Memoirs written in prose of Sergeant Robertson, Damon M. USMC while in Iraq | ...with frequent appearances of King Hammurabi.
If you are new to this journal, make sure to start reading in chronological order by scrolling down to the bottom of the oldest post in October 2004. Damon's letters from August 20th, 2004 - October 23rd, 2004 were all added to this blog on Oct. 23rd, 2004. All subsequent letters are posted in real time.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Re: Hammurabi, USMC - DMR
When the Poop hits the Prop. (that's the kosher way of saying s* this the fan, mind you, and also notice the airplane reference with "prop" as being specific to my current situation). Everyone Gets Crapped on. A lyrical essay in as many parts as there are free-floating particles after the aforementioned and fateful collision. ... Keeping a positive attitude can save your life. But let's be honest. Some things really do just suck. There's a PFC (private first class) in our barracks who, everytime she sees me, says "oh, it's Mr. Positive again," and I'm not quite sure what to say. I explained to her once that no matter what chose to call it, a "turd, for instance, will still smell. Exactly like a turd. It will still get stuck in the tread of your combat boots, if not somewhere else." These are the days pragmatism falls short. When you're trying, in the early morning over your first cup of coffee, to remind yourself that "you know, this really isn't all *that* bad" and then without fail you hear something from the chain of command, like "you are all required to attend three hours of safety briefings after shift today." And that, honestly, isn't so bad. But you get to the chow hall after shift, rush through another meal, get back to the barracks after counting rifles two times to make sure no one lost theirs... [no one in my company ever has... they just make us count them like a bunch of recruits, as though you could forget the worthless piece of metal you've been carrying around here for the past several months... i'm not sure i'm going to ever get rid of mine short of highly dangerous and invasive surgery to remove it like a gangrenous limb] end up in a room with other loud smelly dudes who have half an hour with nothing to do. You'll think someting like "I want to throw this damn rifle out the window, follow it, and then run screaming to the mosque and jump into the spring water there." It's about 40 degrees outside and as detailed in previous emails, the water smells like farts. But you feel just crazy enough to do it anyway, in full gear, and then maybe run six miles because you just can't get away from the BS... What is this, you wonder... psychologists call this "acting out," or at least the temptation to act out. Why act out? Why does sanity fail us in these critical times? Sanity doesn't work. Your brain is trying ever so hard to make sense of something that doesn't make sense, and it's willing to try "insanity" as a defining criterion. [i.e. they made us attend three hours of class but we will, WILL be chewed out today for not field cleaning our rooms at the same time and in the same respect. We will be punished for following directives, then coming home to get four hours of sleep before returning to 13 more hours of work. They will call us lazy, nasty, and all sorts of other things because we didn't field day during the last few hours of sleep time we had left. We are weak, worthless pieces of s*. There is no other way to describe our frail mortality.] "Hell is the impossibility of Reason." --Charlie Sheen (and probably someone smarter than him before) ... So we leave the theater, having droned through three hours of things that none of us will remember. I will tell you the idea of suicide is never so appealing as when I'm forced for the um-teenth time in my short years of service to watch the suicide prevention video... again... "does this make twice in 6 months?... ARRGH!!!" Also, when the theater temperature is about 40 and I keep my beanie on to save body heat, and some yick yack officer in a row behind me says in the Standard Abusive (tone of condescending authority) "Take your cover off inside, Devil Dog!" OH. I'M SO SORRY. I THOUGHT I WAS IN A WAR ZONE AND PETTY RULES DIDN'T MATTER... Oh, yeah. I'm at Al Asad. I'm a Marine. My bad. I didn't even hide my sarcasm. I'm losing it. We get outside. The Marines are instinctively waiting to be counted by our staff sgt and told when they can start walking the two blocks back to our barracks. One or two ask me what to do. "Move in pairs, not as a group, and make your way back to the barracks." I answer. [keeping them separate keeps them safer from mortars and rockets. bunch up and bunch up dead if Murphy's Law rears its ugly head. Also staying with a buddy keeps both guys out of trouble. Usually. This suggestion of mine made sense. To me.] But, Oh God No. Was I ever wrong. They needed to count bodies and rifles again. Again. DAMMIT for the third time that afternoon we counted rifles and I got my butt chewed "You need to get your head out of your ass and start taking charge!!!" ... duh.... .... I mean, uhhhh.... I thought that's what I did, and here we truly have our conundrum. Micro/Nano management by the staff breeds leadership paralysis in the lower ranks. If no matter what you do, you're wrong, you're never going to want to make decisions because no matter how much thought and experience you bring to the table, there's always going to be someone of greater rank, age, and treachery willing to undermine and destroy your youthful skill and zeal. [no one had given me orders to take a count and I actually do know the men, know they're not stupid and trust them to have their gear, rifles and all. I no longer require them to bring their sanity to work, since it's all useless anyway, and they're never required to use it anyway.] I walked as fast as I could back to the barracks, and having long legs this means I can at least move fast when I want to. There is justice in the universe in this, at least. Crawl in the sleeping bag. Wonder why I don't cry at such frustrations anymore. Wake up today. Repeat. :D "As soon as you make something fool-proof, someone has already developed a better fool." --Jared Robertson (and maybe someone else, but definitely not somone smarter than him)
# posted by chevas @ 8:09 AM 