MIddle Weekend Adventures

 

There was once a time when the serving in the Army National Guard was fun. But that was largely before my first enlistment in 1984 when the “old timers” would tell stories about massive weekends barbecues deep in the woods of Fort Jackson. Those parties were only topped by the ones that supposedly occurred during the two-week summer camps. Raging poker games in the barracks and quite illegal beer and food runs off post in army vehicles had become only whispered legends by the time I was a private (E-1) fresh out of basic training.

By 1984 the entire Army National Guard was entering another stage of its evolution. During the Vietnam era the National Guard was more of a joke being a much desired refuge for rich and well connected kids wanting to avoid the dangers of those distant jungles. After Vietnam the National Guard languished in a benign, apathetic limbo where the only thing worse than the insufficient training and discipline among the soldiers was the broken and out of date equipment they were issued.

When I finally joined in 1984, Ronny Raygun had already set in motion the changes that would totally remake the National Guard into the professional force it is today.

I stayed a weekend warrior for two years before going active duty in 1986 and during that time I caught an echo of the easy going style of the Old Guard. By that time weekend drills in the local armory were well organized with the required maintenance on equipment being performed as well as professional training classes being held. But still, there was an underlying understanding that we were not active duty troops and that at the end of the day our family and civilian jobs took first priority.

It was during the two-week annual training where the most hints of the Old Guard could be found during that time. Those two summer camps before I went active duty the first week would be spent in the field sleeping in leaky tents and vehicles along with playing at our various military occupational specialties. The second week had us in the barracks still largely playing soldier during the day but sleeping in hot and miserable barracks at night. Yeah, the hot and miserable barracks were an improvement from sleeping in the field. That is if you could sleep during the raging poker games that went on most the night and breathe the thick secondhand smoke from all the burning cigarettes.

Concerning those poker games, I have to mention that many of the wives of these guys had apparently been told that their husbands did not receive that much in pay for those two weeks. This was cover for many returning home almost broke after having lost it gambling. Now between the first week in the field and the second week in the barracks was the middle weekend. I remember it as a time when all discipline evaporated and the troops did what they wanted. Some just drank themselves into a weekend stupor with what money they had on hand. We're literally talking about whole mountains of empty beer cans at the start of the second week.

Not wanting to deal with clouds of cigarette smoke and Olympic-level drinking, I got in my car and hauled ass to a friends' house or went back home. Understand, I'm not passing judgment on those guys staying in the barracks. By the mid-1980s when I joined, all the rich and well connected Vietnam draft dodgers had returned to full civilian life. That just left the lower-middle class guys who worked rotating shifts during the rest of the year at Georgetown County's two major employers, the steel mill and the paper mill. The middle weekend of summer camp was in many ways their only vacation away from the demands of their jobs and families. I just didn't want to endure the smell of stale beer and breathe their second-hand smoke.

Of course, I went active duty army in 1986 and didn't have to deal with annual summer camps again until I returned to the National Guard in 1990.

When I returned to the National Guard in 1990 a great deal had changed. The Old Guard with its laid back attitude along with its lack of discipline was a bad memory. Even the more responsible but reasonable National Guard that existed when I joined in 1986 had evolved into an excessively gung-ho organization that was beginning to look upon its members civilian jobs as impediments to the mission. This was a situation that would only get worse over time.

What had also changed was the middle weekend. My first couple of summer camps back after leaving active duty had me traveling to some interesting posts with small groups, so I couldn't complain too much. The training was actually fun and I was still single and interested in having a good time. By the time of my first summer camp with the rest of my unit though, the whole basis of how things went had changed.

Not only did my unit still spend the first week out in the field playing soldier, but the second week as well. We would return to the rear area to stay in the barracks for the middle weekend. But even then the officers and NCO's weren't going to allow anything like the freewheeling antics that were once normal occurrences.

As a former active duty soldier I completely agreed with those changes. My problem came when the senior NCO's started making noises that they were going to no longer allow us to leave the post during the middle weekend. I'll put it to you frankly, there isn't any army base my National Guard unit frequented for summer camp that I would want to be stuck at for a weekend.

By 1996 I was married and had a son and as you might expect, the idea of being forced to hang around at the barracks during the middle weekend was supreme bullshit. That year my unit was doing summer camp at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Now understand, Stewart is amazingly close to beaches but as a new dad I wanted to be with my son.

It took a little persuasion, but my first sergeant decided to let me go leave Fort Stewart and go see my son. It was going to be an easy trip for me since all I had to do was hit I-95 and drive up to Manning, South Carolina where I would meet my son and wife at her parents' house. So that Friday afternoon at the beginning of the middle weekend, I got in my 1988 Ford Escort and hauled ass heading north.

I love my wife and kid by one of the sacrifices I had to make for them was selling my 1984 Chevrolet Camaro and getting the Escort. My Camaro had class and style, and been the reason I had scored as well as I did with the ladies back at Fort Carson. But as a family man, my Camaro pretty much sucked for driving your kid and wife around.

So we got a used four-door escort hatchback with four-cylinder engine and a crappy radio. It was dependable, it had cargo space, and I could fit a baby seat in the back. Surprisingly enough my Camaro turned out to have better gas mileage that the Escort but my wife didn't find that interesting.

About about two hours later I'm driving north on I-95 with the pedal to the floor doing about sixty miles and hour. The radio has lost all reception so I'm listening to the one cassette tape the player had destroyed and getting pretty tired Kenny Rodgers crone about his damn card game. Yes, I had a Kenny Rodgers tape in my car, it's a long story in its own right but understand I'm not a fan. The cassette player seemed to have its own idea of good music so I went along with its choices.

At some point after I passed the I-26 interchange the terrain around me opens up enough to allow me to see some sky. To the west I see clouds, some dark and heavy but nothing unusual for South Carolina. The weather that day for the entire state was sickeningly hot and soul-sucking humid but at least the AC on the Escort was a real winner.

The drone of the road and Kenny's whining about some woman leaving her family with a crop in the field caused me to zone out for a few minutes. What suddenly pulled me back to consciousness was a totally unexpected flash of lightning and the corresponding boom of thunder after that. Once I gathered my meager wits and wiggled my butt in the seat a little to make sure I hadn't shit my pants I looked over to my left and saw what was happening.

In the space of a few minutes that party cloudy day had completely changed. To the west of me a huge chunk of the sky had gone completely black, with the lightning flashing it looked like someone had opened the gates of Hell. Instinctively, I switched over to the radio and almost immediately heard the blaring noise of a weather alert.

At first all I heard was the Weather Service's robotic voice saying that a tornado warning was in effect for numerous counties along I-95. Yeah, no shit I thought to myself as the wind began trying to push my car off the road.

Mr. Robot was soon replaced with a panicked human voice saying this storm was throwing softball-sized hail and that if you were between certain mile markers on I-95 that you should seek shelter absolutely right now. Now I've never been good with math but right after I heard his words I saw a mile marker sign and realized I was smack in the middle of where he said all shit was about to fly.

Low and behold that was when the funnel cloud became visible on the left side of I-95. After a momentary scan of surroundings, I realized I was the only car on the road. Yeah, all the other smart people had probably heard the weather report on their dependable car radios and found shelter. I had somehow hit the one bleak and undeveloped section of I-95 in the whole damn state.

So, I said fuck it, gripped the steering wheel harder and ignored the funnel cloud and the growing sound of a train. No, I didn't look back on the funnel cloud so I don't know for certain if it had touched down and became a full tornado.

The rain went from a few drops to torrential and the booming of thunder made me feel like I was driving through an artillery barrage. Luckily, I somehow stayed on the road and didn't hit any fool who decided to stop in the middle of the interstate.

The sound of the train faded away but the rain never really letup. I did find the exit for Manning and successfully navigated the county roads to my in-laws house. These roads are seriously in the boonies to the point visitors traveling in that area might want to stay alert for any banjo playing.

Much to the chagrin of my dad-in-law, I pulled into his driveway before nightfall and was greeted by my smiling wife and young son. Weather reports did say that a tornado had touched down near that area but it was impossible for me to know for sure if the funnel cloud I saw was it.

The rest of the weekend was great with me having lots of time with my family. When I returned to Fort Stewart Sunday evening I found out that commanding officer had restricted everyone to the barracks just minutes after I left. His stated reasoning was to keep accountability and prevent needless accidents during annual training.

This decision by the CO pissed off the first sergeant and with me walking around with a huge shit-eating grin because I got laid and saw my kid over the weekend didn't help with his disposition. So much that I caught a bunch of crappy duties during that second week in the field.

I didn't care, outrunning a tornado was probably one of the funnest things I ever did during summer camp.

Working Around Hurry Up and Wait

 

Anyone associated with the United States Armed Forces should be intimately familiar with the concept of “Hurry up and Wait.” For those who don't have a clue, that phrase is used to signify a screwed up situation in which a person or group is forced to quickly complete a task, or reach a destination by a certain time, only for nothing to happen at that scheduled moment. In the military this usually occurs when other required tasks have not been completed.

Although in my experience it was dumbass officers and their inability to plan or outright fear of making a decision that triggered most Hurry up and Wait scenarios. Either way, back in 1999 I was forced into a Hurry up and Wait/no-win situation between my wife and the South Carolina National Guard that I so successfully navigated by changing the rules Captain James T. Kirk would have approved.

It started on Saturday morning on a typical drill weekend with my squad and I performing our usual duties. That involved our preventive maintenance checks on both our communication equipment and the military vehicles and took most of the morning. Nothing exciting and my squad went about the duties efficiently but still having a good time catching up with each other.

After chow, the rest of that day was spent on various soldier's training classes with neither the officers nor senior NCOs saying anything about important tasks that were supposed to be accomplished. And when we had the final formation later that afternoon, everyone in the unit went home thinking the Sunday drill would be a breeze.

The next morning though something had radically changed. The First Sergeant's demeanor at roll call that morning was icy at best and when the company CO (Commanding Officer) appeared, the entire unit knew something bad was up.

The company CO was at best a mediocre officer with little imagination and less personality who rarely left his office during drill weekends. Past experience had shown when he did walk out on the armory drill hall floor among the troops, something quite bad was about to happen.

The CO told everyone that the battalion commander, his boss, wasn't happy with our performance and that no one would be going home that day until he had a happy smile on his face. That to make the battalion commander happy would require a visual inventory of all our equipment. Something that probably should have started bright and early the previous morning to have a chance of being accomplished in a reasonable time.

Once the CO said his piece the First Sergeant took over and instructed the cooks to begin planning an evening meal, which meant we'd still be at the armory well past eighteen hundred hours. (6:00pm)

Here's where this situation was really going to screw me over. My son, who was four years-old at the time, was supposed to have his first soccer game around 2:30pm that day. Throwing more troubling gasoline on the fire, my wife and I were supposed to supply the after game snacks for the entire team. These snacks, consisting of twenty juice boxes and twenty packs of cookies, were being stored inside my car which was in the armory parking lot.

My wife's attitude about the National Guard was in no way going to get her invited to the wives' support group. Simply put the Guard had a really bad habit of fraking up any family plans. If something important or fun was going to happen in our area that month, you can bet a large sum of money that it would occur the same weekend as drill.

Naturally, after formation everyone was assholes and elbows to try and get everything done so we wouldn't have to stay so late. Remember National Guard troops are “citizen soldiers” who have civilian jobs and didn't want to be dead tired the next morning at the start of a normal work week. Even worse, some people work nightshift and would be going to work around eleven o'clock that night.

Contrary to what can only be called propaganda put out by the National Guard, most civilian employers hate having workers who also play weekend warrior. Having an employee in the Guard screws up work schedules and has a habit of pissing off coworkers who end up covering for the individual who is playing Guard soldier. Patriotism in America may be a mile wide but its depth can often be measured in inches.

My main issue was my son's soccer game. Missing that game was going to get me in big trouble with my wife and the rest of the team because of the snacks. But all during that morning I had absolutely no idea how I could break away in time or even get the snacks to my wife since she wouldn't be allowed on armory property.

Despite what the CO said about needing to make his boss happy, the rest of the morning turned into a Hurry up and Wait nightmare. All the unit officers got rounded up for an important meeting which somehow brought a stop to all activity. None of the NCOs wanted to proceed without assurances that their decisions were the right ones.

By chow that early afternoon I was getting pissed. I would have accepted the circumstances and continued to play the good soldier had the inventory continued like it was supposed. But when you had about one-hundred seventy or so troops just sitting around doing nothing it was time for me to think out of the box.

That outside the box thinking took the form of an old fashioned telephone booth inside the armory drill hall. Remember this was 1999 when cell phones hadn't yet become totally widespread. Yes, the phone booth was a relic even back then, but a nicely convenient one.

The drill hall floor was a buzz of activity, so no one really paid attention to me as I stepped inside and closed the door. Plus this phone booth was on the far end of where the company offices were located, so there was little chance anyone high up in the leadership would see me and later figure out my plan.

My plan revolved around calling one of my brothers and having him phone my unit and say he was involved in a car accident in Columbia and would need a ride back up to Easley, South Carolina where he lived. Which is more or less a two-hour drive from my location.

Thankfully my brother answered the phone and over the course of fifteen minutes we quickly ironed out the various details required to make my scheme work. Yes, it is better to tell the truth but in this instance the means did justify the end.

After hanging up I did my best to sneak away from the phone booth hoping no one would remember seeing me there. All that remained from then on was hoping my brother, who was nursing a nice beer buzz would remember to call my unit and give me a solid excuse to get the frak out of Dodge.

A nervous thirty-five minutes later the loudspeakers mounted on the drill hall floor and outside in the motor pool call for Sergeant Johnson to report to the office. I tried to play extra casual with everyone as I reported but no one will ever say I could be an actor.

Some seriously young Second Lieutenant I had never seen before handed me a note saying my brother was stranded up around north Columbia after being in a car accident. That he was okay but needed a way back home since his car was banged up pretty bad.

Success!!!!

The Lieutenant was going to cut me loose right then but the First Sergeant, a grizzled veteran who knew all the bullshit tricks stopped me as I was walking out. I handed him the note and repeated what the Second Lieutenant told me but I knew he wouldn't buy the story. The First Sergeant, took a deep breath then looked at me with an expression that confirmed what I feared. He clearly knew the whole story was a heaping pile of bullshit.

But instead of chewing on my ass and kicking me out of the office he said go get your brother and we'll see you next month. I have no idea why he went along with my scheme. I wasn't on his shit list but then again I wasn't in the group of soldiers he tended to favor. Whatever the case, the time was coming up on two o'clock and if I hurried across town I would make the start of my son's game.

I arrived at the game five minutes before it started and only earned a stern look from my wife. My son's team had their asses stomped but me being in my army BDU's serving juice boxes and cookies was a hit with the kids.

The following month, I learned that the rest of the unit wasn't dismissed until nine o'clock that night. No one ever made a comment about me skipping out the previous month but I sure as hell did my best to stay under the First Sergeant's radar from that moment on.

Yeah, I have no regrets and put into a similar situation I'd do it again.

Tales From REFORGER-2: I Accuse

 (Author's note: This story is true, although I had to go creative-nonfiction to stretch it out and alter it enough so I wouldn't have anyone going crazy on me.)

All things considered, Captain Bryant, the S4 of my air defense battalion at Fort Carson, Colorado, wasn't a bad guy. Which makes what happened to him in a West German field all the worse. Without overly explaining what the S4 does, it can be boiled down to anything to do with supply, logistics, maintenance, transportation, and budget for the entire battalion. It is a demanding job and takes someone with a detail oriented mind and who can deal with the stress involved when millions of dollars of equipment and supplies are involved.

Since I was just a junior enlisted soldier at the time when the incident occurred, everything I heard from the NCO's suggested Bryant was perfectly competent in his job. Captain Bryant's one problem though was that despite his best efforts at the S4 job he was still catching hell from his lackluster command of one of the batteries of the battalion. See, Bryant was suffering from one of the worst traits that can befall an individual not only serving in the United States Army but anyone living in a country that prizes charisma and hard charging excellence. 

Bryant's first sin was that he had absolutely no charisma or anything else in the way of inspiring others to perform great deeds. Like any leader who command people, army officers are almost required to give speeches that motivate those under them to push harder. Given that the batteries in my battalion shared a common assembly area I caught a few of Bryant's speeches and even as a junior enlisted guy I could tell that someone born without vocal cords could have given a better, more inspiring speech. Sure, he could relay information and give instructions but his spoken voice had the personality of one of the old “Speak and Spell” toys from the 1980's.

His second, and possibly worst, sin was that Bryant was average in all his abilities. I learned this from one of my friends, Specialist David Speakman, who was the driver for the battalion sergeant major. While Speakman was my best friend, I often found him irritating as shit since the man excelled at absolutely everything he did from scores on the rifle range to maxing out the PT test. Speakman would regularly tell me battalion scuttlebutt since he spent all normal duty hours at headquarters.

The overall word about Captain Bryant was that the battalion commander and battalion sergeant major, both hard charging types who expected nothing less that one-hundred percent and then more from everyone in his command wasn't happy with his performance. Back then I believe myself to be a member of the hard charging group but was frankly perplexed at what exactly they wanted out of Bryant. However, my lack of understanding of the nebulous requirements they expected suggests I was closer to Captain Bryant's group than the one my friend Speakman belonged.

The curse with being average is that people tend to remember your mistakes, and misfortunes, more than anything else. Being “average” myself in many ways its almost as if you're wearing sign that everyone else but you can see but you that tells people not to expect much. For Captain Bryant to carry such a burden pretty much meant his military career was going to stall and die unless he somehow turn perception around. That opportunity came in the form of one of the battalions units, Alpha Battery, being sent to West Germany in 1987 for REFORGER.

REFORGER, which stand for Return of Forces to Germany was a huge deployment exercise and war games meant to prepare for the possibility of war with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations it controlled. All told thousand of troops and equipment were loaded on planes and ships and sent to Europe from North America. In the days leading up to our departure from Fort Carson, Captain Bryant seemed to be constantly in action. After we arrived in Europe for the first four or five days before the people in my unit were dispersed I don't believe the man ever slept.

What Captain Bryant did between the time of our first arrival and when we all regrouped at the assembly area to wait for our turn to return home I have no idea, although I highly suspect he did his best to play super soldier.

Every soldiers' mission at the assembly area was to wait and prepare the equipment we had drawn in Europe for turn in. As duty goes it was pretty sweet, we lived in literal circus-sized tents with some of them dedicated to food stands, movie theaters, mess halls, PX shops, and even libraries. Our equipment was nearby, all lined up neatly with us spending about half a day cleaning and repairing what we could. After lunch, which was still first generation MRE's at that time, we were usually released and allowed to hang out in the recreation tents or even see some of the local sites. Captain Bryant didn't play that game, even though many of the officers were almost as eager to get away as the enlisted, he stayed in the makeshift motor pool trying to impress the his higher-ups. Sadly, even though he moved heaven and earth during this deployment his average-ness came back with a vengeance.

Naturally, given the human digestive tract and its normal functions the US government spent the money to rent hundreds of port-o-potties for the assembly area to prevent thousands of soldiers from turning the countryside into a disease ridden sewage pit. Most were the normal looking ones you would see here in the States with a wide base that strongly resists tipping over because of wind. But a number of them, like the ones situated close to the motor pool, were quite thin and light and placed very close together.

The morning the incident happened it was already quite windy. In fact, several of the people I was around had noticed the thin and light port-o-potties being moved by the gusts. Once lunchtime came we stopped what we were doing, ate our MRE's, then put away our tools before drifting off to pursue our off-duty entertainment. Not Captain Bryant who stayed behind inside his deuce and a half fitted with a shop van he used as a makeshift office.

Sometime later Bryant had to answer the call of nature and proceeded to use one of the abnormal port-o-potties. Unfortunately, he picked one in the middle of a line of at least fourteen or fifteen. From what I could gather one of those heavy gusts of wind hit when Bryant was inside and not only did the entire line of port-o-potties fall over like so many dominoes, their thin sheet metal construction bent in such a way that he was literally trapped inside. Yeah, as word passed down everyone learned the potty was tipped over enough that its contents did spill out.

Poor Captain Bryant was eventually rescued by someone several hours later but word of what happened spread through the area at a speed that defies Einstein's limit on anything moving faster than light. Efforts to limit the effect on Captain Bryant's reputation were enacted, mainly having already ill-tempered first sergeants telling annoyed platoon sergeants to pass down to the tired section sergeants to tell their troops that any form of misbehavior around Captain Bryant would be severely punished.

It didn't work, especially when news of the incident somehow spread to nearby British troops who were visiting our location. Reports were that when they learned of what happened to Bryant their entire contingent,which was eating in the mess hall tent, all fell onto the floor laughing their asses off. While it was probably American soldiers who did it, someone a few days later took a permanent magic marker and wrote, “Bryant-potty, Use only at your own risk” on most of the type that fell over and trapped him.

There is no happy ending to this story. This incident sort of capped a military career that never left the metaphorical launch pad. He only stayed with the battalion about six months before getting reassigned somewhere else in the United States. But even when I was about to leave the service in July of 1990 some a-hole was still writing “Bryant-potty” on the much more stable ones used at Fort Carson. The only person I knew who could have been immune to possible discovery of the action and had ample opportunity to hit so many of the potties used down range was my good friend, David Speakman.

Breaking the Camel's Back

The story of a half-assed military career.

One of the secrets for a successful life is to know when a once good situation has changed so much that a person needs to immediately begin looking for the first available exit. Dedication to an organization and tenacity to see things through when the going is rough are nice elements to the character of a person but there are times when things get so utterly crazy it's best for someone to cut their losses and run like hell. That sentiment is true for a whole manner of things but my story begins in the early 1980's.

When someone says they have only a fuzzy recollection of their high school years the tendency is to think such a person spent a good part of it smoking weed in an isolated corner of the campus. Unfortunately, for me I cannot claim that reason as to why I spent the entire four years of that segment of my life totally oblivious as to what I would do once I graduated. Long story short, I simply did not have a clue about anything from continuing my education or what kind of job I might be able to find.

Circumstances surrounding my childhood helped with that lack of direction but by the time I started my freshman year in high school by all rights I should have had some sort of plan. But it wasn't until my junior year, with adulthood fast approaching, that I have the barest recollection of being worried about what I would do after graduation. Somewhere around that time I discovered two of my buddies had joined the National Guard and would be attending basic during that summer and then return the next year after graduation to finish up their training. Needless to say, with nothing else in the works, it didn't take those two long to talk me into joining.

While in hindsight it was a crappy plan, and in fact I didn't go to basic until after my own graduation, at least it had me doing something. In someways I had always figured time in the military would play a part in my life but never once during any of those ill-conceived daydreams did I ever consider becoming a weekend warrior.

So, barely a couple of days after high school graduation—truly an overblown ceremony in this day and age—I found myself aboard a plane heading out to Fort Bliss, Texas. It was there that I endured both basic training and Advanced Individual Training, the former teaching the sorry ass collection of recruits I was part of how to be soldiers, and the latter teaching us specialized jobs like MANPADS crewman, Vulcan Gunner, or Chapparral crewmen. Aside from the usual antics of recruits, my time at Fort Bliss was fairy normal considering all the kids the officers and NCO's assigned there trained during those years. The incident that stands out in my mind was that when our training cycle began in July my unit was issued warm weather PT uniforms which consisted of a thin t-shirt and old style gym shorts. By the middle of September though the weather during the mornings had turned decidedly cold forcing us all to huddle together in tight packs in an effort to stay warm. Of course, as we shivered in the cold, the DI's (Drill Instructors) watched us from inside their warm office belly laughing at our suffering.

When I returned home to South Carolina the National Guard seemed the best decision I had ever made in my short life. During those all too brief Saturdays and Sundays, I got to play soldier and hang out with others, who if they didn't fill a similar thrill at the required activities at least played along, well, that's mostly true.

Just a few months after I returned from Fort Bliss a couple of guys and myself were tasked by the first sergeant to go set up tables in one of the armory's classrooms for a meeting. When we opened the door to that room it was almost totally dark because all the window blinds were down. Naturally, one of us flicked the light switch on to find the entire floor covered with about fifteen to twenty of our fellow weekend warriors laying on the floor sound asleep.

It goes without saying our arrival was not welcome by any of the sleeping individuals. In fact one of the guys on the floor, the principle of a nearby elementary school no less, had some rather harsh words because we were disturbing his beauty sleep.

“I will personally put my foot up each of your asses if you don't turn the goddamn lights back off and leave this room immediately!” This stalwart leader of the community and guiding light to a couple of hundred of children and humble teachers said to us. Mr. Nasty Mouth Principle was quickly backed up with grunts of semiconscious acclamation from the other guys in the room with him.

It was clear, at least to me, that the collective mass of those individuals trying to sleep could have gotten quite nasty towards us three lowly privates unless one of us had quickly turned the situation to our advantage.

“Okay, but First Sergeant Bennett told us to come in here and setup tables. He'll be here in a couple of minutes to have a meeting with the platoon sergeants.” One of the other two said to the now alert group of men suddenly finding a reason to get off the floor.

“Bennett, coming in here?” Mr. Principle said clearly realizing that not only was he almost caught sleeping by the wrong person but had missed some important information and was about to be found totally unprepared for a meeting he had to attend. It took a few more seconds for the brains of those guys to digest all the implications of this news. But once it did, they scrambled chaotically around searching for an escape just like BDU wearing cockroaches trapped in a small room.

As the months passed I became a bit of a fixture at the local armory helping out the full-time guys during the normal work week when I had free time. As for civilian employment during this period, I held one of two crappy jobs whose one positive aspect was that they taught me I would eventually be forced to take a different path in my life. Just so I don't have to relive what is truthfully a rather embarrassing time for me, I'll skip the descriptions of those two jobs that took me from the fall of 1984 to the summer of 1986. The one thing I will say is no, these jobs were not in the fast food industry nor did they have anything to do with working at a car wash. As for this new path, I had absolutely no idea what it would look like so I did the simplest thing, I transferred from the National Guard to the active army.

When I transitioned over I had every intention of staying in the active army for the full twenty years, if not longer. Along the way though the Soviet Union collapsed and the leaders in Washington, both in Congress and the Pentagon decided that the armed forces should be drawn down in size. It was the right decision given the reordering of the  geopolitical circumstances but for me it meant another change in direction. I totally stink at interpersonal workplace politics, which meant as positions became fewer the more talented types who could kiss butt without worrying about the brown substance smeared on their noses would ultimately jump ahead of a naive goofballs like me.

So, with my enlistment over in July 1990, I went back home, enrolled in the local community college and for the most part began trying to form a plan for the rest of my life. The other thing I did was reenlist back into the National Guard because since I still enjoyed playing soldier and the money given the time involved was unbelievably easy. Even though I was just a peacetime soldier after having served active duty the trials and tribulations of weekend drills and the annual two-week summer camp was something I could do standing on my head, at night, during a torrential rainstorm, while singing Margaritville. At least that was the case when I first returned to the Guard, as the years went by that situation began to change in unexpected ways.

My life progressed pretty much as expected from 1990 to 1995 with me graduating from community college in 1992, getting a real job soon after that, and culminating with me getting married 1993. Even after getting married the Guard stayed pretty much the same except that I transferred from the air defense unit in the upstate of South Carolina down to one in Columbia. It was during this time the Guard was slowly getting weird.

At first the changes were reasonable and mainly revolved around senior leaders in the local units making sure that if a soldier was supposed to be at drill, that trooper better damn well have his ass there wearing a decent looking uniform and mildly polished boots. Now if there was a civilian job conflict with drill weekends the units use to work with that soldier allowing him or her to make it up during the week helping the full time guys and gals. Eventually even that commonsense approach slowly changed with the unit first sergeants or commanders giving long-winded lectures at formations telling us that your employer was required by federal law to give a person time off so they could report for National Guard duties be it drill weekends or the annual two-week summer camp.

That was absolutely correct, except that I can report first hand that both civilian bosses and coworkers can become quite upset when that requires the former to juggle shift scheduling and the latter to give up their precious deer hunting time so they could cover the person who was away playing weekend warrior. As my troubles mounted for that reason, I learned that while patriotism appears to run miles wide here in the American South, its actual depth is quite shallow.

The Guard only made this situation worse by ramping up participation in events that required a weekend warrior to do extra drills during the same month, extended drills that could go four or five days, extended summer camps going up to three or even four weeks. I will never forget the surly and disgruntled look on a particular boss's face when I told him my National Guard unit was going to Fort Irwin, California for a summer camp that would last twenty-five days. Thankfully, I had already taken my vacation that summer, and my boss also understood my wife was an attorney, which prevented him from getting really stupid. Federal law is supposed to protect weekend warriors from any possible reprisals from civilian employers for doing the required duty but that's simply not how it works in reality. When you add the glories of living in a “Right to Work State” that adds elements of medieval serfdom for the common worker, you get a perfect brew of legal vagueness that makes any supposed protection nearly worthless. Simply put, if a boss gets irritated at a worker for being in the Guard, he or she can essentially cook something up to get rid of them. The same goes for hiring, discounting all the Guard/Employer partnership BS, with a few exceptions most companies will bend themselves into pretzels to avoid hiring members of the National Guard. From my own personal past experience anyone who says different is either a liar or a fool.

For me the straw that broke this camel's back came in 1997. Up to then I had more or less successfully dealt with all the vagaries that had become inherent to serving in the peace time National Guard. Sure, there were several incidents involving both my civilian employers and my wife that left both upset with me. At the same time, the various National Guard units I belonged considered me a person they wanted to keep because I was showing up on time and meeting the required standards. I will admit though, civilian life was taking a small toll on my weight which put me on the “Fat Boy” program at few times forcing me on short term diets.

But it was in 1997 that I finally told the Guard I wasn't going to play the good trooper anymore. Without going all convoluted with details that might just confuse I was involuntarily transferred to a new unit because the one I belonged was grossly over strength while the one receiving me was desperate for warm bodies. The new unit knew I did not hold the required MOS (Mission Occupational Specialty) to perform the job they assigned me, they said that would be corrected at a later date.

Which I took to mean prolonged training sessions during monthly drill weekends, or a quicky qualification course held at a summer camp. I had earned two other MOS's both of those ways since leaving the active army and wasn't opposed to doing it again. Full disclosure here, by 1997 I had a two year-old son and my marriage at the time was running into some difficult waters, so while I was still willing to play the game my first priority was to my family.

That's not what my National Guard unit had in mind. As summer camp for that year approached, my section sergeant, truly a good guy, called me into his office for a meeting. (I'll paraphrase the actual conversation to cover some privacy and avoid needless detail.)

“Sergeant,” he said pushing a folder filled with paperwork towards me, “we've scheduled you to attend the radio repair course, it's sixteen weeks long so you will have to explain the situation to your employer.”

Screw my baldheaded, dickless, anal retentive boss at that time, all I really heard him say was that the course, which I really didn't want to take, would have me away from my family for four months. When you added the usual bureaucratic in-processing time and out-processing, I was looking at maybe another two weeks added to the four months. Given my marital situation at that moment, I might as well gone ahead and hired an attorney and filed for divorce. It was then that I felt that one last straw hit the back of the smelly, obnoxious and grossly overloaded camel.

“No staff sergeant,” I said politely, “ I will not go to this school. I have family considerations and I will not endanger them for the National Guard.”

While my section sergeant was a decent guy, he was totally dedicated to the Guard, to the point that by all rights he should have gone active duty but that is something I will touch on later. Needless to say, my open but polite refusal totally screwed with his brain.

“You know we can't keep you in this section unless you get qualified,” He said back to me.

“No disrespect staff sergeant, but I didn't choose to come to this unit, I was forced. I'll gladly transfer out to another to avoid this situation.”

As they say, my refusal went over like a lead balloon, or a submarine with a screen door attached. While I wasn't officially on any type of shit list, I had certainly become persona non grata to just about everyone involved. My opinion during that time, and even now, was screw the bastards if they couldn't take a joke. I wasn't about to make my family pay the price so a bunch of weekend Rambos could live out their leadership dreams.

The story doesn't end there, yeah I transferred to another unit and once again found myself surrounded by weekend warriors that by all rights should have gone active duty if they truly wanted to realize their dreams of military glory. What I found interesting though was their complete obviousness to the fact that their over devotion to National Guard duty was screwing their civilian lives.

One guy who worked in a retail store came to drill one weekend totally flabbergasted that his regional manager had given him a bad job review. Now this particular individual eagerly volunteered for every extra weekend drill, even the extended ones, and was constantly putting in and getting various active army schools and training courses that took him away from his civilian job for additional periods. The fact that he was quite a smart person but couldn't connect his bad civilian job review with his weekend warrior zealotry just made me shake my head in amazement.

The example that takes the cake belongs to his best friend. This guy was like me in that he worked a demanding factory job at the time which usually had him on twelve hour shifts. Add to that to all the extra Guard duties he volunteered for, just like his best friend, that at times kept him away from home for most of a month. It all came to head late one Sunday evening when he returned to his home only to find his wife standing outside with a suitcase telling him to go check into a motel. 

Of course, I learned this at the next weekend drill where he and several others were on the advance team that would leave a couple of days ahead of the main part of the unit for a five day exercise. That guy was in tears telling me that over the intervening month he had been forced to look for an apartment and move out of his house all the while dealing with his own bosses at work while begging his wife to let him come home. The guy didn't have a frakking clue. Yeah, he and his wife divorced several months later. No joke intended, the last time I heard from that individual he had developed a drinking problem.

You might be surprised to learn that all this happened before 9/11 and the resulting cluster fucks that became the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires. I will not go further to describe how National Guard demands grew exponentially after that, nor how divorces, civilian career crashes, and even suicides followed in the wake. I retired with twenty-one years in 2005, with only my retirement paperwork being put in one month before my unit received orders for deployment saving me from going overseas with them.

The funny thing in all this is that I once had a lazy ass civilian—who not only never served but never even considered joining the military—question my decision to retire. After a few words explaining that while I hadn't given as much as some Americans, I sure as hell had done a lot more than most I punched the guy in the face. Personally I know violence is never the answer, but damn, that felt good.

To be perfectly honest, I've been out over ten years now and there are times I still dislike civilians as much as I did when I was an active duty soldier.

The Mystery of the Phantom Army Commendation Medal

 The Army Commendation Medal is awarded to any member of the Armed Forces of the United States other than General Officers who, while serving in any capacity with the U.S. Army after December 6, 1941, distinguished themselves by heroism, meritorious achievement or meritorious service.

A couple of weekends ago, I opened up my old army footlocker that had been stowed away in the attic for years and began digging through the contents. Not long before that, my wife had sent me up there to find one of her most precious kitchen appliances that she desperately needed for the upcoming culinary experiments she was about inflict on the family. During my time looking for her motorized utensil, a curious looking instrument that looks disturbingly similar to devices used during the Spanish Inquisition, I saw my footlocker tucked away in a far off corner.

Upon seeing the box I immediately thought of myself as a suburban Indiana Jones exploring a tomb that had been buried and then forgotten for centuries and quickly dodged all sorts of imaginary booby traps and disgruntled natives to safely getaway with the artifact. In truth, I almost killed myself lugging the damn box down the attic ladder but that doesn't sound as good as me playing the intrepid tomb raider. Once free of possible spousal interference I moved the box to the bedroom and opened it up.

I had literally forgotten what I had stowed away inside the thing and spent several minutes emptying it out while sorting the contents on the floor. It was mostly military paperwork stuff from my mediocre career, several books that at one time I had felt the need to keep, and other minor mementos such as a collection of pictures from those years.

One of the first things I saw once I lifted the lid was my active army DD-214 which lists all the details of the four years I played full-time soldier. A vital piece of my past, but my attention was quickly drawn to a few of the photographs from that same period that I should have destroyed long ago.. These photos showed a side of my behavior that would surely confound my wife and children if they ever saw them. A good many people in my family tend to think I have always been a mild-mannered guy who preferred a good book or movie to the life of a twenty-something party animal.

Figuring continued discretion was far better than anyone seeing these odd examples of my younger days, I moved quickly to hide the photos until I was ready to again store the footlocker away. During that time my daughter, Darth Wiggles, found my DD-214 and started reading the information listed on the paper.

My daughter asked me several questions concerning the information on the DD-214 including the part listing the various awards I had earned. Given that this covered my active army years during peacetime, the list was not all that impressive except for one.

“Daddy,” my daughter began while still looking at the form, “what did you do to earn the Army Commendation Medal?”

Now this is where we begin to delve in a real mystery. “Sweetie,” I remembering the first time I noticed that strange item, “that is a long and complex story.”

***

My active duty enlistment ended in July of 1990 and while I had ultimately earned the rank of sergeant (E-5) a combination of things had made me to decided to leave the army and take another path in my life. The first was that my grandfather had recently passed away and I simply wanted to go home and start college. The second was that the Cold War was over and peace and love were breaking out all over the world.

What that last statement meant was that both the president and congress at the time were already talking about cutting the size of the military to save money and while I was good soldier I had absolutely no desire to get caught up bureaucratic bloodbath that was about to take place. To break it down even further, since warm international fuzzies were floating through the halls of power everywhere there was going to be far too many soldiers in the army without a real reason to wear the uniform. Of course, all that was preempted in August of that year when our good friend Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait causing Daddy Bush to begin the largest mobilization and deployment since the Second World War, but I didn't know that in July of 1990.

One of the last things you have to do to out process from the army at Fort Carson was visit the Personnel Service Center¹. It was there that the final paperwork was processed allowing someone to rejoin the civilian ranks, and one of those valuable forms was my DD-214.

It was getting late in the afternoon on a Friday when I finally got a chance to review my DD-214. Since I was never one to even consider being a “PX warrior²” I immediately notified the cute young lady handling my case that there was an award on the DD-214 that I had never earned. Having an unearned Army Commendation Medal on my record was something I wanted corrected but I ran into a rather huge issue.

“Yeah, if you never received the award it needs to be taken off,” the cute brunette said looking at the form while sitting at her desk. “The only problem with having it removed is that the guy who does that left early and we will all be off Monday, so you'd have to come back Tuesday morning.” She told me as I stared into her ice blue eyes.

Long story short, before she and I got down to business we had spent twenty minutes talking and I was getting an overwhelming vibe that she had a personal interest in me. Had we met any other time during my stay at Fort Carson I would have quickly asked her out but that bitch bad timing was once again playing hell with me getting laid. First and foremost, as of that day I was no longer a soldier which meant I had no real reason being on post and secondly, my youngest brother would be arriving at Colorado Springs airport in a couple of hours to ride home with me in my car.

Cute brunette notwithstanding, not only was I sure my brother would immediately want to get on the road heading home, I had no real strong desire to hang around until Tuesday only to spend hours at the PSC to have them fix some paperwork they screwed up in the first place. Then again, I admit the way that brunette was looking at me along with her alluring smile I often think I made a huge mistake. We continued to talk for several minutes all the time knowing I couldn't ask my brother to hang out at a motel for the weekend while the brunette and I hung out at her apartment playing energetic doctors with each other. So I grudgingly left after we both figured I could get the DD-214 corrected at the National Guard unit I would be joining.

Well, that didn't happen either for several reasons. The main one being that once I returned home to South Carolina I had a dozen other things on my must-do list like getting registered for college and cruising Myrtle Beach's, infamous Ocean Boulevard looking for a replacement for the brunette chick back at Fort Carson. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I really should have asked the unit clerk at my national guard unit to look into that award.

About ten years later I got a call from my national guard unit saying that I had enough promotion points to make staff sergeant. These points came from a whole range of things like PT score, MOS competency tests, weapons qualification, and of course, all my awards. As you might be able to guess, to make the required points my phantom Army Commendation Medal had to be included in the calculation.

When I told the unit clerk about my curious situation the dude's head about exploded. People who have the dubious job of managing army paperwork for a unit have to deal with a stress level on par with someone working as an air traffic controller for a major airport. Not only do they have to contend with both active duty and state level bureaucratic red tape, a whole spectrum of regulations, but they have all sorts of part-timers coming in and whining about stupid shit like mysterious awards on their DD-214.

Despite it all, the unit clerk said he would research the origins of my Army Commendation Medal to make sure it would be included in my promotion packet. To help him narrow things down the clerk began asking me questions as to what I might have done to have someone fill out all the convoluted paperwork required for such an award. There was literally only one instance that might explain how that award ended on my record.

***

For you civilians I need to do a brief introduction to one aspect of army life. Most everyone with an IQ over 70 should understand that members of the American armed forces fall into three categories. The first are officers like lieutenants, majors, colonels, and assorted generals. The second group, under the officers, are called non-commissioned officers more widely known as various types of sergeants. Lastly are the enlisted which to keep things simple run from private (E-1), the lowest of the low, to a glorified rank called specialist (E-4). No, you don't want me to explain the rank of specialist, nor the history that lead to its creation. Just understand that those soldiers I've classified as enlisted are the guys and gals at the bottom of the hill who receive all the proverbial shit that rolls down that steep slope.

In each army unit there is a senior officer and a senior non-commissioned officer. While at Fort Carson I served in the air defense battalion whose task it was to protect all the dumb ass tankers, cannon cockers, infantry grunts, and assorted support troops in the Fourth Infantry Division from all those nasty aircraft the commies would throw at us if the balloon went up.

This is where I introduce the senior non-commissioned officer of my battalion, Command Sergeant Major Robert Davis of Detroit, Michigan. CSM Davis is/was a mountain of man who after growing up in the Detroit slums went on join the army and serve two combat tours in Vietnam. This man was so bad ass if a movie were to be made about him Samuel L. Jackson might have just enough force of personality to play him. To say freshly minted second lieutenants fresh out of ROTC, West Point, or OCS were terrified of him would be a criminal understatement. This guy was so tough there was a rumor that CSM Davis came down so hard on one second lieutenant that tried to correct him once that the young man eventually ran off crying and tried to resigned his commission the next day.

Yes, CSM Davis was a mean SOB who absolutely came down like a ton of bricks on any soldier that he felt was not living to army standards. On the other hand, with his combat experience and years of service if I had to go to war he was the man to follow. Even with his experience, expertise, and obvious accomplishments CSM Davis did have his flaws. The one that blared out to any unbiased observer was that for his personal entourage he surrounded himself with stereotypical “yes men.” I discovered this the one time I got invited to one of Davis' enlisted soldier meetings that overflowed with snacks and beer. When CSM Davis told a joke the members of his entourage all laughed precisely at the moment he finished talking and almost surgically stopped thirty seconds later.

Call me slow, but I usually have to run the joke through my head for a second or two and believe it or not my delay to laugh was noticed by Davis. “What's wrong Private Johnson,” he asked me as I not only didn't laugh quick enough but stopped before the rest of the group.

Seeing the look on his face, I quickly answered nothing at all and tried to play along. No, once the meeting was over I was never invited back again. It didn't bother me, not saying I'm special but I've never been one to go along with a group just to fit in with others. While not becoming a member of the sergeant major's entourage, I nevertheless continued to play soldier and went about my normal duties. Not to sound paranoid there were times though whenever I was around CSM Davis that I got the feeling he was giving me dirty looks.

The second curious thing about CSM Davis, which has an important part to play in this story, was his total opposition to awarding Army Commendation Medals. The way he explained it was that with it being peacetime, this being the mid-1980's, as far as he was concerned one of the troops in his battalion would only receive one of those award once that soldier proved he could walk on water. Being true to his word, as long as he was in the battalion CSM Davis shot down every attempt to award an Army Commendation Medal to anyone. Which makes the one that showed up on my records all the more strange.

One of the things air defense types like me did for training was to have live fire exercises where we got to shoot the various weapons systems our battalion had in its inventory. There was one particular live fire that was especially fun for me and six other guys because we got to shoot the Stinger missile.

The Stinger missile looks sort of like the old bazooka from World War Two and uses an infrared tracking system in the head to “see” and catch aircraft before it explodes. Even in the 1980's it was a fantastic weapon as numerous Russian pilots found out in the skies over Afghanistan once it blew up their helicopter or jet. Since we didn't have any Russian aircraft to shoot down like Afghan fighters, we had to settle for live fire exercises using what the army called called ballistic aerial targets (called Bats) that in actuality were just glorified bottle rockets.

The Bat would be launched into the sky with the Stinger gunner going through the various procedures to activate, lock-on, and then fire the weapon with the missile being boosted out of the tube several meters before the main rocket motor ignited.

Of course, unless we're talking really big rockets what goes up into the sky has to eventually come down. Especially when the Stingers missile hit the target Bat causing it to rain down in flaming pieces to start numerous fires downrange. Making things even more fun was that during the live fire I got to shoot my missile that summer had been hot and dry giving all the vegetation an excuse to explode into the flames.

By the time the exercise was over there was enough smoke rising up into the sky to clearly give the impression we had serious wildfire developing. My platoon sergeant, SFC Blackledge, seeing something had to be done fast grabbed every soldier he saw and loaded us up into trucks with the purpose of going downrange to fight the fires. Not only was I one of the soldiers grabbed but also the sergeant major's driver, a Specialist Padget, who looked upon his chauffeur job as a blessing since it usually meant he never spent more than a couple of hours out in the field. See, Padget was man ahead of his time in many way, not only was he an expert ass kissing yes man but his delicate nature and excessive concern over hair gels and clean hands made him a poster child for the metrosexual movement decades before the concept was ever invented. No he wasn't secretly gay, if anything the guy had women crawling over him but I had absolutely no idea why someone so worried about getting dirty ever joined the army.

In addition to being a yes man, Padget tended to look down on everyone else who was his rank or lower. With that type of attitude it made him quite popular with everyone having to live with the twit. It was generally known that Padget's attitude came from being raised in a upper middle class suburb somewhere outside Los Angeles. This upbringing had somehow translated into believing people from other regions of the country were somewhat deficient. But the great thing about being the sergeant major's driver meant no one would ever say anything about his behavior.

Once we reach the first of the fires, SFC Blackledge had everyone grab shovels, axes, and these weird things that looked like giant fly swatters and start trying to get things under control.

“Wait a second, Johnson,” Blackledge said to me as I was about to run off carrying a shovel. “I need someone to stay with the truck and listen to radio, Range Control has a helicopter with a water bucket coming in and we need to know when they will drop.”

That one statement bummed the the living shit out of me. I had grown far more excited about fighting the fires that I can easily explain and wanted to do my part in the emerging battle. Thankfully Specialist Padget was still hovering around and in a backhanded way did me a favor.

“I'll stay with the radio,” he said with a clearly wavering and uncertain voice.

SFC Blackledge was not a man to be trifled with and even though everyone was immediately needed to bring the fires under control he wanted to know why Padget was volunteering, something he positively never did anywhere or anytime. “Why do you want to stay with the radio Padget? He asked while staring at the poor excuse of privileged suburban upbringing.

“It's because I'm scared, sergeant,” Padget blurted out in an honesty that caused SFC Blackledge to shake his head in dismay.

“Johnson, go ahead and join up with the others,” Blackledge said to me, “young Padget and myself are going to have a conversation.”

For the next four hours I had one of the best times in my life. Not only did I get to play wilderness fire fighter but was on the receiving end of several water dumps from helicopters and a fixed wing aircraft. Yeah, this will be a total dick thing to write, but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy seeing Padget in what looked like serious trouble.

After things calmed down, SFC Blackledge gathered everyone in the fire fighting detail together to board the vehicles for the ride back to the unit. About the same time CSM Davis' vehicle appeared with Blackledge immediately walking over to talk with the Davis. SFC Blackledge then called Padget over to the sergeant major who dismissed the guy temporarily filling in as his driver, thus beginning an epic ass chewing. Once or twice during this impromptu disciplinary discussion, Blackledge pointed over in my direction with the sergeant major also studying me like one might a new type of bacteria.

As with anything these days, the whole affair was soon totally forgotten. The entire battalion went back to the usual training with Padget returning to his cushy job as the sergeant major's driver, although it was clear the relationship between those two was clearly strained. All the Stinger gunners for that live fire, including me, received a minor award for our efforts. Proving the old army adage that when you screw up, you move up Padget was eventually promoted to the rank of sergeant, far earlier than normal, and got another cushy job up at division headquarters.

All I can figure about that Army Commendation Medal is that maybe CSM Davis was so pissed off at Padget's cowardice that he put me in for the award as a way to punish his ass kissing driver. Believe it or not, this sort of makes sense since CSM Davis was the type of person to screw with a soldier but since I was not part of his entourage he could have easily just forgot about the whole episode as the days and weeks passed.

In the long run it didn't matter, the clerk at my national guard unit could never find any documentation concerning the award so it couldn't be used for my promotion to staff sergeant. But on the other hand, it was never removed from the copy of my DD-214 I received when I retired from the national guard in 2005. So where it came from I haven't a clue, this minor mystery did bother me once with the only alternative I can think of is that it was a simple foul up by some bored paper pusher.   

1Before some authority freaks out I'm not entirely sure that is the right name for the place that in-processed arriving soldiers and out processed those like me. I have simply forgotten the name but Personnel Service Center is close.

2A PX warrior or PX soldier is a sorry ass piss ant that purchases awards and special badges to wear on their uniform while never having earned them. During my time in the army being caught do such a thing could get a person in severe trouble. From what I've heard to pull a stunt like now the consequences are far worse now.

Embracing the Darkness

Those who have never worked the night shift for an extended period of time will never know the incredible frustration of trying to sleep during the day when the vast majority of their fellow human beings are going about their daily lives. More importantly, people who work normal daytime jobs will never know the warm and comforting embrace of the night as the darkness guides them to a much needed deep slumber.

I really don't want to think about how many years I have now been working night shift but I will tell you that it all began right before President Obama took office. The circumstances of my nocturnal exile are unimportant but with Fate's fickle finger being what it is I have long since accepted both the good and bad aspects of my assigned working hours. The one thing that is different is how I now view the all encompassing blackness of the night.

I'm not sure how this will sound but not too many years ago I was the type of person that needed some form of nightlight to keep sense of my where I was in both time and space. It had nothing to do with being scared of the dark nor the fear of any mythical boogeymen that are suppose use the night to their advantage. The best way I can describe my past predicament involves an event back when I was in basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas. My unit was in the closing days of basic and we were out in the field learning the practical applications of many basic soldiering skills. One of them was sleeping in old fashioned army pup tents.

For the sakes of all unfortunate soldiers, I pray to an inattentive god that those things have long since been replaced with something at least slightly more advanced. But army pup tents were essentially two pieces of canvas--generally called shelter-halves-- snapped together and supported with six wooden poles, a couples short pieces of rope, and a few stakes to keep it all in one place. Once erected and secured in place pup tents theoretically would provide shelter for two full ground soldiers and their gear. The general design of the pup tent has been around since the nineteenth century and if you took in consideration how badly the damn things leaked when it rained you would assume that was also when all of then were made.

Despite the insistent leaking and a troubling inability to shelter anyone from a cold wind, once the sun went down they were pitch black inside when all the snaps were together. That was the situation really early one morning when my training unit's Drill Instructors went on a mad rampage. They wanted everyone up and ready to move out in some ungodly short period of time way before the sun's edge even peaked over the horizon. I had no problem waking up, the trouble came as I tried to determine which way was up and down, left and right since I literally could not see the hand I had placed just an inch in front of my face.

The other young trooper sharing the tent with me did have a problem waking up so he wasn't any help. Long story short, yes, I was lost inside my small tent and pretty much destroyed it trying to get outside. Through the years there have been a few other instances of me suffering through darkness-induced spatial disorientation but except for a few painful stumped toes and one collision with the bathroom door during a local power outage but nothing like that time at Fort Bliss. Mainly because I always had some small light on to keep me properly oriented.

Of course, there isn't any possibility of suffering through a darkness-induced spatial disorientation episode for those of us who have the glorious privilege of working at night. The truth of the matter is that you don't really sleep during the day, with normal humans going about their daily chores the best a third-shift worker can hope to accomplish is to take extended naps. Now I admit during the winter months the situation borders on the tolerable with the sun coming up later and most yard work related activities having ceased because of the cooler weather. The difficulties during the summer months run the gambit of overactive neighbors using lawnmowers. leaf blowers, weed whackers, and my favorite high-pressure washers. This last one just doesn't just make a hell of a lot of noise, if the acoustics and ground conditions are just right pressure washers can transmit vibrations. I write from experience because I have a work-at-home prick for a neighbor who pressure washes his cement driveway once a year. Now throw in delivery trucks with a bad muffler, the occasional evangelical nutcase who knocks on the front door desperate to save your soul, and of course telephone calls and you can understand why I say night workers just take extended naps.

All that is why I have come to embrace the all-encompassing darkness on my nights off. Just this Friday night I went to bed around nine o'clock pm after having opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan to draw in the cool night air. What first hit me was not the darkness but the near utter silence. Except for the sounds of a few nocturnal insects and a distant set of wind chimes moving with the breeze it was so silent it seemed surreal. Neither my wife nor my daughter have ever had the issue with total darkness that I did so when they go to bed all the lights in the house are turned off. That is when the darkness seems to engulf me and I slowly sink into a restful oblivion.

It doesn't quite end there, see when your body's circadian rhythms are screwed up you can't really sleep completely through the night. I myself wake up at least three times a night but after looking at my alarm clock and realizing the time the darkness quickly rolls back in to comfort and lull me back to sleep. It is during those times that I dream. I have no idea about the mechanics of dreaming or the different levels of sleep but on those nights when I am home I even seem to dream differently.

When Sunday morning arrives all I can do is prepare for the return to my normal work schedule. Which means around noontime I have to lay down for a nap to get ready to start my shift. Returning to work is an utter waking nightmare, that first night even thinking is hard making mundane tasks seem like solving equations for quantum mechanics problems. About the only thing that gets me through the week is the knowledge that the coming Friday night the darkness will welcome me again.

Divided Germany in Autumn

Climbing into the way-back machine for me I remember some of the trip Uncle Sammy sponsored for a huge number of my fellow American soldiers and myself in August of 1987. I hadn't been at Fort Carson for more than two months playing full-time soldier when I was approached by a couple of non-commissioned officers of another unit in my battalion about joining them on the Return of Forces to Europe (REFORGER) exercise they had been tasked with.

If there is one avenue of posts and stories that I have not tapped it is that three month period where I learned the full meaning of the phrase about travel broadening the mind.

If I remember correctly we flew directly into Rotterdam, drew equipment at a preposition site then drove like bats out of Hell into Northern Germany. So much that bathroom breaks seemed to have been forgotten until one goofy kid from South Carolina couldn't take it anymore and pulled over and let it fly in front of scores of good Deutshlanders, fellow troops, and a television crew filming our convoy.

Many other sad and fun adventures followed during my three months in Europe. Including a night a platoon of Britsh troops, captured, stripped naked, and tied an American officer to a tree. Almost resulting in an American three-star general declaring war on them in the middle of war between the evil "Orange forces" out to conquer Germany from the east and the heroic "Blue forces" out to stop the Slavic hordes.

But the most revealing part of the trip was my visit to a concentration camp and the Inner German border. Not the Berlin Wall mind you, I didn't get that far by no means but the segment I saw was no less menacing.

It was late September and all the training and after action reports and reviews were over for the most part for the lower enlisted like myself. Our days were spent doing maintenance on the equipment we we would be turning in, hanging out in the various circus-sized tents watching movies or eating, or doing our level best to make time with female troops who being generally out numbered had developed a very cynical and choosy side to what male troops they would have sitting next to them "holding hands".

Still though, our great benefactor Uncle Sammy saw fit to cough up funds for visits to relatively near-by places. I got to see Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Nothing of the camp itself survives because liberating British forces had to burn the buildings down due to disease. All we saw in 1987 were mounds with brick memorials in front noting how many bodies were underneath. All supernatural jokes aside, walking those paths and seeing those mounds covering literally thousands of bodies you had to be soulless not feel the presence of those victims of a twisted madness not beside you. And no, somehow I missed seeing the tombstone-like memorial to Ann Frank.

The other trip I took during those days was to the Inner German border. When we got off the bus for that visit we were immediately greeted by West German border police who gave us ignorant Americans a brief history on the "wall" and what their mission was overseeing their side. We were also strictly told that when we saw the East Germans that we were to say absolutely nothing and make no gestures to them what so ever. After that we were shown the actual border and at first I was severely underwhelmed. What we at first saw was a simple rope barrier about a foot off the ground where the West German police talked so more about how many barriers there was from that point eastward. We couldn't see anything really at that point because of a grove of trees blocking our view.

As we had been briefed though five or ten minutes later two armed East German soldiers came out for the trees and to my surprise took several pictures of my entire group. I have to admit, that sort of freaked me out at the time and even now I wonder about what paranoia purpose those pictures served. Even now I can picture some Karl Rove looking character in a near-by depressing gray DDR office smoking a bad cigarette looking over those pictures trying to find the face of some super-spy among the collection of stupid and young American faces.

After the East German soldiers pulled back from where they came we were escorted to a raised platform that if I remember correctly actually sat beside a ravine offering a panoramic view of East Germany. All the barriers and obstacles on the pamphlet above could be clearly seen, thrown in for good measure was some sort of commie jeep headed for one of the watch towers.

Given the times, and remember this was two years before the Wall fell, I had a very surreal feeling knowing that the place I was standing at that moment could at the drop of a hat become the front-line for the Third World War. While all sort of warm fuzzies were building even then for the ultimate ending of the Cold War it would not have taken much, a stupid military commander and/or politician somewhere in the world, to have the tanks rolling and the luftballons going up.

Especially strange for me was to see a seemingly empty village on the east side leaving me to wonder if people even leaved there and if they did what sort of people lived there so close but yet so far from the West.

Our visit to the border ended fairly quickly and I'd like to say that my fellow soldiers were as equally taken back with both the view of a oppressed land and the realization of how damn lucky we were to live in a place that despite its numerous faults was lightyears better when compared to the lands we saw stretching eastward. However, all the talk on the bus consisted of the normal stuff twenty-somethings guys talk about when forced into a sparse female environment. In the end I guess that is what freedom to a large extent is all about.

On a closing note this post was "inspired" by the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Watching the television pictures two years later of Germans climbing on top of the wall that only weeks before would have gotten shot was beyond amazing. I don't think many realize or at least remember now that conventional wisdom from all the highly educated diplomatic, geo-political, and military types said that the only way that wall would come down would be under the force of tanks with mushroom clouds spouting all around.

Since then I have heard more times than I want to count conspiracy theories about "New World Orders". Hell, an important part of the History Channel's programming are shows about various conspiracies involving shadowy figures controlling things. But maybe, once all the self-aggrandizing crap by the political ideologues and conspiracy theorists are boiled away, a large segment of people realized how stupid and oppressive the system they were living under was and decided they would not take it anymore.

Nah, such an event would be giving credit for commonsense to the masses and would be a bad example since in my opinion the menace of Communism has been replaced by the religion of voracious hyper-capitalism, and the billionaires doing "God's work" wouldn't want their special status upset.