Operation Impending Doom

At the request of someone quite special, this entry has been aptly named, I believe.

Long story short, this has been the single longest week of my entire life. And it's not even over yet.

We've had gear issued to us each day that we've been here, and we finally got our weapons given to us yesterday. And for all those of you that think that it's cool carrying around an M16 all the time, please... let me be the one to burst your bubble.

From the get go, the Chief who was issuing us our weapons said, and I quote, "Don't let these weapons become a burden. Because once they become a burden, you'll become complacent."

Well, within the first hour of getting my weapon, I looked at it as a burden. Not being particularly physically superior, the weapon gets heavy after only being carried for fifteen minutes. Then there's the fact that you have to "clear it" (a fun li'l ritual, lemme tell you) before you go into any building. Add to that the fact that you can't go into select locations with it, either. These locations include the mini-mart, and of course... the bathroom.

To fully clue you all in on how much this sucks, do the following.

Go down to your local grocery store buy a watermelon. Now, carry this watermelon with you wherever you go. Don't bother attaching a sling to it, because you'll never use the sling anyway, except for when you go to eat. Now, go drink a lot of water, or some other fluids. You have to do this because you gotta remain hydrated! And once you have to go to the bathroom real bad, pass the watermelon off onto someone else. If you live alone, go to your neighbor and ask them to watch it for you. If you have no neighbors, I'm sorry to say that you're SOL, as without someone to watch that watermelon for you, there's no damn way you're gonna relieve yourself.

Assuming you've made it this far without your bladder bursting and/or your colon exploding, congratulations. Now, for the next six months, continue to carry this watermelon with you wherever you go, and finding someone to watch it whenever you have to go into a store and/or a bathroom. If the melon starts to rot, replace it. Not because the smell is bad, but because you need the full weight of the melon to fully immerse yourself in the illusion.

If I'm starting to sound pretty disgruntled, or whatever, well... you've got it all wrong, my friend. No, I'm not disgruntled. I'm disillusioned.

You see, when I first got here, everything was grand, because the Army was doing everything that the Navy hadn't been doing. They'd give us instructions once, and that was it. There was none of this repeating shit, because the leadership thought we were too stupid to catch on the first time. It was fantastic. I didn't have to sit through stuff that didn't apply to me on a daily basis.

But then it happened, as I knew it would have to eventually: the Army started repeating itself. The topic? Range procedures.

Range as in gun range.

Now granted, I know that this is a very important topic, and it requires quite a bit of emphasis if the point is to be made.

However, comma, I don't need to hear the four principles of guns and so forth. Why not, you ask? I may be no expert in the field of marksmanship, and I'm no member of the NRA, but quite frankly, I've played enough first-person shooters to know how to hit a target, seen enough movies to know what can happen when the shit hits the fan (i.e., Full Metal Jacket), and I've had some hands-on experience with weapons throughout my entire life.

And today, I managed to zero my weapon in nine shots. Not perfect, but I was in the top three. And for not doing anything that they recommended to ensure I got zeroed, that was pretty damn good.

Granted, I did plant my elbows firmly on the ground. Granted, I did get the sights aligned as I was supposed to. But there was one thing, one very crucial thing that they told me I needed to do that I didn't: I didn't breathe.

They told us all that in order to get those shots where they needed to be, we needed to breathe, and on the end of the exhale, to squeeze the trigger and hold.

But I didn't. Instead, I held my breath the entire time, squeezed the trigger, and held.

And the results on the screen showed that although I didn't get the shots where they were supposed to be (within a 3cm circle), they were closely grouped (within a 1" circle). Needless to say, that was pretty damn good to someone who doesn't pride himself a mercenary.

But I digress.

Since then, the day has improved a bit. We just finished moving into our new barracks, and I've managed to seclude myself away from the others a bit, because we've got larger beds, and larger lockers. So, I've got a bit more of a semblance of privacy than I had. It's just unfortunate that it won't matter but for a small portion of the day.

Still, I'll take what I can get.

In other news, I found out the other day that there's some shit going down in Afghanistan. My confidence in coming back unscathed is waning, as is my confidence in the other positive assumptions I've made for this deployment.

But we'll see.