The Marine Memoirs - Day 022

Day 22
2009-5-17

Let’s begin today’s entry with a little lesson on Afghan deployment living shall we. First off, if you didn’t know already, I live in a tent that exceeds temperatures of one hundred degrees during the day, and could get as low as fifty degrees at night. There exists no happy medium, and I share my tent with over a hundred people. Just imagine that many people, and all their germs and smells living in such a confined place. The Platoon heavies have taken the lead on not doing a single productive thing. Their job consists of having other people establish accountability. Other than that, they just lounge around all day and do nothing. The mascot has been unveiled, and they are currently treating her like the crappy person she’s always been… and it’s about damn time I’d say. Anyway, the shower water is still freezing, but the six mile trip to use the internet makes up for it, because there is no time limit, and it’s fast for Afghanistan standards. I can’t believe how hot it is… and it’s only May. The chow over on the British side has been awesome lately, and we love going there. They want me to retake all of my pre-deployment training, because my training was received prior to 2009. I tried loading a page yesterday, and was eventually kicked out while it was still loading, because some general was about to make an appearance. Junior Marines tend to hate generals, because their heavies train them to. Whenever one is scheduled to make an appearance, all the heavies get their dick sucking faces on and make junior Marines do things they normally wouldn’t do; like mop a floor covered in sand in a combat zone. The most peculiar thing, but expected event of which occurred yesterday, was when the heavies decided to promote me. I’m now the reactionary force commander. Competency prevailed over behavior, because behavior is irrelevant when proficiency is required. I can expect to be walking in excess of ten miles each day, now that I have to go over to the Combat Operations Center every morning and evening to turn in my manifest. There are no missions, and no real reasons to have so many Marines here on base at this point in time. As it is right now, this base can’t accommodate the personnel it has, let alone another ten thousand. There will be water and food shortages soon. The lines and turnaround time for laundry are now ridiculous, so I can only imagine what they will be like going forward. It has been confirmed that the United States will be at an operational pause thirty days prior, and thirty days after the Afghan electoral process. We will serve no purpose for sixty days, so that theoretically everyone is clear that we had no control over how their elections turned out.

I’ve decided to crowd source the ever irksome task of editing and proofreading my book with you guys and gals, so please feel free to make any corrections or suggestions you’d like.