Desert Snow

Okay, so they told me I was going to the desert for a year. They told me it is not like Iraq. My recruiter told me 22 years ago that joining the Army would be a great adventure. All true…

It has been snowed now for three days. This morning it was about 5 inches deep. It is kind of nice. I feel like I am in another world, different from the one I arrived in a half a year ago. It is very difficult to go out to walk to eat though. Not that it is cold but it is not like you can walk down the street to get something eat. You have to watch out for idiots driving a bit too fast splashing through the pot holes. You have to carefully place each step to ensure one of two things does not happen. One, of course is you slip and bust your … behind, two is that you do not step somewhere that is too deep and soak another pair of boots.

So Saturday is special breakfast day. We get a group together and walk down the street to a different Chow hall to eat. They have omletes and what could pass as Egg Mc Muffins from Mc Donalds, if you close your eyes and imagine it.

Anyway with breakfast complete we left and on our way back a LTC told one of our group,” get your hands out your pocket that is why they issue us gloves”. Really set me back as I have not heard anyone corrected for this for 10 or more years. It is an Army standard but it seems to only be upheld by the “regulation readers” and LTC’s who did not forget their gloves. Seems to me that my young soldier who was corrected has more sense than the LTC to keep his hands from getting wet with snow and frost bitten because some LTC who was issued a brain by the US government wanted to boost his ego. As he strutted off there was a murmur in the group that let me know I was not the only one who felt that way.

Sometimes those of us who drive desks lose track of the real soldiers and more often than not, the real soldiers do not understand what it is that we desk drivers do for them.  We are not responsible for beans AND bullets this trip but we are responsible for the most important of the two. A soldier can go without beans for a little while in a combat zone.
My ramblings are over for now.

Pray for the 16