I am writing this right before I head to the FOB, a mock-up
of a forward operating base installed right here on Ft Dix, NJ. It has big canvas 16-person tents, shower
trailers, guard towers, everything you would want in a FOB. However, I have to get this out before I go
as there is no internet in the FOB. Not
that conditions are super Spartan or anything, the Army just didn’t pay the
wifi bill. War is hell.
Camp Arifjan in
Kuwait won’t be like that at all, it is more like a large city than a remote
base so I will be sure to have access to the internet - if not in my box in the
desert than certainly in the Starbucks.
We are not savages after all.
I think I have either stayed the same weight or gained a
little. The food here at Ft Dix is
outstanding, far better than anything I ever had on any ship or Navy base so no
matter how much I work out or run around doing Army training I think I am just
treading water. The killer is the frozen
yogurt, because they also put out strawberries, peaches and other canned fruit
that you can ladle all over it and then top with whipped cream. One night both frozen yogurt machines went
down, that was a tough one. Everyone
knows that when the LT gets his dessert he is a far happier man than when he
goes without, so the Chiefs run recon now to make sure everything is up and
running. One night a Chief actually took
the bag out of the machine and cut it open at our table, an ice chunk had
stopped up the nozzle. Navy ingenuity at
its finest.
I find myself getting used to some of the Army terminology. It is still a lot like talking to an Aussie
or something, you think you have the thread of the conversation then some words
get used that don’t seem to have the meaning that you are used to and you get
completely lost. For instance, “contact”
in the Navy is a blip on the radar, something you have identified but you don’t
necessarily know what it is. You might
say ‘I have a contact bearing 250, range 4 miles”. In the Army, contact means something that is
shooting at you. We were playing at
convoy operations, and every time one of the sailors would say something like “Contact
at 3 o’clock” the Army guys would get all hyper. We have to keep explaining that we are in the
Navy, and things are different in the nautical world. I like a lot of the phraseology, it can be
very colorful. Someone smart is high
speed, the opposite is a crayon-eating bastard.
Hook and pile is Velcro, a sliding fastener is a zipper. They are fond of saying “too easy” or “easy
day” or “tracking” in response to a request.
The one I don’t like is “hooah” which can mean anything but no. An instructor might be giving a lesson and
pause every 30 seconds or so to say “hooah”, as if saying “can you see the
subtle difference here?” to which you
are supposed to respond “hooah”, responding that you do in fact appreciate the
finer details of defilade. I have tried
to ban our sailors from using it, but it can be so mindless that sometimes they
forget.
Anyway, we will be back early next week. After that it is straight downhill, we “validate”,
have a couple days off then take about a month to fly military air to Kuwait. I have been trying to pull a lot of info out
of the folks already there, it sounds like it should be an interesting
time. I am going to be the Company
Commander of Alpha Company. It is a
mission the Navy has been performing for years, so everything is pretty
institutionalized. I’ll ease on in and
see what there is to see.
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