Much Ado About Nothing

The events of the last few days inspire me to defer the continuance of my treatise on Iraq and Iraqis and instead turn your attention to a lengthy exhortation about nothing at all. My considerable experience with nattering about this nebulous realm leads me to conclude that it is more satisfying in every aspect than having to engage in such mind-numbing endeavors as research and other, more scholarly, undertakings.

First from my stream-of-consciousness discourse is the Army birthday. This past Monday, 14 June 2010, the Army turned 235 years old. If you failed to notice or properly observe this milestone, by all means run to the fridge right now, pop a cold one and offer up whatever suitable honors you deem appropriate. You'll get full credit as long as you complete this task before the next Monday rolls around. They even relaxed the hated General Order #1 and allowed us to have two beers. Cheers!

235 years seems like an awfully long time ago. Before we had Presidents. Before we had states that Presidents could campaign in. Before we had trains that could take a would-be President to a would-be state to campaign in. Before (for you younger folks) Pong was invented. It was in ancient history that George Washington roamed around the east coast with a rag-tag group of (if you ask the British) terrorists, perpetually begging the Continental Congress for more money with which to prosecute the fight for freedom (some things never change).

As daunting as it seems looking through a historical lens, I found it to be even more disconcerting after I whipped out my trusty calculator and determined that I have been in the uniform of this service for 12% of its existence. It cannot have been that long! I'm not that old! It feels more like 12% of MY existence! Damn, it's like waking up one day and realizing you've been married for 30 years, or that you have a 35-year high school reunion coming up soon. Old.

So I'm getting older. Beats the alternative.

I still have white space to fill and no desire to actually work for meaningful words, so I'll tell of a little adventure I had yesterday.

There we were, an intrepid group of staff pukes crossing the feared Red Zone to brief the Big Guy, USF-I commander GEN Odierno at Victory Base. Having traversed said zone swiftly and without incident in the relative comfort of the boss' escorted Suburban, and having successfully made our point and exited the office of the GEN without undue abuse, I and two of my fellow travelers settled in to await the ride back to the embassy complex.

As hard as it may be to believe, somehow wires got crossed, signals got mixed, and suddenly the three of us discovered that the boss left without us. This caused a brief episode of panic as we recalled having left all of our protective gear in the Suburban, without which it is not permitted to traverse, by land or air, the No Man's Land between Victory Base and the embassy. To our very limited relief were we told that they at least had the decency to remove it from the vehicle and leave it in the lobby of Al Faw palace.

So at least were then free to explore options for returning. Thanks to the very charming and able assistance of an Air Force major in Al Faw we quickly secured seats on a CH-47 helicopter, leaving late enough for us to go enjoy a leisurely dinner before heading to the airfield. As we were preparing to jump in a vehicle to catch the flight, we noticed one of the USF-I 3-star generals loading up into his Suburban to leave. We figured there was a good chance he was headed to where we wanted to be, but rather than ask we agreed that we preferred the helo ride, since none of us had previously flown in a Chinook.

I mean, what could go wrong? For starters, the stop you want on your flight gets nixed from the itinerary. The birds came in and they departed on time, but we were again left behind as they no longer saw fit to make the desired stop enroute to wherever they were destined. No big deal. There are two Blackhawks due an hour later that will get us to where we want to go, so we manifest on them. We wait in an overheated tent, reading bad books and watching fuzzy TV, and, as our roll call approaches, we learn that entire flight was cancelled.

Now we are well and truly hosed. It is 2130 at night, travel options are gone, and we need a place to sleep. Once again the kindness of others gets us a room for the night and a ride to the PX where we can pick up some toiletries. Turns out a "room" is really this mega-CHU with two bunk beds, which isn't all that bad. But the mattresses are just slightly better than a rug on a gravel floor and the pillow only marginally more appealing than a 50-lb sack of potatoes. But by now it is about 2300, and it all looks marvelously cozy to us. I'm pretty sure we were all asleep when, about 30 minutes later, another group shows up to occupy the adjoining CHU, which is actually just the other half of the same container we're in with a thin intervening wall.

Through some quirk of ironic fate, our CHU was quaintly termed "The Mardi Gras." But the party showed up next door. Lots of door slamming and loud talking, most annoyingly from some dude that could easily reprise the role of Gomer Pyle. The old fun-o-meter is registering dangerously low levels when all eventually gets quiet and we manage about four hours of sleep, at which time we quickly shave and shower and head to the appropriate parking lot to catch a Rhino run (convoy of Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected trucks) and, thankfully, finally, make it "home." Just in time to go to work.

The horrors of war. The horror.