit by a car sliding around a curve, who I then watched spin out in my rearview mirror and bump out to get stuck in a field less than 50 meters from the Polizei, who looked mildly annoyed. Her having seen the accident, I kept plodding along, making the 15 minute drive to my friend’s house in about 30 minutes.

The way back, almost 11 hours later, was no picnic. Slipping to my car and then taking five minutes just to convince my car that backing out of a spot onto the road was a good idea, I figured it would be prudent to take my time going home.

Apparently, this was where I went wrong. I made it to within a mile of my house, just turning onto the main road in town, when the blue lights and the “STOP! POLIZEI!” lights flashed behind me. I went a block ahead and found a place to pull over.

Upon discovering that I spoke English, the Polizei decided to speak it as well, which was fun because his English was about as good as my German. We understood each other enough for me to communicate that I have a strong dislike for poor driving conditions in darkness, and for him to communicate that he thought I was coming from the nearby American Refugee Camp, also known as the local Irish Pub. He wanted to know why I was driving so slowly and more towards the middle of the road, and why my car looked like it was weaving and slipping a little. I gave him an incredulous look, but then realized that I recently had Botox shot into my face as part of a perverse headache treatment attempt, so really I probably just looked rather young and blank. I instead explained to him that I have been in an accident on icy roads, and just that day had seen a few, so was trying to be careful. He sneered at me. He actually sneered at me. I don’t think he tought I would notice. I did. I was not happy. This is a culture that cannot seem to keep their roads clear, eventually just putting sand down on top of the snow when the plow guys decide they had enough for the day, had two accidents in a row just that I had observed in less than 12 hours, and he sneers at me because I tell him I am trying to be a prudent driver in poor weather conditions. Plus, I think I recognized him from previous trips to the indoor rifle range. We will see who gets expert next time, buddy, we will see…

I watched his partner slip and slide back to the Polizei vehicle to get her Breathalizer and agreed to play his game. To not do so would have meant a Driving Under the Influence with Refusal to Submit to Testing, plus a forced blood test on the spot, so I didn’t have many options aside from chatting with him to wait for her to return with the machine. To make small talk, I asked him if the roads were clear near where I lived. He tried to give me directions to my house. I stopped him to try again, and got more directions to my house. I decided I should give up and wondered which of us should take the test. He asked me if I was from Arizona, since that is where my most recent license is. I was getting tired, so I said sure and told him the desert is hot. He agreed. We were both content.

I blew a 0.00. They had me try again, apparently hoping for a higher score. I must have lost the game, because they seemed very disappointed when I failed to produce any trace of alcohol. I told them I had last had a glass of wine with dinner five hours before, but they could give it a third try if they really wanted to. They declined my offer. Before slipping back to their car, the nice Polizei told me to drive carefully. I bit my tongue, rather hard in fact, so I wouldn’t point out that was what had caused the trouble in the first place.

I know the nice Polizei were only trying to do their job by making the roads safer, taking the drunkards off the streets. I know I could have pointed out the quality of my automobile or the darkness or the ice that was raining down in little flecks onto his head to make him understand, but I knew that no matter what I was going to take the test and he would continue letting others speed by and whipping themselves into fields. Laws of German Nature, I suppose.

So instead I just told him he should really be wearing a hat to avoid catching cold, turned on my car, and plodded home at the same speed I had been traveling earlier: a few kilometers an hour under the posted speed limit. Meanwhile, they whipped around and went back to stake out the Pub. I finally made it home safely with nary even a citation to help explain the delay to the cat. It was only then that I realized I had forgotten to take any cookies home with me.

I blame it on Germany. If the Army isn’t doing it to me, it can only be the location. A few more months and there will be all new adventures. So long as I drive slowly enough but obviously not too slow, I should be able to live to see the day.

And that, I suppose, is the best I can hope for.

Want my two cents? Can’t have it. Sorry. Army already has it.

No, seriously, and quite literally. Nothing has changed in the regulations: Mother Army still really doesn’t care what her little peons like me have to say. I can give my two cents all day long, were it mine to give.

But it isn’t, because see, Mother Army didn’t give it to me.

Story goes like this. I shall do it in steps so those that might have trouble following a long story (as in, other Army folks) can follow along:

1) Soldier goes on five week temporary duty assignment halfway around the world.
2) Roughly two weeks into assignment, Soldier gets cryptic message saying that the approval for the assignment that Soldier is already on was retracted because someone accidentally hit the wrong button when trying to remind the Soldier to send a payment request voucher. How that happened is still something of a mystery expounded upon during previous sleepless nights.
3) Soldier completes assignment and returns to station.
4) Soldier finds a voucher cannot be submitted because the approval was returned.
5) Everyone gets perplexed.
6) Everyone remains perplexed for about a week and then tells Soldier to just start over with the paperwork because it is easier than figuring out the whole thing again.
7) Soldier is reminded of a conversation with one of her junior Soldiers about how he said something similar when his stripper fiancee cheated on him but he decided to go through the wedding because it was “just easier that way.”
8) Soldier remembers telling him he was an idiot and bites tongue and resubmits.
9) Soldier resubmits a few times to help some random person up the chain try and “streamline” the process, which eventually extends the process by a week or two.
10) Nothing happens for a few months except occasional calls to the company from the Sergeant Major wondering why nothing is happening and Soldier’s bills were not paid. Soldier wonders why the Sergeant Major doesn’t ask the people who sit at the desks upon which her paperwork has sat for two weeks, then returned, then sits again, then gets returned, and so on.
11) Soldier finally gets paid nearly three months after returning from a five week temporary duty assignment.

Here comes the kicker, folks:

12) The bill paid to the now-suspended government travel card, which was for several thousand dollars, was two cents short of the bill. Probably a conversion error somewhere, but two cents short nonetheless.
13) Soldier and supervisor both agree that at this point it is probably just spite instead of a conversion error.
14) Soldier beats head on desk repeatedly. Supervisor puts Soldier’s mittens on the desk to absorb some of the shock, since they just got some new computers over the summer and he is signed for them and would hate to see the Soldier damage them with the daily beating of Soldier’s head on the desk.

Two cents. No big deal, right?

One would think so. Trouble is, the card is suspended. That means the entire bill needs to be paid before the card can be unfrozen. To include those last two cents. The two cents I would love to give the Army, only the Army already has them and won’t give them to the government card.

So as I wait for the new bill showing the paltry sum so I can figure out what to do, I realize that I have a few options right now:

1) Wait a few weeks for my name to come on the delinquent roster again for bills owed. This might be entertaining only because it would mean that the Sergeant Major would have to find a way to complain with a straight face that I am delinquent on debt for two cents. That alone might be worth the utterly annoyed and exasperated telephone call from my Commander that would result. I would hope he would counsel me in writing for it. That would be a keeper along with the electric tape extravaganza from my time at Bragg. I really like silly counselings. I keep them to remind myself to never get like that. Ever.
2) Suck up my pride and do an electronic check through my bank to the government card for the bill. I like my bank, though, and don’t want them to laugh at me, hiding their electronic smirks behind their electronic hands.
3) Tape two pennies to a notecard and mail it to the government card. I don’t think they take cash, though.
4) Write a check for two cents and send it in. Both 3 and 4 have the additional problem that stamps cost 44 cents now. I would be spending 2200 times my bill to send in payment. I feel like that violates some of these new laws about absurd rates and such. I would then feel the need to write my Congressman, which would need another 44 cents. Now I am 4400 times my bill for this little problem. That is just out of control and a travesty. I can’t be so wasteful.
5) Have the bill in hand, call the company, and offer to give them my two cents. I have a nice rant on the political climate in eastern Africa that I have been saving up for such an occasion. See how long it takes them to hang up.

Quite frankly, I am wondering if the government card company is actually ballsy enough to send a bill for two cents. If they are, well, kudos to them and I shall pay after copying it to frame for my Commander’s wall. I strongly suspect that they will, seeing as they are on a government contract anyway. I’ll get the frame ready.

At least this finally gives me an excuse to give some of these people my two cents. All I need is for the first person to ask for it…

Even after they leave, Soldiers can be useful.

Case in point: My Branch Manager is highly elusive. He is a very nice guy on the phone, but very busy and so if you don’t catch him with enough time to accomplish the entire task needed before the conversation is over, it may not get done. Good luck getting him on the phone, too, because most of the time that involves dealing with his full voicemail box, his unread email inbox, and usually calling at an obscene hour. Luckily, his obscene hours fall in the middle of my day, so that helps, but nevertheless he is a wily one, ducking and dodging phone calls even better than a warrant officer can dodge a full day’s work. The difference is that Branch Managers control assignments and reenlistments, making them fairly important people with whom we start to get fairly frantic in our attempts to get in touch when threats of Fort Gordon loom in our possible future.

So we found that if we call another lady who works down the hall from him sometimes we can convince her to transfer the call over if she knows he is in the office. It isn’t very nice, and it very obviously annoys her to no end particularly after I let the secret out to a few other people in my position who now don’t even bother trying our Branch Manager’s real number anymore. Today one of the warrants tried to get her to do it and she finally told him no, call in half an hour, and don’t call her. I took that as my cue to get hopeless for ever getting the class date I need to get promoted or get an assignment that doesn’t involve me contemplating just how far I could get if I squeezed out the window and took off across the lawn towards anything looking like freedom, what with freedom being particularly hard in both Korea and Georgia, the two current threats. I needed the class and no one but Branch could put me in. I had to find him. Now.

I started to lose hope until my warrant came up with a plan: Call the other lady and pretend I had a Soldier who would fall into her realm, one who is our sister job and a sergeant or below. I told him she looks them up by service number and name, so I couldn’t just make one up. My head fell into my hands… and then he mentioned my previous Soldier.

My previous Soldier hates the military. We get along fine, particularly now that he is gone. He periodically sends me emails and even calls to tell me that he understands now all those days I threatened his well-being and why I did all the things I did. He would kill me, rightfully, for what I was about to do: put him on the Branch radar for re-enlistment.

I did it anyway. He is not happy with his current assignment anyway, so what is the harm in asking about options that would send him back to this hole? I called as a favor to him, of course, and was therefore most upset that I would have to let him down by telling him that he was not able to move again for at least another year, maybe even more. Bummer (and something I already knew). But hey, while I have her on the phone, could she transfer me over to my own Branch Manager?

By the end of the day, I had a class date. Not the one I wanted, but a class date that might keep me in the running for promotion even if at the bottom of the list because of the late timing of the class.

Every Soldier uses and abuses his NCO. It is what we are here for, really, while we are accountable for that Soldier and he falls within our realm of influence. But once they are gone, it is fair game to take their names in vain and potentialy bring retention’s persistent wrath upon them. He is an NCO now, which means he can now attempt to employ some sort of retribution against me, but he also thought Hugo Chavez was from Russia for awhile so I am not that concerned. I’ll thank him for putting up with my abuse, albeit unwittingly and from halfway around the world, one last time when I next see him.

All I know is I have a class date and I don’t have to go to Georgia, nor do I have to call that lady again and have her catch wise and ban me from calling as she banned the warrant earlier today. I already have a long list of places I am not supposed to call; I would hate to have to start a new page.

This morning, I lost my patience.

Not that such an event should come as a shock to anyone, but nevertheless it turned out to be a rather traumatic experience.

I decided this morning to check on the status of my travel voucher. Much to my surprise, it appeared to have passed on to the next level! I decided to doublecheck and opened it up to see who had the courage to actually do their job for the day. Upon doing so, I noticed that it said “Adjustment.” My warrant started to giggle. Adjustments are never in our favor. I opened it up at his prompting and immediately saw the trouble.

Something to the effect of “Until your final receipt for your auto rental is included, you will not get paid for your rental. When you have the receipt, submit an amendment to be repaid for that.” In very fine print, it laughed at me and called me a sucker.

The thing was, I submitted the final receipt the rental company provided for me after my return to Germany. I was, therefore, once again confounded by the perplexities of the system. Surely there was something missing? No, indeed the receipt was loaded into the system just as it has been for well over a month in total. Perhaps it was illegible or not clearly a receipt? No, I understood it just fine and the amount on it matched the amount paid on my credit card statement. I notified my Commander and then realized that it was Training Meeting Day, which has a tendency to turn into a seven hour affair, so my warrant prompted me to get more information by calling the person who left the cryptic adjustment on my voucher.

The conversation started out pretty normally: I was told there was probably nothing anyone could do, a hearty “Eff You,” but at least he would hand me to the person who made the adjustment so he could confirm.

The next conversation was rather circular in nature. It consisted of the person telling me he needed the final receipt and me explaining to him that I submitted the final receipt. He insisted that there was another receipt I needed because this wasn’t the final receipt. I informed him that indeed, it was, it even said “Receipt” in bold letters at the top. He insisted he needed the receipt from after my final payment. I pointed out the total amount and how it matched my statement and the dates and the account numbers and informed him, patiently, that it was the only receipt sent after I requested it directly from the company several days after the payment was made and this was what was sent so please just give me the money you owe me and I will go away. He said no, he needs the final receipt.

He wanted something, anything, that told him the balance on the receipt was zero. Apparently, “Balance Owed: Zero” was the key phrase missing. The receipt showed the amount owed to the company, the credit card used for payment, the itemized charges, and so on, and he also could see that the bill identified the company and matched the dates, accounts, and amount, but that was not enough. He wanted the company to generate a “Balance Owed: Zero” statement for me. Until then, perhaps they would pay me the rest of what they have owed for several months, but will hold the rental repayment until I can come up with the balance receipt, which does not exist in this world as far as I am aware. I hung up the phone, put my head in my hands, and finally worked up the nerve to write a pleading request to the company to please generate the receipt. The adjustor had also mentioned, in passing, that if I could get in writing from the company that they would not generate such a document, in other words tell me Eff You, it would also be good enough for him. He just needed a formal Eff You in writing, and until then he would continue to just give me a hearty Eff You.

My Commander then called, having received my email. I told him about the conversation. He got irate, mostly because the entire thing was absurd. He ranted, he raved, he called Battalion. Battalion agreed to call the adjustment demons. The Commander ranted and raved until he had to go so he could call back Battalion for an answer.

Five minutes later he called me back, possibly about to cry. The adjustors had told Battalion to Eff You, making Battalion call my Commander to tell him Eff You, so he had no choice but to call me and tell me Eff You. He did mention that he was not going to repeat the excuses that he was given, because as far as he could tell none were valid, but to find a way to get the company to either generate the receipt these people wanted or at least tell me Eff You in writing. Apparently, that one last Eff You is the key to repayment paradise around here. It’s like levels of success, and the more people who can tell you that one phrase in a day, the closer you are to getting what you want. Somehow, it all works out that way around here. It’s a little bit of a backwards system, I think, but what do I know, really?

I am starting to wonder if my unit is doing this to me on purpose. Trouble is, I am not sure what “this” is, because it is all-encompassing and thus harder to define.

Let’s see. Just today:

I discovered that my payment for travel from which I returned over two months ago has been sitting at the same office for the past 12 (soon to be 13) days. My Commander called them last week to get them to sign it and move it along, since it needs just their signature and one more to pay me, but apparently he doesn’t hold enough sway. The Sergeant Major is apparently trying now. It is a curious phenomenon, as these people are civilians and can therefore be replaced. I assume it is indicative of how word is spreading to others about this unit, even culling the Europe-dwelling civilian herd to the lame and dull so if we were to fire these (which have their competent days, just not in the past few months) we would struggle to find replacements. I am pretty convinced that my lack of payment has something to do with someone saying “Uh oh” sometime within the past year which now indicates lack of funding. I wonder how they will explain that to the bank, because I don’t want to get involved anymore.

Then I received an email from the head of the health clinic who spoke to the main personnel division for Europe’s medical command. He was asking about my Purple Heart and CAB. He was told “This is Personnel 101.” I still requested that he get it spelled out, because it will be needed. Today he confirmed my worst fears: everything has to go back through my current unit. Again. Let’s see if they can get it right THIS time. Doubtful. I will have the backup packet ready for my next unit. One would think it would be easy. Look at evidence. Determine if evidence supports criteria as defined in published regulations. Evidence does. Sign paper and move it forward. Repeat until a General looks at it. General signs and sends to Human Resources. Human Resources grants badges because oh, right, those particular things are already defined in regulations and you either meet the criteria or you don’t. I happen to, so easy, right? Apparently this has puzzled entities higher paid than I for four years running. And so the games shall continue on Wednesday.

So kick forward to later in the day, because everything in the middle was also mundane to include trying to puzzle through a conversation where someone admitted to having an imaginary pet hermit crab when she was eight. No, really, and when I asked her if she had a real terrarium to hold the pretend hermit crab in she answered that no, that was where her real pet lizard was kept and looked at me as if I were stupid. My brain bled a little in its attempt to escape the pain.

My resident fool, for whom I have had to follow up on his little cardiac problem since he seems to think 39 is ancient and therefore he should be absolved of all decisions regarding his health and well-being and accept “You’re getting older” as an excuse for nearly passing out doing pull-ups, went to the doctor after my repeated pestering (of the doctors and of him). Turns out my pestering of the doctors got a referral into the system for him a week ago but he didn’t know because he didn’t ask, walked into the doctor today and was turned right around with a comment of “Your referral has been in for a week. You could have just called and asked.” The doctor doesn’t like him much, either. The doctor is 79 and has little patience for the under-40 age group trying to say they are too old to run. I like that doctor.

Then, maybe a half an hour before closing time on my warrant’s schedule and the Commander calls to ask if my Soldier has a government travel card because he needed to send her on temporary duty halfway across the country for two weeks starting, oh, let’s just say in the next 18 hours. Time frame nonwithstanding in this unit, even this was a little irritating, but needed to be dealt with because the Commander was just as annoyed. Now, things like government cards are usually standard applications upon inprocessing, but I wasn’t around when she inprocessed and have been finding that a remarkable number of things that should have been done for her were somehow overlooked. The person leading her around during inprocessing, the “Old Man” as it were, emits maybe one nanowatt of brain power per year on average, and that is only if I am really making him try extra hard by asking him simple questions to lead him to a correct answer, so I had my doubts. I called. Nope, she didn’t have one and thought the magical government card fairies would take care of it because she didn’t really bother to mention it either. My fault, I should have asked instead of assuming things would have been done correctly in the first place. I talked to her about using a personal card for meals and getting reimbursed (a pipe dream, but maybe someday…), and she said she had one. I told her the hotel fees would be taken care of and arrangements were already being made through other resources. She agreed and I got a long-winded story I didn’t care to listen to about exactly how much is on her card.

Should have asked more questions, because I foolishly assumed that at least said personal card would be one readily accepted in, say, German dining establishments. She called me later to mention that she has an American Express card. Foolish me. Germans don’t take American Express, along with most of the world. She doesn’t know where another card is, though she thinks she has one in the house somewhere. I stopped her because I didn’t want to have another aneurism today.

I mentioned that at least today was payday, so can she figure out how to get enough money to sustain for a bit and then we can advance pay her in the system to cover the rest? Well, she could, but oh wait the money goes to an account her husband can access and not her. She has to wait for him (and he is currently deployed) to put money in her account. She has little liquid assets until he can get to it. They haven’t gotten around to fixing that stuff yet.

Great. So I would have to talk to someone about rushing her advance payments, then. Okay. I then mentioned that we have to make sure her accounts are all correct in the pay system and we would talk to the movement people in the morning. I then double-checked, starting to learn my lesson now, that she even registered in the pay system.

Of course not. And of course she never thought it important enough to talk to me about, only her husband who is in a completely different Major Command. Her (giggly, because she seems to find it immensely funny when she screws up) response was “Well, he looked to see if he could sign me up,” here I pause, because you sign in yourself because it is unit-driven payments, “and he couldn’t because he’s not actually responsible for me! Teeheheehehehehehehe!” I responded, in the most patient tone possible, that perhaps then she might have thought to bring it up to the people who ARE responsible for her? As in, perhaps, me? “Oh. Well, I didn’t really think of it. I just thought something was screwed up and it would fix itself eventually! Guess I could have asked… Oops! Teeheehee!”

Instead of seeing if I could reach my hand through the phone to choke her, I reminded her that her husband has no bearing on her success in the Army and that there are also no magical finance or any other fairies in the Army to fix her issues. She giggled again, so I calmed myself by pretending to have a pet hermit crab and imagining how happy it is at having found a new home in her vacant skull. It’s very theraputic.

So tomorrow, I, having too much real work to do in order to do this myself, have to trust fool number one to take fool number two back out to the company where fool number two can fill out the paperwork and get herself into the pay system and apply for a government card, and then be whisked away from me for a glorious two weeks. Meanwhile, fool number one has to pick up some equipment, load it into the government car, take the car to another post, switch it out for a new car, remember to move the equipment and anything else we own to the new car, get all the proper paperwork, and then drive back to us without getting horribly lost even with a navigation system. Last time, he ended up an hour north of us and I had to guide him back because he had the Soldier I liked in the car with him. This time he might not be so lucky, since my warrant is signing for all of the equipment anyway and I am not so sure I want any of these people back, so I don’t really have any alliegance to seeing any of it again.

My patience wears thin. I have little hope of seeing my awards before the turn of the next century, so instead I called my Branch Manager to again plead with him to send me to a course to which I should have already attended, what with promotion boards coming up and all. His mailbox, just like last week, is full.

Xenu might want to get out of my head while he can; my frontal lobe is stockpiling explosives, trying to make good once and for all my brain’s escape in a last ditch effort to save itself. I might just let it go this time in the heroic move that should it be able to get free at least one of us can survive to warn others.

It came to my attention today that I could quite easily do the job of several others with little to no training.

It did not, as it turns out, come as much of a surprise.

Today I decided to follow through on some advice from a few medical officers and actually put together the paperwork for my Purple Heart and for my elusive Combat Action Badge. The latter has been something of a thorn in the side of those above me for quite some time now, possibly because it seems like a lot of work to, I don’t know, read the regulations for a retroactive submission. This is, however, the first time I have tried to submit for the former, so I figured it could make for an entertaining use of my morning.

I started out by doing something that it appears few people in several of my units have thought to do: I read the regulations and messages governing the submissions. Cue: gasp of shock and awe!

Indeed, folks, it does appear that just like everything else in the Army there is in fact a way to do these things. They are governed by several regulations, several military personnel messages, and even a few headquarters letters. The Internet, as it were, held the answers. In roughly five minutes I had more information than I have been able to procure from several at higher headquarters, and within ten minutes figured out that roughly half of what I had been told regarding the Combat Action Badge was incorrect.

Now, I am sure it is not the fault of those in, say, my personnel shop. Who asked them to read a regulation when it is their only duty to have things sit around for five weeks before passing them on for a signature from someone of whom they are quite possibly terrified? My Sergeant Major usually seems like a pretty nice guy to me, but I am sure he scares the person who has been sitting on one of my requests for the past two months. He must, right? Otherwise, why wouldn’t they process it… right?

I am misleading myself. It makes me feel better.

Anyway, so I pulled out the regulations and the messages and printed off the relevant passages. I was careful to underline or otherwise note the important sections, just as I did within my medical records in case they didn’t feel like reading the whole, long paragraph to get to the important bit where it says that things that went boom in 2005 made me screwy.

Then came the problem of the actual paperwork for other people to sign. Not wanting to make them look like the escapees from the zoo chimp house, despite my suspicions, I decided to ask for a template for the Purple Heart. I already have four templates for the Combat Action Badge, one for each time it was previously submitted (one, it seems, is still missing, since it was submitted five times in total, each time turned around for some oddity or missing piece of paperwork or, my favorite, because no one read the regulation to figure out how to process it the fifth time so they assumed they couldn’t and turned it around instead). While waiting for my personnel shop to get back with my training room and provide a template, I figured I had time to go ahead and figure it out on my own. This was confirmed when my training room contacted me to let me know that the personnel shop had no idea but were going to look into it. I have heard that before. I had several hours at least.

I generated a form that looked reasonable within ten minutes. I found the correct addressee for the decision-maker right in the award regulation. I used a similar request as a template and generated one for a Purple Heart, adding in the documentation requested in the regulation.

Basically, I made it all up using the limited resources of the Army regulations that sort of govern this whole process.

I submitted it to my training room and asked her to have the personnel shop look it over and let me know what needed to change. She emailed me back and asked me to submit the supporting documentation, because apparently it was good enough for government work and they were going to at least figure out if it was correct. They had no template; they were going to use mine instead. They went to school for this, you know.

I then did the same thing with a Combat Action Badge request, which is going to be processed through the medical system since my unit freaks out every time they look at the thing. Then I generated a new copy of a medical document that my doctor wanted to sign but didn’t have time to generate. I asked my warrant officer if there was anything he needed, because I was clearly on a roll.

Tomorrow is signature day when I go to the clinic and run everything by them and get their signatures on their required paperwork for all of these documents I generated, so only time will tell. According to regulation, everything I did is correct, though a few addresses or wording might be a touch off. I have full faith that the form submitted to my unit will take at least four months to go anywhere, since it takes roughly a month to clear Battalion and then at least another month to clear Brigade, and no one is even sure where anything goes after that anyway much less how long it might sit wherever that is, so I am confident that having the medical team look over and sign a few documents won’t really hurt anyone or anything.

I do, however, feel very proud that I had the mental and physical fortitude to find the regulations, read them, and generate the necessary documents. Clearly, as evidenced by the length of time it takes some people to do the same at higher echelons, this is a task not to be undertaken by the faint of heart. What seemed quite simple to me is obviously much more challenging at a higher level and with more training, so I should not get cocky lest someone decide to bump me from my current position and move me over to admin. I have already had brain surgery once; a full lobotomy is not something I desire.

In the meantime, however, I shall practice and perfect my new craft of reading Army regulations and applying them practically to situations, plying this craft as necessary when others do not feel like doing their jobs. I anticipate using it a lot in the coming months… a shame it took me this long to figure out.

I’m so sorry, Mother Army. I apologize for not having been more watchful over things that should be happening automatically at echelons above me.

Oh wait. No, I am not, though apparently I should be.

On Friday I happened to call up to my orderly room. There is a charming Specialist who sits in there and allows the rest of us to make her life miserable with our demands, which she then forwards up to higher elements, who yell at her in return. Hey, it’s a living, I suppose. I enjoy talking to her because she is usually one of the few people justifiably more miserable than most of us on a daily basis. So I called her to ask her if she happened to know why my pay documents have been sitting on the same desk for a week, and if she had any word on whether or not I would be attending a required school anytime in the near future, since it was needed for promotion and I have been on the list over two years now.

To the first, she responded that she asked about that payment and had been told to “expect it would sit there awhile.” Funny thing is, my government card is suspended now, which has recently made the same elements that told her to tell me to wait on payment very angry. Makes one wonder what it takes to spurn them to action, since clearly freezing the card wasn’t enough. My Commander informed me that I should just make minimum payments and worry about getting paid back later. I don’t think he realizes that on a government card that regularly bills you when you are not in the country to receive the bill, you cannot carry a balance. So unless I pay somewhere around 3,000 good, American dollars for the next two months to clear past due and currently due debts on my previously authorized travel, my card remains frozen. I am also well aware that getting paid back would be something of a pipe dream, given how long it takes them to figure out why it is so dark with their head shoved in such uncomfortable locations. But I am not allowed to call the people who sit at the desk where my paperwork lays, because that would be jumping the proper channels. So every time I ask, I am told to wait. Then every time I see my Commander, he asks why I haven’t been paid. It is a tragic circle of life around here, one for which I have little hope of escaping before my credit rating goes belly-up.

The circle was made more tragic by her response to my other question. You see, there are certain schools that everyone is required to attend. Some of them, to include the one I currently need, happen in two parts and you are put on the list sometime around when you are promoted to the appropriate rank. I was promoted in 2007. Presumably, that means Big Army put me on some list. Now, there are apparently conflicting theories as to how exactly one gets scheduled for the class, as in getting one put at the top of the list. Up until last week, everyone in my command was telling me that it was a Big Army job and all of my complaining about not having attended wouldn’t do me any good because it wasn’t anyone’s fault or anyone’s job to schedule me. Recently, I spoke to someone in Big Army who said it was the unit that is supposed to call and move you up to schedule you for the class. Somehow, I believe Mother Army, given my unit’s track record for failing to tell the truth when it involves anything that looks or sounds even remotely like “work.”

Now I graduated from the first part of the course in April, thanks to Big Army wanting participants for a trial program for the new course and randomly selecting me. Had that waited for my unit, I would undoubtedly have nothing at this point, because remember: It’s Not Their Job. One would have assumed that, should Big Army be the one to schedule me for the next bit, they would have done so immediately. That wasn’t the case, so I started asking. I was told to wait. I asked if I could go before my class in August began, since the two lined up almost perfectly. I was told to wait. I came back from the class and pointed out that I am up for promotion in the spring, so perhaps I should get scheduled for the class as soon as possible. I was told to shut up and let Big Army do their job and it was not the training shop’s fault. I brought it up again to my command about a week ago after my Branch Manager at Big Army informed me that my unit was screwing my career by not scheduling me. I was told that it was not the unit’s fault.

Then, apparently at last week’s Battalion training meeting, I finally turned up on the training room’s slide as needing the course. Good job, folks! I only needed it for over two years now, so great that we finally got around to updating the PowerPoint. Baby steps… Too much too soon and we might overwhelm them with expectations of the potential for efficiency.

But then word on the street is the Sergeant Major piped up and said I was too close to leaving the unit, within six months (um… actually I have seven or eight, depending on who you ask, but no one asked me to do the math for them), and therefore couldn’t go because it was a waste of money. Furthermore, I should have requested the class before now, so it was clear I only wanted to go for promotion reasons.

Well first of all, no one wants to go to this class except for promotion reasons. It is boring, worthless, and a waste of six weeks of my life. But we go because without it, no promotion, so he is correct in that sense. CSM: 1, Me: 0. However, the tally begins to change when they become aware that I have now been eligible for the course for two years, or at least since April when Big Army squeezed me into a pilot program of the first part of the course, and they were supposed to be tracking me since 2007 for the course in order to emphasize career progression. Tie score. Furthermore, I did ask for the class. Repeatedly. Now I am winning. Also, they don’t even pay for the course, as I am told that Big Army does, so that would be another point to extend my lead. Moreover, they are the very ones that told me to shut up because Big Army scheduled the class, now they are saying that I should have complained so they could pay attention more and get me in. That type of waffling gets me game point, particularly since it then becomes muddled as to whether or not I am supposed to baby-sit their training room. Apparently so, as well as every step between myself on the low end of the totem pole and their end who knows how high. And yet, I am not even allowed to call above my company level, so how exactly am I supposed to find out if my complaints or requests traveled any higher? Oh, they didn’t? Fancy that… All I know here is that I win, but there is little I can do about it without seriously making the Sergeant Major very angry. How little he knows me if he thinks I won’t do such a thing, particularly since he is now significantly hindering a promotion opportunity in “The Year of the NCO.” Maybe he missed that briefing.

Friday was the closest I have come yet to calling the doctors to accept their repeated offers of transfering me far, far away from this unit and then getting me out of the Army with a nice paycheck to go along with it. It has come to my attention that I have long since stopped working for the good of anyone but those above me, and they are distracted by anything sparkly that catches their attention anyway so no matter what I do that is right it won’t hold their attention long enough for them to actually do anything about it, and they can also happily ignore anything that goes wrong around them so long as it doesn’t affect them or anyone in their immediate vicinity who might pester them. They are free to let their minds wander as they bask in the glory of being middle management.

And as for everything that they screw up? Well, it all rolls downhill. That’s right, folks. Apparently, I should have been paying closer attention when I signed my contract: I didn’t realize I would have to baby-sit both my lower AND my higher levels. Must be in the fine print somewhere. My fault…

Today one of the local deploying units had something of a Veteran’s Day Send-Off for themselves and the post. It was entertaining and well done for a unit activity, with plenty of food, beer, gluwein (warm, spiced wine traditional once it gets cold here… you sometimes start seeing it around August), and a bouncy castle.

I steered my warrant around the bouncy castle. It was not an easy task. Luckily, he was wearing shoes with laces today so I could convince him it was too much effort to take them off just to go in the bouncy castle. I promised him next time and then sincerely hoped I would be gone by the next time.

We made our way to the food, running into some of the unit members who were oddly allowed to have beer but not food, and found seats at the long fest benches. We just so happened to sit across from a rotating arsenal of membership representatives for the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter.

I like the VFW. They contribute great things to veterans and their children and to society in general. They are fun to talk to, and when I find I have my membership card on me near a VFW hall the alcohol is cheap. Sometimes conversations can get a little confusing, particularly when they trail off and start another conversation with you about something you all of a sudden realized happened in Saigon but they are talking to you as though you were there with them, or when they follow a train of thought for five minutes before jumping back to finish a sentence from three topics ago, but really that doesn’t bother me having worked with Iraqis, Afghans, and my warrant, all of whom do the same thing.

So we chatted with a few of the gentlemen, most of them Korea or Vietnam veterans, and listened as they pitched lifetime VFW membership and the like. I happen to be planning on getting a lifetime membership sometime after my husband finishes paying for the new windows on the house, so I asked the nice man currently sitting at the table (he replaced the man who had four purple hearts from ‘Nam couldn’t hear so well… or balance so well, but that was probably also because of the four beers he consumed) for a business card. As he pulled out the card, he explained to us that there are meetings locally once a month.

I knew there was a VFW somewhere, because I have seen the members around at some events. I always figured they met off-post or in someone’s home or something. Shows where assuming gets you, as I shall explain:

“So you know the Burger King,” He says to my warrant and I.
“Sure. Only food place on post not run by the Army,” Says I.
“Okay, so you know the dining facility next door, right?” He says.
“Of course,” I says.
“There is a staircase on the side of the dining facility closest to the burger king. It goes down into the basement. Go down there on the first Tuesday of the month and we have our meetings there in the evening after dinner is over,” He says, now leaning in and speaking faster to accentuate the immediately creepy.

My reaction is mostly triggered because I have seen stairs going up in the dining facility, but not stairs going down. Most of the buildings around, with the exception of some of the Brigade and Garrison buildings with offices in the basements, have exceptionally creepy underground storage areas. Furthermore, I have never seen a VFW member on post when it was not an event, but he is telling me that once a month they gather in the basement and do whatever it is they do.

“Wait, what? Stairs? Basement room? Are you saying the VFW ‘Hall’ is a previously unknown room somewhere underneath the dining facility which we should visit after dark sometime?”
“Exactly! Don’t worry. The meetings are usually less than an hour. You’ll be out by 8pm.”

Yeah, if I ever leave at all… I reiterated that I would probably not get my membership until close to my departure, due to the windows escapade going on at my house in the states at the moment. Windows are expensive, after all. At this point, I made reference to the fact that I was from New Jersey, a topic which had previously been mentioned but, in true VFW veteran style, now needed to be revisited in depth. Once New Jersey was exhausted, he and his new friend, a jolly-looking fellow quietly sitting and eating his hot dogs (the chili cook-off hadn’t started yet… I’ll spoil the surprise and mention that we did not end up sticking around for it), asked what my heritage was. He was not satisfied with the “Mixed” response I tend to give, and then told me about a website where you can trace your lineage all the way back a few hundred years. He wrote it on the brown paper lining the table.

He explained (needlessly, upon examination of the web address) that it was a particular faith’s website, while methodically tapping the paper, circling the writing abstractly and occasionally making his point with a little dot near the top of the words. His previously quiet friend (who had been turned the other way watching something going on near the front of the hangar) quickly turned and jumped in with “I’m One!” at this point, nearly causing me to fall off the bench from my recoil to evade the hotdog that swung at a prescribed radius in front of him as he spun. He was not the gentleman who could not hear, and was stone cold sober. I braced myself.

Now, before anyone gets all uppity, I tend to love most of those I know of this particular faith. They are either very nice or what we call “Fallen Members” who were raised strict members but decided to break a tiny rule, perhaps eat or drink something wrong, and spiraled downhill back to the rest of us, and they are usually very fun. I have worked with several and find both types to be lovely to work with or hang around with, and have made and remained friends with more than a few because they seem to be everywhere in the Army. I don’t really buy anything they have to say about religion, but I feel that way about pretty much all religions, so no hard feelings, and I like how the nice ones are really just genuinely nice as a general rule. My issue is when people, regardless of faith, get creepy. I had the sense that was about to happen. My warrant officer smelled it as well and started edging to the end of the seat as we sought a potential exit. I love older people until they get crazy. This was heading in the wrong direction for anything less than that, so it was time to duck out. But when…?

We let him tell us how the site worked. We avoided eye contact when they started getting too deep into anything. My warrant then tried to make a comment about the religion. Dangerous move. They both glazed over, talked again about the website and how we should try it and enter our information into it, and asked us again to come on a Tuesday evening to the basement room below the dining facility. They then began to make no further reference to other topics than coming to the meeting, not even attempting to get me to commit to paying membership dues for the VFW. In fact, the very initials of VFW had not been mentioned in quite some time. We found a pause, stood up, promised to get in touch, shook hands, and made for the bouncy castle and behind it, the exit.

In the cool, free air we broke down what we had learned:

1) There is a basement room under the dining facility.
2) It may be a VFW hall.
3) There is no smell of alcohol in the area of which he speaks, so presumably no bar.
4) On certain Tuesday evenings, a small group of old men gather there and discuss things.
5) These men appear normal on the outside and for most conversations.
6) These men can turn on the crazy at the drop of a hat and it is hard, maybe impossible, to switch it back off.

We have thus, with the evidence at hand, decided that there is a secret, possibly religious society plotting nefarious deeds in the basement of our dining facility which may or may not be the VFW, though they all are seemingly members of the real one and using this as a cover. Many of them are over 60 years old and slowing down in the cold, but there has been “sewer reconstruction” lately in that area which we think may actually be part of the underground tunnel network they are working on to keep their arthritis at bay during the winter and to further their eventual goals. Perhaps the basement room is only indoctrination. We don’t know how far this goes…

I’ll still get my membership, but I am not going to a rumored basement room to get it. I’ll do it by mail or wait until I move in spring. I love the VFW, and encourage every combat veteran to support their local chapter and sign up and volunteer and help them out, but I am pretty sure if this supposed underground clubhouse had a bar I would have known about it by now, so just how real are these people? If this room even exists, I ask what’s a VFW with no bar? I think I need to examine the pins on their hats more closely…

This could be big, folks… big…

Of course, it’s all speculation based on a short conversation with some very genuinely nice gentlemen from an organization I love and respect, and both of us have watched a lot of movies involving scary basements and buildings with hidden rooms and tunnels. Way too many, probably. We only know about the stairs right now. How much more we intend to find out regarding the people under those stairs remains to be seen.

Thursday was yet another day in this humdrum life I call the Army. That is to say, it was full of mishaps and misadventures that usually end up with me being at least an hour away from anywhere practical and moderately annoyed. Most of this, as usual, happens because someone doesn’t feel like listening. Usually, that is because listening might involve work, and there are definitely some work-adverse people in my daily life.

I began my day with the Semi-Tri-Annual Local Area German Random People Somewhat Affiliated to Us Meeting. While that may appear to be a long title, and is indeed one that we made up, it is shorter and more pronouncable than whatever it is actually called. It happens approximately once every year and a half, so that is the best we could come up with. Also, the German who works at my office could not seem to really identify who would be there aside from the one guy who passed us the invitation, so I had to wager a guess. I did not wager much. I asked my warrant to assist, particularly since preparation work needed to be done, and to attend with me. He decided that it would be better if I went alone, leaving him to attend a huge ceremony on our base that would leave him alone for the better part of the day. I chided myself for asking him to actually work and instead concentrated on preparing for the meeting.

At the meeting, I was to present something. I also had to wager a guess at this, since the instructions were not terribly specific. I opted to name some of the threats to U.S. Forces in Germany and what we do to counter those threats. I figured that such a briefing must exist somewhere already in the vast system we call our analytical section.

I figured wrong, forgetting the work-adverse nature of certain elements. They sent me a few items, mostly newspaper articles. I ended up making up the presentation, picking hot topics like “Terrorism,” phrasing them like they were new and exciting, and stressing how the Germans have to do all of the work anyway for any investigation off-post, but we are certainly there for moral support. Go, Team! Oddly, they seemed to react well to the whole thing, with the head of the meeting expounding upon some of the examples I provided. Very heartwarming. My warrant, when he saw me working on the briefing and regularly harassing analysts and everyone else I knew in the country for an official briefing, told me that he must had misunderstood the nature of the meeting and didn’t know it would be so much work for me. He was very proud of me for having done it, however.

Now, I had to leave the Semi-Tri Annual Local Area German Random People Somewhat Affiliated to Us Meeting early on account of the fact that no one could give me a straight answer if there existed an implied task for me to head to the area of the Company headquarters and watch the Sergeant Major of the Army give a speech and try to score myself a coin. A warrant officer told me that it was not required, but I couldn’t shake the guilty feeling. Since at present I was the highest-ranking enlisted person in the Company actually working, I changed into my uniform and headed to the theater.

At the theater I ran into every enlisted person from the tenent infantry unit waiting in the lobby. I promptly walked back out of the theater and went back to the headquarters. Mission failure. I decided to wait around, because my warrant officer had told me in no uncertain terms that a piece of equipment for our computer network would arrive at the Company and I had to pick it up and return. His persistence had even caused me to set up for the local tech guys to come bright and early the next working day for the installation.

And so I sat and waited. And waited. And waited. Luckily, there was a suspicious package scare with some powdery substance occuring back at my home station, so I filled my time writing reports that my warrant had not done because he misunderstood another warrant who told him that it was unnecessary. The other warrant had actually told him that until my warrant had more information it was unnecessary, but that was not how it was heard as that would have meant my warrant would have had to get the information and then actually write it. My warrant called me from the office several times to give me all of the information, but assured me the reports weren’t required. Skeptical, I called the other warrant and discovered the miscommunication. By then, naturally, my warrant had been told to clear out of the office by the emergency personnel and was not about to go to the other locations where they had access to the reporting system two blocks away. But I didn’t really mind, seeing as it filled my time waiting for our communications guys to deliver the equipment. His reaction to my having to write the reports? “Oops. Thought it sounded odd that we wouldn’t report that. Huh. Well, thanks!”

Still I waited. Three hours later, the communications guys finally showed up. I asked them for our equipment. They gave me a blank look instead. Several phone calls later, it turns out that when my warrant had heard “The equipment will be hand-delivered tomorrow because these guys have to go down to your company anyway, so send your NCO to spend her afternoon picking it up,” what our communications shop had actually said was “Your request for that equipment has finally been sent up to Brigade and may take a little while longer yet for approval. Don’t expect it anytime soon, much less tomorrow.”

I tried to grab a computer or something just so I didn’t go back empty-handed, but my commander caught me. The computers, one of which actually belongs to our office to replace my ancient machine, were still not network-ready anyway.

My warrant’s reaction to this one? “Hmm… I must have misunderstood. Oops! So, when you coming back? Yeah, sorry about it being well after the duty day already and all with you still being way near the eastern border, but I’m on my way home for the night. Anything else you need?”

I asked him go fetch me a sandwich to leave on my desk. I figured since my whole day was largely his fault, I may as well get something out of the guy for the day.

Lo and behold, he screwed up my order. Says it was some sort of miscommunication. The sandwich was still good, but I have decided that from now on I am only communicating with him in writing and recommending that others do the same. Simple words, large print, on sticky notes left on his computer screen. I have around six months left here, so I need something to be done right once in awhile before I lose my mind.

I am not, as it turns out, going to ask him to do the supply request for this new method of communication; I do not even want to see what would happen should I ask him to order pads of sticky notes.

Sometime this afternoon I received a disconcerting telephone call from my Operations Officer. It went something along the lines of:

Him: So… can you send me a map?
Me: Sure. I got maps. If not, I can make them up and pretend. What maps?
Him: One of your Garrison area of operations, if you have one.
Me: Coincidentally, I have that, having asked our Garrison for one since no one else in the Army seems to know what the areas are. Need your area, too? The guy at my Garrison sent me all of them.
Him: You have that? That would be great. Saves me some time, because I have to draw in all of the boundaries the Garrisons have as well as all of the boundaries our Battalion says we have. Oh, could you send me what you think your boundaries are, too?
Me: Sure.
*pause for effect and confusion caused by flash of logic*
Me: Um… wait… shouldn’t someone have this already? Like, the people that draw the boundaries between our areas? Like, the people at Battalion that tell us where we should be working, since they told us to work there?
Him: You would think so, wouldn’t you… Funny thing about that…

It appears, somewhat not surprisingly, that my Battalion has absolutely no idea what areas we are actually covering, what any office is actually responsible for, nor what logically we should be doing in order to support the unit’s (somewhat theoretical) mission statement of supporting Garrison Commands. This actually makes sense when one comprehends that sometime last year my office was told that we were responsible for a district completely outside of our Garrison boundaries and were, in fact, no longer responsible for our own surrounding community.

However, I do not encourage one to attempt to comprehend such things. We still have to re-explain it to our Operations Officer every now and then, like we did today. He is so cute: he still tries to think that there was a logical decision behind all of it. He has only been at our unit a few months… he still has to accept how some things operate out here.

See, it seems that while I was temporarily on some assignment somewhere last year someone decided to redraw the boundaries. They did so, it now appears, without actually looking at a map, which we pointed out but were dutifully told to shut up and get to work. As a result, today we had to convince people that our physical Garrison is actually located an entire district north from where they apparently thought it was. I ended up having to draw a picture (the original map I sent apparently ended up being too confusing despite the pretty colors and the fact that it came from Europe’s Garrison Headquarters) which my warrant officer turned into a very pretty PowerPoint so our Operations Officer could forward it to our Battalion. I was so proud; I knew he went to warrant school for something…

Now we, as it turns out, have been muttering about these odd boundaries for a long time, as I may have alluded to previously. It turns out that no one was taking us seriously not because they are just used to tuning out muttering, but because they legitimately thought we were located in a completely different place than we actually are. Even our Operations Officer argued with us about the district our Garrison is physically located in, having run on the assumption that to have us in any other district would be the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Turns out, it was at only the stupidest thing he heard before I also mentioned that his office, two hours away, is actually responsible for the town in which my cat spends her days waiting for me to come home after work. I made the request that he feed the cat whenever he popped by. He was not amused.

So to break it down: an entire battalion and operational section seem to have lost our office. That, and it appears they may have a little trouble with basic map reading since the district lines are quite clear on area maps. Some re-training might be in order. Even my mother, who has a map aversion recalled from car trips long past, can look at a map and tell me that Hawaii is not actually a part of Kansas. She can also tell that Trenton is not in Pennsylvania because the big, fat, New Jersey state line gets in the way when one is crossing through Camden towards Philadelphia. This makes my mother, the same woman who slept resolutely through 10 hours in the car with two screaming children and a husband perpetually singing show tunes just so she could avoid being called upon to communicate directions from our massive and intimidating road atlas, more qualified to determine operational boundaries than the people who are theoretically qualified to periodically take large groups of Soldiers into the woods and demonstrate for them how to find their way back using a stick, a shadow, and a string with some beads on it. That should disturb people. A lot.

There were times when I would find it nice that no one knew where we were: it implied that no one could just pop in for a visit. But it would be nice to have a job for my last few months in this unit, to perhaps get a little bit of support for a mission we know exists but can’t quite get to, and maybe every once in a great while have someone in our own parent unit identify our district correctly on a map at least perhaps three times out of ten so I could be confident that should they find their way out for a visit, I don’t have to worry about them starving on the Autobahn somewhere near the Swiss border because they thought they were somewhere completely different when driving back. Is that really so much to ask?

Nevermind. I should just go ahead and warn the Swiss now and save myself the trouble.

Sometimes, when a parent is getting annoyed that their children are pestering them for something to do or a little bit of attention, they give vague instructions. Usually, in decent weather and reasonable neighborhoods, those instructions are something along the lines of, “Go play in the yard.”

Mother Army is no exception to this. For roughly my first two years at my current unit I spent an inordinate amount of time pestering people in order to find something to do with myself. I usually asked questions that annoyed Mother Army, such as, “Um… so if you want me to do this, doesn’t that impact our supposed mission negatively?” and occasionally, “So you still want me to do it… which implies the question of what is our mission again?” or perhaps, “Isn’t this a little out of our scope and covered already by someone else?” along with frequent mutterings of, “This makes no sense at all, but okay…”

Last winter, Mother got annoyed and sent us out to play with vague instructions of where to go. We found some toys and offered to share and wandered out to do whatever it is we could do with such vague instructions. I questioned the logic (or apparent lack thereof) but was told to go anyway, so go I did.

Trouble is, it was not our yard. It was a neighbor’s, because we were not allowed to play in our own on account of another neighborhood kid already playing in our yard with no good reason for it. When this was pointed out, I was told to carry on and just work around it. I worked around it until it could not be worked around anymore, and then tried to mention it and was dutifully ignored. The trouble with the Army is that when someone tells you to get on a plane (or in a car) and go, you go. I went, and apparently was skipping rope on the neighbor’s sidewalk. I explained to them that Mother Army had sent me out to play and that no, I had no real reason for being there other than that, so would they mind if I stayed for a little bit until Mom would let me back in?

I ended up developing a pretty reasonable mutual respect with them in a short amount of time through sharing of toys and swapping of stories, and in the meantime knocked loudly on Mother Army’s door and mentioned that there was a slight problem outside because I am on someone else’s yard but it seems I couldn’t play in mine for some illogical reason that was not explained in adequate detail during the past nine months of me asking.

I knocked pretty loudly a few weeks back, ruffling some feathers in the meantime as I am wont to do when I get restless and things in the Army get more illogical than usual, and then this evening the door to my house reluctantly cracked open out of necessity to at least let me inside, if not let me play in my own yard. The reason I got back inside: I was told to pack up my toys and go by the neighbor, who finally kicked me off of their lawn. No real trouble on my part, since I had told the neighbor that I was only there because I was told to be and would leave just as soon as I could anyway if we could just convince someone to let me play in my own yard. The annoyance is that they kicked me out before we had worked out some of the logical steps within my own unit that would allow us to function as we should have been functioning for the past three and a half years. The same steps I have been asking about taking for the past three years. The same complaints I have had for nine months when I was kicked into the neighbor’s yard. The questions being asked now are only new to the people who had told me to be quiet before; I have been keeping a running list in my drawer, along with some of the solutions that no one has been interested in until this week. I just have to word those solutions now, no doubt, into a way that they can turn it into a nice evaluation report bullet for the highest ranking in the bunch. Chivalry is in fact dead, folks: it was murdered and taken over by politics long ago.

Nevertheless, until things get sorted it appears to be a rainy day as we are now not allowed in our own yard nor the neighbor’s. Good thing my warrant keeps a stock of toys up in the office or it could be a very dull month or so. Game of Scrabble, anyone?

The cat should have been my first clue.

I wake up in the morning and notice it is a little cooler than usual in the apartment, but think nothing of it because it is Germany in October and therefore already colder than normal humans should have to tolerate this time of year. It is also a little before 0400 and I have to leave to go to the range in half an hour, so I hop in the shower. Upon getting out of the shower, I notice that when I crack the door the cat does not try to bustle in and roll around on the bath rug, which is odd.

Just to clarify, the odd part is not the rolling around on the bath rug, because she does that every day. Well, it might be odd, but so is the cat. It was simply odd that she was not there.

I wander out of the bathroom to don my uniform and, upon turning on the main light, notice that the main door to the apartment is cracked to the width of one smallish cat-sized object. The downstairs door, leading outside, hasn’t properly closed in weeks and I can’t remember enough German whenever I see my landlord to get it fixed.

The cat had chosen today, the day I had to meet my Soldiers bright and early for a long day at the range an hour and a half away, to finally figure out the right way to jump up and open the door. She has been working on this awhile. Today, she finally won. This should have been my cue to just go back to bed.

I find the cat a bit later, her having returned of her own accord while I was out by the street looking for her. She undoubtedly didn’t get far anyway, being smart enough to realize that living things can’t survive long in this environment. I was wearing five layers by then. She had some fur. She was displeased, and appeared to blame it all on me. I opted to go to the range instead of appeasing her. I picked up my Soldiers and we headed out, possibly while she emplaced her hex upon my day.

At first, all went well. My Warrant was late, as usual, but we still made it out to the arms room on time to get our weapons. I usually tell everyone a half an hour early to allocate for the fact that he will be between 10 and 20 minutes late for most events, particularly since he maintains that he only gets up before 0600 once a quarter, and that he fulfilled his quota already for this quarter. I think he is right; I dragged him out for some other random tasking earlier in the month. Regardless, we get to the arms room, draw our weapons, and I find our acting first sergeant.

The warnings started right back in. One of the Soldiers on the ammunition detail, who had to pick up ammunition an hour and a half away in another direction and then return with it, had hit some traffic on her way. But she made it there, so we headed out to the range. By then it had warmed up to a balmy 28 degrees or so, which was nice. We set up the range and waited to hear about the ammunition.

And we heard about the ammunition. That, in fact, became the morning saga. As the Soldiers waited around with no heated areas to speak of and we pretty much did the same only where the Soldiers couldn’t hear us making fun of them, we all watched the ammo drama unfold before our eyes. First, the Soldiers drawing the ammo were asked a question about their date to leave Germany. One, who is supposed to leave soon, did not know how to respond and so did not respond until she called her sergeant. Her sergeant told her what any self-respecting non-commissioned officer would do when he needed that Soldier to draw ammunition three weeks before her departure date: he told her to tell them her date was in 2010. Obvious to us, but not so to them, so by the time they passed along the information at the ammunition supply point several other vehicles had gotten in front of them. So the wait began.

0800 passed. No phone call. 0900 passed, which was the time we were supposed to start firing. No phone call. At 1000 or so the phone call came in that they had actually just gotten in and the supply point seemed to be running slow and strangely. Then, at 1115 or so, they called again. They had gotten the ammunition in the form of two measly crates. They had loaded it and gone to inspection to leave the supply point and start the hour and a half drive back. They get to inspection and inspection tells them that there are 28 extra rounds in one of the crates, so they cannot go through and have to be turned around to sort it out.

28 extra rounds, nearly 5 hours after they were supposed to draw ammunition, so turn around. Short answer? No. We instructed them to just sign for the rounds and come back. Oh no, said the supply point managers, that is not possible. Those 28 rounds come from a different lot number, and lot numbers cannot be mixed. They must go and turn in the rounds. Okay, says the sergeant who was up drawing the ammunition, just take these extra rounds back then so we can go. Oh no, said the supply point managers, that is not possible. We are going to lunch. Try again at 1300.

Really. Of all of the inefficient things I have seen German civilians on military bases do, this might actually rank up in the top five. Dare I say, top three! But such was the case. Instead, we used that lunch time to find a way to store the ammunition down at our location, told the Soldiers at the supply point to just get the ammunition somehow and bring it back, and we would just try again tomorrow to actually fire any rounds.

I assigned myself the task of telling the medics who were there to fire with us. I head to the vehicle where they are sitting. I open the door and tell them that because of the late hour, we are going to delay the range or possibly call it off completely. One of the Soldiers, an E4 I believe, thought to ask the question why we were drawing ammunition from an hour and a half away when there is an ammunition supply point on the base where I currently stood talking to a car full of medics. I explained that the supply point at this base only supplies blank ammunition and no live ammunition.

She asked me, completely straight-faced, why we didn’t just go ahead and qualify with blanks then.

I had no idea how to respond to such a question. I did my best, her not being one of my Soldiers to allow me to fully explain to her just how moronic that statement was coming from anyone who has ever even thought about holding a weapon, much less a Soldier. I pointed out that I supposed we could qualify with blanks, as long as I had ample time to walk up to the targets and jab my pen into the targets in the spots where it looked like something would have hit had the rounds not been blanks. She still looked confused, so I pointed out that live rounds have an actual projectile in them and blanks do not. She still looked confused. I walked away. Imebciles: One. Me: Zero.

We ended up leaving approximately an hour later, giving up. We finally get back to the office and attempt to get a few things done just so we can waste the entire following day with confidence as well. We attempt to get some inventory done for the Commander and to get an upcoming exercise to support the post worked out.

The computer systems went down. My warrant proceeds to call the help desk and nearly flip out when the help desk explains that everyone who could actually help had already left for the day, and this help desk guy was just there to answer the phones and put in the help desk request tickets. I thought it was funny, my day having been what it was. My warrant, grumpy from the early wake-up, was not as amused. We finally give up, debate a few things about some office matters, realize there is nothing we can do anyway because the systems are down, and decide to go home. We head out to the parking lot.

The icing on the cake! My car is dead. We attempt to do a rolling start, which was only fun because my warrant officer, who rarely does any type of exercise, tried to push my rather heavy, steel vehicle across the parking lot so we could try and build up speed (on flat ground, which was even better) to pop the clutch. Needless to say, it did not work and instead we pushed it into a parking spot and gave up for the evening, working out my transportation plans instead until I could get a new battery.

I finally get home in time to realize that in approximately eight hours I have to be back over to pick up my Soldiers to start all over again.

I should have listened to the cat. She was only trying to warn me…

The military is full of options. No matter what, you can always make some sort of choice with your life. Just take me for example. I finally got in touch with my branch manager and started asking him what the options were for someone of my rank and capabilities. I mentioned that I am considering a reenlistment because of the probability that I will be on the list for senior enlisted this winter, but want to check options before my retention representative’s head explodes with my random requests. So many places to choose from! So many different tasks and different things to try and different people to make angry. So he booted up his system and pulled up all of my fine and fantastic choices to further my military dreams.

I can reenlist for either South Korea or Georgia.

I mean, at least my branch manager could happily narrow down the long list of every military outpost in the world so I didn’t feel overwhelmed. I thanked him profusely for this favor. Then I asked him what else he had. Turns out that answer was simple, too!

Nothing.

Well, that isn’t really true. He has more options, so long as I am willing to request them by name and he can call the major command and see if he can squeeze me in. I am having him do that now, as a matter of fact, because the calls of Ktulu - I mean, the calls of the medboard office - grow louder in my ear as I contemplate spending a year of my life somewhere near the demilitarized zone on the border of North and South Korea or at the unit I will continue to avoid like the plague for the duration of my military career: a combination of my current unit and my Fort Bragg unit mashed into one enormous conglomoration of pain and stupidity. They forget that word gets out about places like this unit, and about places like just about all Korean assignments. They also apparently forget that I am not stupid.

At least he gave me a choice between two of the locations to which I would never agree to go, much less reenlist for. Also on that list of automatic “no thank yous” is Fort Bragg (been there, and I am happy to live my life without ever returning to Fayetteville again), Fort Hood (Fort Bragg on steroids), Fort Wainright (middle of nowhere Alaska), my current assignment (please, someone save me), Fort Huachuca (where I involuntarily spend a lot of time anyway, to include an impending six week course I have no desire to attend), Fort Polk (the mosquitos are bigger than me), and anywhere in Kansas (just because). Coincidentally, when I mentioned this list to him, he found it most amusing because all of those were on his list of places he could probably get for me with minimal hassle. I even asked him about one of those one-year tours to Afghanistan with a follow-on to station of choice. He said those had all been scooped up as well.

Does that strike anyone as odd? Temporary assignments to Afghanistan are full, but Korea and Fort Gordon are wide open. That should say something to someone, somewhere…

But hey, at least I have choices, right? No one ever said you have to like any of the options…