More Silly Bullshit

I haven't posted in a while, I know.  I've been pretty busy, and when I wasn't busy, I was lazy.  Plus nobody pays me for writing this shit, so lay off. Anyway, I decided to do something a little different with this one.  Sort of a photo-essay/bitch session thing.  

It's no secret that the military has a lot of weird rules.  When I first joined, I just accepted a lot of these seemingly arbitrary rules as a necessary evil, or thought that there must be a good reason for them that I was just too inexperienced to grasp.  But it's been more than 24 years now.  As I spend more and more time in the Marine Corps, the more I am becoming aware that there often isn't any good reason for the rules.  This is further aggravated by trying to explain to civilians why I behave the way I do sometimes.  Read the Monkeys, Menswear, and Marines post to get an idea of what I mean.  This time, I'm looking mostly at rules posted on signs, usually at places on base that are run by government-employed civilians.  I'm convinced most of them just come out of the minds of the hundreds of petty tyrants that our bureaucracy has produced, and ought to be eliminated.  To illustrate my points, I took a series of pictures at Camp Lejeune, NC and Quantico, VA.  These are actual snapshots taken with my cell phone.  Enjoy.

Above is an example of a good, logical rule.  This is at Onslow Beach in Lejeune.  I understand why this one exists.  I am in favor of it being enforced and I'm glad this sign is here.

Another example of some great advice being delivered in sign form.

Okay, this one seems like common sense to me, but still good advice.

Important thing to be aware of.

Not sure what we're supposed to do with this information, but it's good to know, I suppose.
(Full disclosure: I didn't take this picture.  I meant to go back and take one, but never got around to it.)

Now, let's get more negative.  The pictures below were taken after I spent a good 15 minutes driving all around the medical clinic at Quantico looking for a place to park so I could go in and get one of the many shots they are always making us get.  Lovely things, like bubonic plague, yellow fever, smallpox, and dozens of others I can't even recall.  If those conspiracy theorists are right, I'm due to catch autism any day now.  But back to my point: Reserved parking spaces for high ranking officers.

For those uninitiated in military lingo, an O-6 is a captain in the Navy or a colonel in the other services.  The "full bird" colonel it's called.

A "flag officer," as these signs are for, means you have to be a general or an admiral to park here.  There were six of these spaces in all.  How many colonels and generals are possibly going to go to this little medical clinic simultaneously?  Add these to the eight or so handicapped spaces, and a big portion of the lot was empty.

 The reason I got pissed off and broke out my camera at the time was because as I was driving past all these empty spaces for the senior officers, I saw a very pregnant young woman with two very small children parking all the way across the street and trying to walk through the whole parking lot to the clinic (strolling through at least 12 empty spaces for handicapped people and generals on the way).  I don't want to attack the Americans with Disabilities Act, at least not here, but the spaces for generals thing just pisses me off.  Aren't these the very people who are supposed to take care of the junior troops?  And it's not just at the medical clinic, either.

Here they are at the gym.  The spaces that is, not the generals.  These spaces are almost always empty.

Seriously, there are only a handful of generals on the whole base.  Do they all really need their own space at every facility?

Here we have the PX at Quantico.  They don't restrict reserving spaces just for generals.  They throw in a few spaces for the high ranking enlisted as well.  about 14 in all.  I think the message here is, "Screw the junior troops."  The words "abuse of position" come to my mind.

 But this post isn't supposed to be all about parking spaces.  It's supposed to be about arbitrary rules delivered via signage.  So let's now take a look at the new multi-million dollar football stadium and track at Quantico.

Pretty nice.

Of special note here is rule #7.  

The CFT referred to in that sign is the Combat Fitness Test, which all Marines must take every Fall.  It consists of several events, including an 800m run, an agility-type course on the football field, and an overhead lift.  Some dipshit decided to spend the taxpayer's money to make this little football field into an astroturfed multi-million dollar facility so that the tiny little Quantico High School football squad would have a place to play that's nicer than where the Redskins play.  That's pretty wasteful, but the part that really bugged me was that they had the audacity to prohibit MARINE CORPS TRAINING on the field.  I guess they don't want the expensive turf to get damaged, so they outlaw the whole reason they needed a track to begin with.  Who's in charge around here, anyway?  It seems they might have forgotten why the base exists.  Hint---it wasn't to facilitate a high school freaking football team.  It's kind of hard to listen to speeches about austerity and how we need to cut back on training ammunition and such while walking around this expensive track with an astroturf field.  How much ammunition could we pay for with what this field cost?  But I digress...

Let's walk back over to the Quantico Gym for a moment, and see what we find along the way...

There's this example of a sign I agree with completely.

And here's another that seems pretty stupid, at the entrance to the weight room area.  No gym bags allowed in the gym?  Instead you are supposed to carry your towel, your lifting belt, your wrist wraps, notebook, and what nots loosely around with you.  No shit, that's what the attendant told me when I asked him.

Good sign usually, but the floor actually wasn't wet, and the only real trip hazard around was the sign itself.  But I'll give that one to them, since maybe it was wet when they put it out there.  Two weeks ago.

DON'T WEAR A HAT IN THE GYM, OR WE'LL LOSE THE GODDAMN WAR.
I like the way they reference the Marine Administrative message, like they are quoting scripture.

There are lots of rules for going to the gym.  Notice that "boots and utilities" are outlawed.  This is the Marine Corps UNIFORM for crying out loud.   I asked why, and was told that the boots would tear up the mats...

But you already can't wear shoes on the mats.  Can't you also take boots off?

Rules for playing raquetball

There are even rules for going outside.

Want to run outside in the fresh air?  Better wear a reflective belt.  It's noon and sunny?  We don't give a shit.

Judging from the number of signs, this is the most important rule of working out in the gym on base.  I brought this up in a discussion with another officer, and he told me he agreed with this sign.  When asked why, he said because it's insulting for a man to wear his hat indoors.  This same man admitted that he wears ball caps indoors off-base all the time.  WTF?

Apparently spitting on the floor is frowned upon.  Urinating on the floor isn't mentioned, so I guess that's fair game.

Take off your damn hat!  Do you want the terrorists to win or something?

So why does any of this stuff matter?  Why am I wasting my time taking pictures of silly stuff like this?  Because I think it is an important indication of how much restriction we put on young Marines.  Some would say that heavy regulation and strict discipline is to be expected in the Marine Corps, and so it's fine.  I agree with them.  The problem is, when you have so many silly rules that it seems impossible to obey them all, and you can discern no reason for their existence in the first place, you are prone to start breaking them.  When you get accustomed to breaking the rules, then the rules themselves lose their power.  That means there is less discipline when there are lots of silly rules, not more.

Lots of First Sergeants are probably going to chime in and say that what we need is more people enforcing these silly rules.  They call it having "moral courage" to go up to a Marine who is choosing to do physical training on his own time and give him shit for wearing a baseball cap or a watchcap.  Maybe it is courageous to stand up for a rule and insist it is followed.  I am all for having rules and regulations, provided they are for a good reason.  I'm also for ruthless enforcement of those types of regulations.

But I think that every time a leader is forced to impose a rule that makes no logical sense, he loses some of his credibility with the led.  So when we make people wear reflective belts in broad daylight and other such nonsense, we make people feel juvenilized and resentful, and we actually are reducing the discipline of the troops.

So my message is this:  1) Have only the rules you need to have, and then enforce them.  2) Eliminate old fashioned and nonsensical rules.  3) Watch discipline improve.

The Fellowship of the Hole

The original members of the Fellowship of the Hole.
I'm the ridiculously handsome one on the left.

Hello again, Dear Reader.  It’s been a while.  You look great! Have you lost weight?  Just kidding, we’re Americans, so you probably haven’t lost weight…  As for me, I find myself in Iraq.  Again.  I’m on what we call an “individual augment” or “IA” for short.  That means they pluck you randomly and out of the blue from whatever life you thought you were leading and stick you somewhere else where the quality of life sucks.  It wouldn’t be so bad if they sent me someplace exciting, you know like with bullets whizzing by in a hot LZ.  But alas, they sent me to another boring staff job, just now I live in a dismal little trailer-type thing with brown linoleum walls.  Being sequestered in Mesopotamia as I am, my usual diversions in life are greatly reduced—I’ve been here 2 months now, and I’m starting to get a little stir-crazy.  So, I felt it might be a good way to pass the time to start writing silly blog posts again.  And here we are.  I’m also trying to learn the ukulele, if you can believe that.  More on all of that later.  What I want to do today is tell you another Marine Corps “sea story,” as we call them, mostly to remind myself of why I still do this stuff.

The Fellowship of the Hole

               When I’m not getting IA’d to butt-fucking Iraq, I have a job in the Pentagon advocating for the combat engineer community in the Marine Corps.  It’s actually an interesting job, and has landed me in some unusual places to watch things explode a few times, which I find most enjoyable.  Almost exactly a year ago, in December of 2017, I had just such an opportunity.  There was to be a huge exercise on the West Coast and as a part of that exercise, 1^st Combat Engineer Battalion (at the time commanded by a good friend of mine, Chris Haar) was going to conduct live-fire amphibious rehearsals with Assault Breacher Vehicles (ABVs), Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), and armored bulldozers on San Clemente Island, off the coast of California.  For the lay-person, that means they were going to land on the beach in tanks and other big armored vehicles and set off really big explosions and do other manly shit.  The Marine Corps has been so preoccupied with chasing little guys in man-dresses around the Middle East for the last 15 years, that we hadn’t really tried this out for real in a very long time—like since 1992.  So it was all very exciting.  I was going to fly out there and observe the exercise, feel the explosions, perhaps remember what it was like to be a real Marine again. 

               The combat engineer community is relatively small in the Marine Corps.  As such, we all tend to know each other, or at least know about each other by reputation.  In this case, I knew personally several members of the staff of 1^st CEB.  A certain couple of officers in particular, I don’t want to embarrass anyone so I’ll assign them aliases—let’s call them “Nate Knowles” and “Eric Spalla,” both of whom I had known for years and had been their instructor twice—once at the Marine Corps Engineer School and once at Expeditionary Warfare School.  Nate was the battalion operations officer (OpsO), and Eric was the executive officer (XO).  They told me everything was going to be taken care of.  In fact, I spoke to Nate on the phone, he said and I quote, “We have a squad bay barracks locked on, so it’s going to be fine.  All you need is your sleeping bag.  Don’t worry about anything else. I got you, sir.”  This last sentence should have been a huge red flag.  I mean, this is not my first rodeo.  But I was so excited to get away from the Pentagon and go watch explosions and hang out with old friends, I totally fell for it. 

               So I flew to San Diego, got a rental car there, and drove up to Camp Pendleton (By the way, San Diego—I love you, but you gotta do something about the rental car situation at the airport.  Seriously.  Who wants to ride a bus for 20 minutes just to begin to get a rental car?).  Once at Pendleton, I got on a Marine Corps plane.  Not just any plane, but a VIP transport plane, like a Gulfstream IV.  Traveling like a rockstar.  So far, this trip was working out great.

 

Straight Pimpin'

               After a short flight, we landed at a tiny airfield on the northernmost part of San Clemente Island.  Now I had never been to San Clemente Island before, but I ‘Google-Earthed’ it, and knew a little.  It’s a long thin island, owned by the US Navy and used mainly as a range for naval gunfire.  It’s just south of Santa Catalina (you know, as in “the fuckin’ Catalina wine mixer”). Then the truck arrived to take me to the SHOBA, short for Shore Bombardment Area, where the battalion commander was.  We drove along for about 30 minutes, and all was well until we entered the gate to the SHOBA, and then the road turned from nice, flat, normal pavement into an absolute nightmare trail.  It was hilly, eroded, and very slow going.  When we started out it was maybe about 3:45 PM, and we entered the SHOBA about 4:15 PM.  It took at least 45 more minutes before we actually arrived at the battalion’s location, a distance of maybe 2 additional miles, so it was now quickly growing dark. 

I got out of the truck, still in a good mood, and found Nate and after some handshaking and friendly greetings, I said “So where’s this squad bay?” He looked at me and said, without even the slightest shame in his voice, “There is no squad bay, sir.” 

I said, “Surely we aren’t driving all that way every day?”

He said, “No sir, we’re staying here,” and gestured around at the collection of two man tents in the area.  “The squad bay up the hill is over-run with rats, so it won’t work. Here’s your flak jacket and helmet.”

I said, “You are a terrible human being, Nate.”

To translate, a squad bay is a type of barracks with one big room filled with bunkbeds.  It sort of sucks, since you share the room with a bunch of dudes who are expelling MRE farts and foot odor everywhere, but it’s at least INDOORS.  I am now totally homeless, in a strange land, and it’s dark.  All I have with me is a steel thermos, some sunflower seeds, a long underwear shirt, a sleeping bag, and an IsoMat (a thin foam rubber mat).  Oh, I also have a pocket knife, some civilian clothes, a cell phone, and a laptop computer.  Unfortunately, there is not even a hint of a cell phone signal down here in the SHOBA, so the phone became only a camera and the laptop wasn’t much good except as part of a pillow.

I get the idea you are not appreciating the position I was just finding myself in…  Let me elaborate.

First off, it’s December and it’s at least 20 miles out into the Pacific Ocean.  And crazy windy.  Like hard-to-stand-up-straight windy.  Everything is rocky and uneven.  And let’s not forget the bombs.

This range is the only place remaining where the U.S. Navy can practice ship-to-shore fires, and has been in continuous use as such for about 80 years—since before WWII.  So there’s a LOT of dangerous junk left around everywhere as a result of this. Things like the expended cases of rockets, shrapnel, flare parachutes, etc.  And let’s not forget the random shell or bomb that failed to detonate, what we call UXO, or unexploded ordnance.  EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) technicians say that roughly 10% or so of explosive projectiles malfunction in some way.  I’ve always thought that estimate to be a little high, but even if it’s only 1%, you can imagine how many that might be in a range this old.  These are things that were meant to explode, and for whatever reason didn’t.  You can also imagine how hazardous that is.  They (EOD techs) periodically go through the range to try to clear out the majority of the UXO, but it’s very difficult to find them, even when they are on the surface, which they may or may not be.  High-velocity naval gunfire shells or even aircraft-delivered bombs that don’t detonate tend to burrow into the ground.  They sometimes do a “porpoise” maneuver, meaning they pop up out of the ground at a seemingly random place away from the point of impact, and just lay there waiting to murder you. 

Caution has never been my strong suit.

As if that isn’t enough, the island is also absolutely COVERED in cactus.  Like 15 different species of cactus, all of which have evil little spines just waiting to find their way into an unsuspecting toe or finger.  Also, as I would soon discover, it is also home to about a billion mice.  And foxes that chase them.  Neither of these two have much exposure to humans, and thus do not always keep the usual respectful distance that I have come to expect from wildlife.  Everything that lives on this island can either bite you, stick you, or stab you.

I wasn’t alone in my predicament.  Some other guys from various places in the Marine Corps had come too, with the same level of preparation as me.  They all came a few days earlier though, riding the ships and landing craft there with the engineer battalion.  So they had the lay of the land already.

After arrival the first night, after talking for a while to all my old friends, I just did the only thing I knew to do.  I found a relatively flat spot, kicked as many rocks and cactus away as I could, spread out my IsoMat and sleeping bag, and climbed in.  That night was pretty miserable.  For one thing my flat spot was not very flat, and angled toward a good-sized cactus.  The wind howled all night long, and when my bladder roused me at about 4 in the morning, I realized that it had blown my backpack down the hill about 20 yards.  The problem was that my boots and trousers were inside that pack, and I was in a field of cactus.  So I climbed down the hill in my underwear and socks (it’s maybe about 45 degrees, by the way), picking my way very carefully and very unsuccessfully through the hazards, to retrieve my boots and then to relieve my bladder.  Afterwards, I spent about an hour removing cactus spines and trying to get warm again in my sleeping bag before the sun came up.

That next morning, I was complaining to my friends about the wind, and that’s when they told me about the hole.  Of course I had seen the hole the night before, but I didn’t realize that’s where everyone else with no real gear or tent was.  Going down the steep sides was out of the question in the pitch dark of the night before, anyway.  But it offered a little protection from the wind, and best of all had a dozen or more concrete slabs, each about 4 feet by 8 feet in size.  Concrete is not usually the first choice as a sleeping surface, but at least cactus can’t grow there.  So I moved in, and thus began The Fellowship of the Hole—the group of seven of us poor souls who wound up living here for a while. 

The Hole

In defense of Nate and Eric, there actually was a squad bay.  There was an abandoned observation bunker complex up on another hill overlooking the area.  We didn’t use it because it was absolutely over-run with mice.  It had showers and toilets, but the running water wasn’t working.  I know all this because I went there.  It held the only phone that worked, so I and the rest of the Fellowship had to go up to it and take turns on the phone to change our flights when the timeline got screwed up.  The whole place smelled like a hamster cage.  The air was so thick with mouse pee that my sinuses were up in arms for hours after that.  One of the other guys told me a story about trying to take a nap here when they first arrived and waking up to find a rat sitting on his chest.  Ordinarily I don’t put much stock in stories like that, but in this case I believe him.

This is the one phone that works, in the rat building.  Doesn't look that bad, but be thankful we can't send smells over the internet yet.

During the day, we would go down to the cliffs overlooking the landing beaches and observe some truly remarkable combat engineer stuff, including everybody’s favorite—the MICLIC, short for Mine Clearing Line Charge.  That's 1,750 pounds of C4 in 3-pound bricks all along a 100 meter rope, fired with a rocket.  This thing is like porn for combat engineers.  The blast it produces has to be felt more than seen to really understand its erection-inducing qualities.  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

Tell me that's not cool...

  I was just enjoying the show.

And a YouTube video that shows it a little closer up.

But those blasts had long intervals of nothing in between, and with cell phones out of commission, what we did most was talk.  To an actual living, breathing human standing right next to you who was actually paying attention.  We talked about anything and everything.  We talked about everything from the texture and odor of our latest poops, to war stories, politics, women, religion…you name it.  Nothing was really off the table.  And in a world where you can’t post a funny cat video on social media without some asshole making it into either a Pro-Trump or Anti-Trump statement, it was quite refreshing.  I mean, guys would still say fucked-up things, but it was to your face, and you could argue back in real time.  And you actually had to sort of listen to the other side in order to participate.  And you also always knew that the other guy might just punch you in the face if you went overboard.  These factors (especially that last one) allowed a certain civility to be maintained during even highly contentious discussions.  A vast improvement over the state of affairs in the anonymous virtual world. 

               The thing I discovered is, your smart phone has been cheating you out of some things.  First of all, you never have to be truly bored.  You can play solitaire, or candy crush, or look at Facebook, or Insta-Twit or any number of a thousand other things besides talking to the guy beside you.  If some crazy person tries to engage YOU in a conversation, you can just sort of smile at them and go right back to your little electronic buddy until they go away.  This lack of boredom seems like a good thing, and it is, but it’s an essential ingredient for things like reading, the arts, story-telling—virtually all forms of admirable human endeavor.  These things are much more rewarding than candy-crush or Clash of Clans or whatever else, but they are on the other side of boredom , and boredom sucks. These types of games and apps are interactive and engaging enough to keep you occupied, sort of, but don’t result in anything useful at all, apart from filling the time you have until your inevitable death with random noise.  As I type all this out, I am fully aware of how smug I sound.  As though I figured out the meaning of life and I’m just letting all you poor dolts in on it.  I also recognize the irony that I’m using those very electronic devices to tell you about this.  If it makes you feel any better, the very instant that internet connection returned, I was right back on my smartphone with the rest of the herd.  I’m like a junkie telling his junkie friends about the time he went to rehab for two weeks and got clean, while in the act of tying off his arm and searching for a fresh vein.

Like crack cocaine, but harder to quit.

               Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that I actually talked to these guys.  A lot.  And I listened to them too.  We didn’t agree on a lot of things, but there’s just something about shared hardship and tall tales that brings men together in a way that is difficult to describe.  Camaraderie is just not a good enough word.  I guess it’s the reason I am still hanging around in this Gun Club, long after I thought I would. 

By the way, I was supposed to be there for a couple of days, but a combination of weather and Nate being a bad human caused me to have to wait and ride the LCAC back to Camp Pendleton with everyone else instead of getting another ride in the pimped-out VIP plane.  Actually, it’s really not fair to blame all of this on Nate.  I’m just doing that to be an ass.  He totally promised me we were sleeping indoors though, so he’s not off the hook.  It’s really just the way things go in the Marine Corps.  We call it getting fucked by the “big green weenie.”  This time it resulted in another night or two in the hole, but also in these cool pics.  And another good story.  So thank you, Big Green Weenie.

 

LCAC coming in for a landing.

Damn, I'm handsome...

What Freedom Sounds Like

We've been arguing about symbols a lot lately.  Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem.  President-elect Trump made a comment that flag burning should be illegal.  The cast of Hamilton gave Mike Pence a bit of a condescending lecture.  And every time, social media lost its damn mind.



Mike Pence had the very best line, however: "I nudged my kids and reminded them that is what freedom sounds like."

My biggest reaction when I saw this? 
That hairstyle means he doesn't expect to have to wear his helmet.

You might not of guessed by my demeanor on this blog, but I am as guilty as anyone of indulging in social media.  But I have an unusual perspective, I think.  I grew up in the rural South, but now I have lived for some time in the D.C./Baltimore area.  I have family and old high-school acquaintances back in Georgia, and I have made several liberal friends.  My personal political philosophy resides somewhere in the middle with the wacky Libertarians, so I don't completely alienate either side into "unfriending" or "unfollowing," the blackballing of the modern age.  Because of this, the stories and articles shared on my Facebook feed are both red and blue, and increasingly, they are more angry on both sides.

Look at some of this stuff I found:

NOW who's throwing out racist stereotypes, Lefty? 
Hello pot?  This is kettle.

You're doing it again...

And Righty weighs in...

And there's the ultimate guilt trip.

I'm no stranger to hyperbole, as this ridiculous blog clearly illustrates, but it seems to me that maybe everyone took the actions of the second-string quarterback for the 49ers just a little too seriously.  People I know to be reasonable and upstanding citizens IRL started calling for his head online.  They posted all sorts of things, but the main tenet of their argument is that Mr. Kaepernick should be forced to (not) kneel before the symbol because VETERANS.  

But--I'm one of those vets.  I know this much--I've been serving a good long time now, but I didn't go anywhere or fight anybody so that I could force an American citizen to pay homage.  That's not the sort of country we are.  Is Colin Kaepernick kind of an asshole for choosing to protest the national anthem?  Yes, kinda, but what sort of country would we be if it was the LAW that you had to bow to the government?  I when I joined the Marines, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, not  the flag, or the president, or even the Marines.  Among the very first rights protected in that document is the right to free speech. 

Then, just when you thought it was safe to go back on Instagram, Giant Douche, full of confidence after his upset win over Turd Sandwich, sent out this tweet:

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!  — @realDonaldTrump

This old guy obviously doesn't get the whole "freedom" thing.

The constitution protects the speech that people DON'T like, because the speech they do like doesn't need any protection. It also protects the speech of the people who want to point out that Colin Kaepernick picked a shitty way to protest, or that flag burning is inflammatory and offensive.  Never mind the fact that the Supreme Court has already addressed this issue (and recently), and found that flag burning is symbolic speech, because--well, because of course it is. 


Apparently, the First Amendment isn't as important to some as the second one is.  Silly me, I like them both. 


Gotta love the beauty of the three-part harmony of America--seldom do all three lose their way at the same time.  Here's Justice Scalia talking about that very case:

https://youtu.be/fHO6IeBOiNE