Raz-zle Daz-zle!

POST-POSTED FOR 30 JAN 2007

"i thought it would have taken longer to see a naked man."
this is an exact quote from a fellow class of 2001 submariner oif conscript, made upon our entering what is to suffice as our new "home" for the next two weeks--as we were met most immediately the the pasty back end of some other poor bastard sharing out lot.

so it was that sunday i settled into those open bay barracks at fort jackson, in north carolina. today i purchased earplugs in the likely vain attempt to silence the nasal-pharyngeal cacophony that has disturbed our sleep the past two nights. the additional creature--er, beastly--incomforts include a series of five shower heads (likewise installed in an open bay) that are meant to service my bunkhouse and the one adjacent... which, should we all desire to snap our towels playfully at one another before a given evolution, would require that nineteen persons rotate through each head. i have taken to showering in the later hours of the evening so that i can at least go to bed feeling hygenically clean, if not emotionally.

seriously.
if you have ever seen the movie stripes, you have viewed the equivalent of a platoon of sailors attempting to acquire some modicum, however small, of army skill... although in our case there are four platoons. it would be humourous if it were not so eminently distressing.

two of the platoons are involuntolds like myself, all taking the shaft of the spear before getting to its "pointy end" (military slang for forward-deployed). the other two are medical personnel. large numbers of each are woefully out of shape, and completely unprepared (because they are completely untrained) for service in a war zone. many strike me as potentially incompetent, and some as perhaps impaired by their age. one strikes me as "special needs".

today, as we were learning how to perform a field tracheotomy with a penknife and a nasal-pharyngeal (yes, that's where i got the word) airway, and how to effect a chest cavity decompression with an 18-gauge needle (needle?! hardly--you can see daylight through those effin' things) to prevent a sucking chest wound from colllapsing a lung, i was struck with how casually attentive many personnel were. that's one crossed "t" away from not coming home.
casually --> casualty, for you engineers.

despite the bitter flippancy that may show itself through my words, i am eating this shit sandwich as seriously as possible; i fully intend to return with all extremities intact, and with no penetrations other than those with which i was born. to that end, i have volunteered myself (i know, navy = never again volunteer yourself, but in this instance i feel justified) to be assigned to a marine unit. i figure, what with every marine being a rifleman, i need to surround myself with as many teufelhunden as humanly possible... better than being surrounded by the weekend warriors, right?
and, these navy bastards scare me.

very full metal jacket... how quaint.