Filling sandbags isn't really an art. Yes, there are better ways and worse ways to go about it, and people will extol the virtues of one method or the other, but really, it's just an exercise in time and man power. Except that for some reason you should always turn them inside out, because they are stronger that way, and that you should make sure whoever is tying them up isn't an idiot. Usually in the army there is a table, or a grid, or a matrix, or a rule of thumb that would tell you how long it would take to fill x number of sandbags. But there isn't. There is a matrix about work/rest schedules for those filling sandbags, dependent on the weather, and there is a table outlining how many sandbags are needed for various tasks, or to protect against specific threats, but nothing on time.
This is probably because sandbags are a pretty loosely defined concept. You think it would be simple; take a bag, fill it with sand. Nope. Most commonly, you end up with a dirt bag, or a rock bag, or an ice bag, or a bag filled with ammo you'd rather hide then deal with, or casings you'd also rather hide than drag back up to an admit point, or old ration packages, or bits of beef jerky wrappers, or whatever you have in your pockets that you'd no longer like to carry. Only once did anyone ever hand me a sandbag and point me over to a mound of sand. And frankly, it was a dream.
The other problem with sandbags is that the efficiency of their preparation is highly dependent on the motivation and attitude of the troops. Their morale, to put it simply. And this is usually directly proportional to how tired of being fucked around they are, and how meaninglessly stupid they believe the task to be. If the enemy is advancing in your direction, and you're looking at facing them sticking out of a shitty little hole in the ground you only half managed to dig out, then yes, you're going to dig. Then again, if it's for some shitty exercise that isn't half believable and a complete waste of time and resources and even one of your cocky asshole corporals could have planned better, then frankly, it's going to take some time to get those sandbags filled. Let alone dragged over to the truck, then loaded, then dragged off, then positioned. Then repositioned. Again, and, again, and again. There is a set of sandbags out there that I not only filled, but loaded onto trucks, moved, and repositioned 6 separate times. And this was before we learned those two critical rules, the ones about turning them inside out, and not letting an idiot do the tying.
And whenever you find yourself digging sandbags, it's always in the same kit, the same tools, the same one guy holding the bag and another shoveling, rotating every say 5, or 10, or 15 bags - depending on how many need to get filled, and what you're filling them with. But you're always somewhere new. Not to put too fine a point on it, but usually it's only the shitty things in life that follow you around. The rest is just backdrop, like cities and towns along the highway passing through in your car windows. Or is it the other way around? Do misery and happiness come from the places you find yourself, not the activities that occupy your life?
I guess where I'm trying to go with this is that I've been up to this shit way too long. This morning I woke up rolled into the corner of the spare bedroom at a place I'm house sitting, tucked into my sleeping bag, sleep crusted in my eyes, with no idea where I was; vaguely thirsty, extremely dislocated, increasingly anger, and badly in need of a toliet, not to mention, completely missing my underwear.
It's been around 20 months of this now. of living nowhere, of having no place. I'm the guy who spends more on hotels a year than anything other than student loans, who begs you to house sit while you're gone, who snaps up that offer to stash his spare things in your basement, and who secretly wants to ask you how much to rent that spare bedroom at your place. Because what I have, is a tiny bunk in a small room with 3 other bunks, and 2 tiny closets and a little desk that I'm not allowed to put anything on but 1 civvie book and 1 military book and nothing inside because the Sergeant Major loves to randomly inspect the quarters. I have to make phone calls from inside my car, which is also my closet, and if I was out looking for women, believe me, it would be your place.
I hate to sound like I'm whining, but grown men, grown men with university degrees, grown men who are constantly told they are leaders and role models and all sorts of completely untrue cliched platitudes, should not be bunkmates. Nor should they be marching around like recruits on basic training, from their own graduation parades as platoon commanders, no less. The system is set up like some unbalanced, abusive mother - it places the training of future leaders in the hands of their own future subordinates, who do not stop beating them in punishment for this arrangement untiil the last second before the roles are officially reversed. And I'm sure all of a sudden it will be snapping to attention and neat salutes and yes sir, but the damage is already done. The men who are supposed to be my future sources of experience and advice, in exchange for steady leadership and support, are in fact my tormentors and enemies. I will be expected to attentively care to their personal administration and professional development, despite the years they spent mocking the personal complications and dislocations of myself and my peers. These are men who changed a graduation parade with 2 days notice, and sneered at all the candidates whose families had now wasted hundreds if not thousands of dollars on travel and plans to come and see what should have been one of the proudest days of their careers. Men who laugh at the prospect of candidates spending 3 years total living like dogs in a kennel, making up new locker inspection templates that assure there is no room for anything personal, who can barely contain their giggling when asking knowing questions, like demanding to know why we brought so much personal kit to a course, when they know full well its been years and years since any of us really lived anywhere.
I'm a 24 year old university graduate who owns one pair of pants, who has slept in a sleeping bag for 8 months, and who has earned the right to command troops in battle, but not to walk like a human being from point a to point b.
And the thing with sandbags is that you have to be careful about how much you put into them. Because at the time, they seem tough, and you can just dump and dump into them absentmindedly, because you aren't even really paying attention. But there's a limit, and if if well tied, they will burst apart. And as heavy as sand is, stupidity, pointless meanspirited treatment, and utter disregrard for others way a hell of a lot more.
And the stupidest, stupidest thing of all, is myself.
Because I wanted this, I didn't just volunteer for it - I chased it down. I changed my life to fit with the path that was needed, and I hunted it down until I made it, and I became decent at what I do, and I took all the ideology and ethics and ethos and doctrine and inanity to heart and truly believed in it all, and now I just wish I was somewhere else.
And I could still do it. I could still get out. But all of a sudden I don't just not want to wake up in the shacks, or some hotel, or some borrowed space - all of a sudden there is a place I would like to wake up. And the only way that makes any sense is to stay in the army, and to follow it off to the least likely place I ever expected to go.
And when I asked the guys, the clever guys, who already quit, what they said when they put them before the man and demanded to ask why. And they said they called them cowards. And of course I said bullshit, they just hated to see a youngster that much smarter than any of them.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
6 weeks in the field.
I went to bed last Saturday around 4 am after a night out with the guys, I woke up around noon on Sunday and ran some last minute errands. I didn't go to sleep again until Friday, at 2am. And I wonder why I can't sleep anymore. Canada Day long weekend 2008, Halifax, CFB Halifax to be more precise. The Navy knows how to roll, they rebuilt their entire officers quarters as a hotel and a large percentage of my course is currently shacked up here, partying like hell to shake off the last 6 weeks of bullshit.
We're done our hard field time and not a minute too soon. This week was when people started to crack. You could feel it coming, from day one. A tour might be 6 months and a war might be years, but nothing is longer than a course, because every day of your life on course is an attempt by the staff to break you down. And to this end, the defensive is about the best tool you could ever hope for to beat whatever is left out of a group of soldiers.
You recce a position, site your trenches, move the troops, occupy the position, then you dig in. Carry your shovel and your pick on your back, and dig like hell until you're standing in the ground, you're head sticking out looking down towards the kill zone where your enemy will eventually appear, right in the trap you're rushing to set. Except, not on course. On course, you dig in, and before you have a chance to even finish, let alone change your socks, or drink some water, or eat, you're attacked and you withdraw, under contact, and run, and march, and find a new position and start it all over again. And at night, you don't sleep, you dig. And if you eat, you're hammering down a cold rat pack while your fire team partner watches the arcs of your trench, and you listen painfully to each slow scrape of the rat pack as your buddy gets every last scrap of that useless 240 calories that the army swears you can live on x 3 a day.
But what the defensive teaches you is the bare minimum of what you require to live. You live out of your rucksack, like we always do, but you're carrying it everywhere and often. In the dismounted role, who knows if you're going to have transport to get you out, especially in a withdrawl under contact. So we prepare to carry, and run with, and hit the ground with, and conduct fire and movement with our rucks on our back. Between your fighting order - your weapon, your frag and tac vest, your gas mask, 48 hours of rations, 2x first line ammo and 3 litres of water, any extra weight is just going to cause trouble. Anything you pack has to be essential, like, down to nothing but socks and extra food.
So this is where you learn the importance of hold out kit. Snivel kit is slang for all the extra bits of junk you carry with you to make your life a little nicer - fleece jackets, guicci rain gear, hell, a pillow. Hold out kit on the other hand is that last little savior of equipment or clothing that you will not bring out until you are truly fucked. I was once saved from hypothermia but one last old t-shirt I found jammed in the bottom of my ruck, grabbed and put on a few minutes after I had stopped shivering and a few minutes before I was really in some trouble.
And on the defensive, for most people, is the bivy bag. The weather is an unpredictable and dangerous beast. We had a day so hot that at 11pm my friend went down on a patrol vomiting with heat exhaustion and I had to drag him out 300m through thick brush to the road in complete darkness. And that same night by 2am we were shivering uncontrollably in our trenches saved only the clear skies above. But you don't always get so lucky. We abandoned our position on Thursday at 4 in the morning and set out on a 13km withdrawal with full platoon weapons and equipment. By the time we reached our new position everyone to the man was soaked with sweat - so we spent all afternoon and evening withdrawing and reoccupying the same ground until night set in and around 1 am we had finally finished our trenches and prepared to finally get some rest, our last night in the field, after 6 weeks.
And that's when the rain started.
It played out in our trench the same way it must have in every other - no one wants to admit that they are slowly going hypothermic, so they accuse their trench partner. Mine started nagging quickly that he could hear my teeth chattering and that I should do something quick. So we relented and abandoned proper battle discipline, pulled out out bivy bags, and crawled in fully kitted up. A bivy bag is a waterproof - hopefully - sack that you usually keep your sleeping bag in to keep dry, but in a pinch will make an emergency one man tent against the elements.
And around 3am is when I realized that the bivy bag is not completely waterproof.
And around 3pm that afternoon, when I was still shivering and barely awake, I found out that one of my best friends had failed off the course.
I knew he had been pulled to the hospital for twisting his knee in a tank rut, but didn't realize that doing so he lost his chance to re-test his practical and was by default out.
And there is nothing harder than being exhausted but elated for having finally finished the worst, and turning to your friend who was there for all but one day of all the hell and bullshit, and wanting to be excited with him and hop in your car and hit the road to Halifax for the long weekend, but having nothing at all to say to a guy who was always there for you but now is struggling to keep his career from slipping through his fingers.
So he gave up his reservation and his spot in the car, and when I get back he won't be there. The army moves people out pretty quickly to teach us a lesson, that the only people who exist are those still on course, still on tour, still on the mission - still alive. Because people will die and we will lose troops and we can't sit around and dwell on the losses because we lose people in order to accomplish missions, and if we don't carry on then they died for nothing. Which is great, in war, but bad when you already miss your buddy and have to add him to the list of good, good friends who were unlucky, or unhealthy, or just plain incompetent - who are now very gone, and unlikely to ever look up their old life or the old friends their status within it used to grant.
And walking back to the naval barracks, after bailing from the bar early because the guys were hammered and I just didn't feel like dancing anymore, I thumb my NDI 20, my military ID in my pocket, making sure everything is in line to cross through the guard shack. The guard demands and I present and he inspects it and reads my status and tells me, "sir, have a good night." and I can't help but think who am I fooling as an officer in the military, maybe a year away from commanding my country's soldiers in combat in a foreign country, sulking around in a random city feeling bad for friends and missing women and wishing I had someone to share the comfy bed in my room with. I want to be hard, I want to be one of those guys who can take any punch without missing a beat, and I'm not soft by any means, I can survive anything you can throw at me - I just don't want to feel bad anymore about things I can't control.
I guess really, I want to be able to visit random cities without needing to wander around alone in the fog, and to be able to sleep in big comfy beds without lying staring at the walls until 4am, and I want to have friends who won't be posted out or recoursed or med-catted, and to be able to just think about what needs to be done, without having to feel anything, and really, I don't want to have to write anything anymore.
We're done our hard field time and not a minute too soon. This week was when people started to crack. You could feel it coming, from day one. A tour might be 6 months and a war might be years, but nothing is longer than a course, because every day of your life on course is an attempt by the staff to break you down. And to this end, the defensive is about the best tool you could ever hope for to beat whatever is left out of a group of soldiers.
You recce a position, site your trenches, move the troops, occupy the position, then you dig in. Carry your shovel and your pick on your back, and dig like hell until you're standing in the ground, you're head sticking out looking down towards the kill zone where your enemy will eventually appear, right in the trap you're rushing to set. Except, not on course. On course, you dig in, and before you have a chance to even finish, let alone change your socks, or drink some water, or eat, you're attacked and you withdraw, under contact, and run, and march, and find a new position and start it all over again. And at night, you don't sleep, you dig. And if you eat, you're hammering down a cold rat pack while your fire team partner watches the arcs of your trench, and you listen painfully to each slow scrape of the rat pack as your buddy gets every last scrap of that useless 240 calories that the army swears you can live on x 3 a day.
But what the defensive teaches you is the bare minimum of what you require to live. You live out of your rucksack, like we always do, but you're carrying it everywhere and often. In the dismounted role, who knows if you're going to have transport to get you out, especially in a withdrawl under contact. So we prepare to carry, and run with, and hit the ground with, and conduct fire and movement with our rucks on our back. Between your fighting order - your weapon, your frag and tac vest, your gas mask, 48 hours of rations, 2x first line ammo and 3 litres of water, any extra weight is just going to cause trouble. Anything you pack has to be essential, like, down to nothing but socks and extra food.
So this is where you learn the importance of hold out kit. Snivel kit is slang for all the extra bits of junk you carry with you to make your life a little nicer - fleece jackets, guicci rain gear, hell, a pillow. Hold out kit on the other hand is that last little savior of equipment or clothing that you will not bring out until you are truly fucked. I was once saved from hypothermia but one last old t-shirt I found jammed in the bottom of my ruck, grabbed and put on a few minutes after I had stopped shivering and a few minutes before I was really in some trouble.
And on the defensive, for most people, is the bivy bag. The weather is an unpredictable and dangerous beast. We had a day so hot that at 11pm my friend went down on a patrol vomiting with heat exhaustion and I had to drag him out 300m through thick brush to the road in complete darkness. And that same night by 2am we were shivering uncontrollably in our trenches saved only the clear skies above. But you don't always get so lucky. We abandoned our position on Thursday at 4 in the morning and set out on a 13km withdrawal with full platoon weapons and equipment. By the time we reached our new position everyone to the man was soaked with sweat - so we spent all afternoon and evening withdrawing and reoccupying the same ground until night set in and around 1 am we had finally finished our trenches and prepared to finally get some rest, our last night in the field, after 6 weeks.
And that's when the rain started.
It played out in our trench the same way it must have in every other - no one wants to admit that they are slowly going hypothermic, so they accuse their trench partner. Mine started nagging quickly that he could hear my teeth chattering and that I should do something quick. So we relented and abandoned proper battle discipline, pulled out out bivy bags, and crawled in fully kitted up. A bivy bag is a waterproof - hopefully - sack that you usually keep your sleeping bag in to keep dry, but in a pinch will make an emergency one man tent against the elements.
And around 3am is when I realized that the bivy bag is not completely waterproof.
And around 3pm that afternoon, when I was still shivering and barely awake, I found out that one of my best friends had failed off the course.
I knew he had been pulled to the hospital for twisting his knee in a tank rut, but didn't realize that doing so he lost his chance to re-test his practical and was by default out.
And there is nothing harder than being exhausted but elated for having finally finished the worst, and turning to your friend who was there for all but one day of all the hell and bullshit, and wanting to be excited with him and hop in your car and hit the road to Halifax for the long weekend, but having nothing at all to say to a guy who was always there for you but now is struggling to keep his career from slipping through his fingers.
So he gave up his reservation and his spot in the car, and when I get back he won't be there. The army moves people out pretty quickly to teach us a lesson, that the only people who exist are those still on course, still on tour, still on the mission - still alive. Because people will die and we will lose troops and we can't sit around and dwell on the losses because we lose people in order to accomplish missions, and if we don't carry on then they died for nothing. Which is great, in war, but bad when you already miss your buddy and have to add him to the list of good, good friends who were unlucky, or unhealthy, or just plain incompetent - who are now very gone, and unlikely to ever look up their old life or the old friends their status within it used to grant.
And walking back to the naval barracks, after bailing from the bar early because the guys were hammered and I just didn't feel like dancing anymore, I thumb my NDI 20, my military ID in my pocket, making sure everything is in line to cross through the guard shack. The guard demands and I present and he inspects it and reads my status and tells me, "sir, have a good night." and I can't help but think who am I fooling as an officer in the military, maybe a year away from commanding my country's soldiers in combat in a foreign country, sulking around in a random city feeling bad for friends and missing women and wishing I had someone to share the comfy bed in my room with. I want to be hard, I want to be one of those guys who can take any punch without missing a beat, and I'm not soft by any means, I can survive anything you can throw at me - I just don't want to feel bad anymore about things I can't control.
I guess really, I want to be able to visit random cities without needing to wander around alone in the fog, and to be able to sleep in big comfy beds without lying staring at the walls until 4am, and I want to have friends who won't be posted out or recoursed or med-catted, and to be able to just think about what needs to be done, without having to feel anything, and really, I don't want to have to write anything anymore.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Black Bears
Nothing in life is ever a pure positive it seems. Having done all my military training up to this point in the winter, summer brings a new set of challenges to the table. Hypothermia is off the table at least, though I have seen people go down with heat stroke in February as well as August. Bugs are a new one though. The sheer number of mosquitoes out in the training area is mind blowing, and for a few weeks right after they start hatching they are maddening. I'm covered in the scars from scratching hopelessly at over 300 bites acquired in the last few weeks. Thankfully as summer heats up, the 'skeets die off, but of course, new challenges emerge...Bears.
Bears are jerks. Bears are annoying, dangerous, and hate you. You'd love to shoot bears, but we're not allowed, some environmental protection thing. SO instead, we're resorted to scaring them away. By throwing dynamite at them.That's right, I spent last week throwing dynamite at bears. Bears who stole $20,000 worth of equipment. Bears who stole rucksacks so soldiers came back from patrols, tired, wet, and cold, and found they had no sleeping bags or dry clothes or anything. Bears who woke me up sniffing at my feet, until thankfully the sentry threw dynamite between us, or rather, next to me.
And that's where I am in my career right now, where I roll over and pull my sleeping bag off from over my head and look up at the bear at my feet, and then a third of a stick of dynamite goes off at my feet, and the bear runs away, and I immediately fall back asleep without so much as a shrug. The insane becomes the ordinary far too easily. But then curiously, the ordinary becomes the most amazing thing in exchange.
Friday afternoons have become the most surreal thing. There is no feeling in the world like it. Deploying to the field sunday night, driving the body all week long, smashing yourself against the ground and getting up again and running across broken terrain carrying a hundred pounds of equipment over and over again without sleep or food, in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, in the bugs, passing and failing assessments - it's all worth the feeling of showering and putting on some civies and getting in the car with some of the closer guys and hitting the town, windows open, to get some good food in you before the exhaustion catches up and you are down for the count.
And every sky is beautiful, and every woman is fantastic, and every meal is incredible. And the time slips by and soon it is dark and it is over and all you can think of is the next friday night. Because friday night is the only night with any promise, because saturday ends too quickly and sunday night you start again - but friday, friday is the furthest point between you and everything - putting on a uniform, drawing a weapon, being a soldier. And if I am thankfull for anything about joining the army, it is for knowing that no one else has experienced a friday night as full and incredible and important as we have.
Bears are jerks. Bears are annoying, dangerous, and hate you. You'd love to shoot bears, but we're not allowed, some environmental protection thing. SO instead, we're resorted to scaring them away. By throwing dynamite at them.That's right, I spent last week throwing dynamite at bears. Bears who stole $20,000 worth of equipment. Bears who stole rucksacks so soldiers came back from patrols, tired, wet, and cold, and found they had no sleeping bags or dry clothes or anything. Bears who woke me up sniffing at my feet, until thankfully the sentry threw dynamite between us, or rather, next to me.
And that's where I am in my career right now, where I roll over and pull my sleeping bag off from over my head and look up at the bear at my feet, and then a third of a stick of dynamite goes off at my feet, and the bear runs away, and I immediately fall back asleep without so much as a shrug. The insane becomes the ordinary far too easily. But then curiously, the ordinary becomes the most amazing thing in exchange.
Friday afternoons have become the most surreal thing. There is no feeling in the world like it. Deploying to the field sunday night, driving the body all week long, smashing yourself against the ground and getting up again and running across broken terrain carrying a hundred pounds of equipment over and over again without sleep or food, in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, in the bugs, passing and failing assessments - it's all worth the feeling of showering and putting on some civies and getting in the car with some of the closer guys and hitting the town, windows open, to get some good food in you before the exhaustion catches up and you are down for the count.
And every sky is beautiful, and every woman is fantastic, and every meal is incredible. And the time slips by and soon it is dark and it is over and all you can think of is the next friday night. Because friday night is the only night with any promise, because saturday ends too quickly and sunday night you start again - but friday, friday is the furthest point between you and everything - putting on a uniform, drawing a weapon, being a soldier. And if I am thankfull for anything about joining the army, it is for knowing that no one else has experienced a friday night as full and incredible and important as we have.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Patrol Week Ex
Nothing builds team work like a mass hallucination. 3 am in thick woods, 38% illumination, canopy too thick to see the moon anyways. 8 km patrol, 4 days without any sleep. I have a dozen dreams before I realize I'm marching, my hand wrapped tight in the tac vast of the man in front of me, holding my friend Alex's hand, pulling him along as he falls asleep at every pause, waking with a shudder and marching full speed right into me. I dream of friends, and places, and memories and hopeful futures that will never pan out. Branches cut and slice at my neck and hands, sticks and leaves whip at my eyes, thankfully protected by my ballistic eyewear, or officially, eyewear, ballistic, for protection of vision, known more accurately at night as eyewear, ballistic, for prevention of vision. At long halts we lie in rain soaked swamps, waiting for some poor candidate who is completely lost to find himself with the flakey army GPS unit and get us back on track, and pass his assessment, and be one step closer to not failing off this most important of courses. I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm not fucked up enough to have to fear an actual patrol - my written assessments have set me aside as successfully meeting the standard, balancing both planning and tactical abilities. If I'm that good I shouldn't fear a live patrol, but I do, because when you're that tired, nothing is scarier than responsibility.
So, I lug my light machine gun and follow the man in front and guide the man in back through the impossible darkness and let my thoughts drift, knowing full well I am shit-pumping, but I don't care, the imaginary enemy of this ridiculous scenario are not going to find us, we don't even know where we are. I can take a few minutes to drift off, and try to think, try to put almost 2 years together into some cohesive story of what the hell is going on, and sure as anything, it won't work.
Riviere-de-loup is the symbolic half way point on the 11 hour drive between Camp Gagetown and Ottawa. I've made this drive a handful of times. 3 provinces and each feels very different. I'm an ardent opponent of New Brunswick. If it wasn't too late, I'd be voting against it. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because half the province is the Gagetown Training Area, but I don't think so. It's just a strange place, I can't justify it, but it's too far from home and I feel nothing for the place. Quebec on the other hand, that's a whole other story.
I had been to Montreal a handful of times while I was living in Ottawa, and really, it never struck me as anywhere special. The city of my birth, where my parents lived their entire married relationship, until I was born, then they split and my prospects of growing up bilingual and stylish died along with the family unit. Cut to 22 years later, the part where I make a wrong turn while checking out some pretty girl walking alongside the highway of life, and join the army. I am sent to do my basic training in Saint-Jean-sur-Richlieu, a little bedroom community 30 minutes from Montreal. I visit a few times during basic, but rarely, I'm still trying to get back to Ottawa every chance I can get to wake up next to a girl I can't forget every time I'm there, but forget far too easily whenever I leave. Basic training ends and I prepare to be sent to Gagetown, but a surprise is in store, and I'm posted to the Canadian Forces Language School for 8 months to learn French. At the time, I'm not happy, but I as time goes on and I learn more and more French, it begins to grow on me. The town is pretty, if small, the people interesting. Maybe it's the lifestyle, the stores, the locales, the food, the products, everything is the same but the culture is still foreign. It's like leaving home one day and coming back to find a family of immigrants living in your house, wasting all your croutons in steaming bowls of beef and onion soup. And frankly it's kind of neat.
So this is where things get a little sketchy. While at the French school, I meet a young aspirant officer who is working on the campus of the prep school for young aspiring-aspirant francophone officers. And it starts completely un-innocently, with a lot of flirting in uniform and abuse of rank and continues right along the same path, with fraternisation and violating barracks orders and sneaking out of buildings and running from security guards and completely forgetting condoms. But it only last 3 weeks before she is off back to the military university and I'm stuck there like a sucker. But after she leaves, before she goes back to school, I come to Quebec City to visit her at her parents house. And Quebec City, I don't know what to say, it's fantastic. Meeting parents, after 3 weeks, in a language you barely command is terrifying, but they are warm and put up with me and make me feel at ease, and I pass by on what little French I know at this point, and make them dinner and win them over with Pad Thai and we try to quickly have sex while they walk the dog and it doesn't quite work, though we don't know if they know and pretend not to. And the girl takes me downtown to the old city, and its beautiful and romantic and I'm in love with all of it, and the history and the streets and the culture and her. And we kiss on the back of the Citadel, allowed permission to the military side of the tourist attraction by our status as serving officers, though we are briefly mistaken as errant young tourists. So she tells me she loves me and I know she doesn't because she is young, and I tell her I love her even though I don't, because I'm old enough to know I wish I did.
And this is the lasting memory I will have forever of Quebec City, looking over the high walls of the Citadel, on a beautiful day, across the river, down on the city, at 400 years of history and a fascinating people, and a beautiful girl.
And the next time I'm in Quebec City it's once I've been posted to Gagetown, 3 weeks before Christmas. 3 of us have packed my car literally to its maximum capacity, and we joined the convoy of recently bilingual-fied (to various degrees of success) young officers and stop to party for one night in far too fancy hotels paid for by the government. We eat a delicious meal and wander the old city in the biting cold before finally finding a popular club. We dance a bit, standing out like English army interlopers, with an army base literally 3 blocks away, still starkly in contrast with the local populace. I meet a girl, and I want her to be the last girl I kissed in Quebec City, but she's not, so she doesn't become the 2nd but we talk and exchange information and I make what turn out to be hollow promises to visit her on the way back.
Then again, on the way back. This time, alone. Another trendy hotel, this time paid for by my own credit card, thankful for a generous military discount. And I walk the old city, wrapped up against the January cold, uncharacteristically bearded after a month of leave. I eat dinner alone and playfully catch the eye of the cashier at the pay by weight vegetarian cafe. I head to the Citadel, and walk the same walls, and sit in the same spot, but everything is different now, 4 months later. The memories encompass so many things. Quebec City, Saint-Jean, Kingston, the home of my dear friends where they let me a room so I could come visit the girl on weekends while she was at school, anxiously driving 4 hours through Montreal traffic every Friday to come see her. Passionate sex and waking up wrapped around her tiny frame, and dressing up for my friends wedding, and talking about getting married ourselves one day, and shopping for a ring, and everything turning sour, and sitting on a cold park bench with the waves crashing up on the shore with my arm around her but my heart hardening against what she's just told me, and then the end.
And to this day I love the French, because they remind me of Quebec City. And to this day, I still can't go back to Quebec City. But I want to. I want to blast through Riviere-de-Loup, through the shortcut we learned when the police escorted us through the first time we got lost on the move to Gagetown, then scream 3 hours down the highway, across the bridge, back to the old city, and I want to live weeks there, then head back to Montreal, and eat delicious omelettes in the Jewish quarter with my good friends then head back to another week of learning French, then go back further to the first weekend of leave from basic training, and partying and just trying to be a person again with 40 strangers who were suddenly my entire world, then keep going back, to before it all started, to Ottawa, and taking things for granted, and going home with girls from Thursday night at Barrymore’s, and back to dating dozens of girls in a few months, but never for more than few weeks, then to the big ex, to 2 years of mediocrity I will forever remember as the best years of my life, to her beautiful pale body and her soft pink bra in the bright lights of my bedroom the first time we had sex, the first time I had sex, on top of the sheets, as she smiled at me and looked into my eyes...
And when I open my eyes I'm still there, lying, legs locked in a circle with my 39 fellow soldiers, my machine gun pointed out towards an imaginary enemy, still on patrol.
So, I lug my light machine gun and follow the man in front and guide the man in back through the impossible darkness and let my thoughts drift, knowing full well I am shit-pumping, but I don't care, the imaginary enemy of this ridiculous scenario are not going to find us, we don't even know where we are. I can take a few minutes to drift off, and try to think, try to put almost 2 years together into some cohesive story of what the hell is going on, and sure as anything, it won't work.
Riviere-de-loup is the symbolic half way point on the 11 hour drive between Camp Gagetown and Ottawa. I've made this drive a handful of times. 3 provinces and each feels very different. I'm an ardent opponent of New Brunswick. If it wasn't too late, I'd be voting against it. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because half the province is the Gagetown Training Area, but I don't think so. It's just a strange place, I can't justify it, but it's too far from home and I feel nothing for the place. Quebec on the other hand, that's a whole other story.
I had been to Montreal a handful of times while I was living in Ottawa, and really, it never struck me as anywhere special. The city of my birth, where my parents lived their entire married relationship, until I was born, then they split and my prospects of growing up bilingual and stylish died along with the family unit. Cut to 22 years later, the part where I make a wrong turn while checking out some pretty girl walking alongside the highway of life, and join the army. I am sent to do my basic training in Saint-Jean-sur-Richlieu, a little bedroom community 30 minutes from Montreal. I visit a few times during basic, but rarely, I'm still trying to get back to Ottawa every chance I can get to wake up next to a girl I can't forget every time I'm there, but forget far too easily whenever I leave. Basic training ends and I prepare to be sent to Gagetown, but a surprise is in store, and I'm posted to the Canadian Forces Language School for 8 months to learn French. At the time, I'm not happy, but I as time goes on and I learn more and more French, it begins to grow on me. The town is pretty, if small, the people interesting. Maybe it's the lifestyle, the stores, the locales, the food, the products, everything is the same but the culture is still foreign. It's like leaving home one day and coming back to find a family of immigrants living in your house, wasting all your croutons in steaming bowls of beef and onion soup. And frankly it's kind of neat.
So this is where things get a little sketchy. While at the French school, I meet a young aspirant officer who is working on the campus of the prep school for young aspiring-aspirant francophone officers. And it starts completely un-innocently, with a lot of flirting in uniform and abuse of rank and continues right along the same path, with fraternisation and violating barracks orders and sneaking out of buildings and running from security guards and completely forgetting condoms. But it only last 3 weeks before she is off back to the military university and I'm stuck there like a sucker. But after she leaves, before she goes back to school, I come to Quebec City to visit her at her parents house. And Quebec City, I don't know what to say, it's fantastic. Meeting parents, after 3 weeks, in a language you barely command is terrifying, but they are warm and put up with me and make me feel at ease, and I pass by on what little French I know at this point, and make them dinner and win them over with Pad Thai and we try to quickly have sex while they walk the dog and it doesn't quite work, though we don't know if they know and pretend not to. And the girl takes me downtown to the old city, and its beautiful and romantic and I'm in love with all of it, and the history and the streets and the culture and her. And we kiss on the back of the Citadel, allowed permission to the military side of the tourist attraction by our status as serving officers, though we are briefly mistaken as errant young tourists. So she tells me she loves me and I know she doesn't because she is young, and I tell her I love her even though I don't, because I'm old enough to know I wish I did.
And this is the lasting memory I will have forever of Quebec City, looking over the high walls of the Citadel, on a beautiful day, across the river, down on the city, at 400 years of history and a fascinating people, and a beautiful girl.
And the next time I'm in Quebec City it's once I've been posted to Gagetown, 3 weeks before Christmas. 3 of us have packed my car literally to its maximum capacity, and we joined the convoy of recently bilingual-fied (to various degrees of success) young officers and stop to party for one night in far too fancy hotels paid for by the government. We eat a delicious meal and wander the old city in the biting cold before finally finding a popular club. We dance a bit, standing out like English army interlopers, with an army base literally 3 blocks away, still starkly in contrast with the local populace. I meet a girl, and I want her to be the last girl I kissed in Quebec City, but she's not, so she doesn't become the 2nd but we talk and exchange information and I make what turn out to be hollow promises to visit her on the way back.
Then again, on the way back. This time, alone. Another trendy hotel, this time paid for by my own credit card, thankful for a generous military discount. And I walk the old city, wrapped up against the January cold, uncharacteristically bearded after a month of leave. I eat dinner alone and playfully catch the eye of the cashier at the pay by weight vegetarian cafe. I head to the Citadel, and walk the same walls, and sit in the same spot, but everything is different now, 4 months later. The memories encompass so many things. Quebec City, Saint-Jean, Kingston, the home of my dear friends where they let me a room so I could come visit the girl on weekends while she was at school, anxiously driving 4 hours through Montreal traffic every Friday to come see her. Passionate sex and waking up wrapped around her tiny frame, and dressing up for my friends wedding, and talking about getting married ourselves one day, and shopping for a ring, and everything turning sour, and sitting on a cold park bench with the waves crashing up on the shore with my arm around her but my heart hardening against what she's just told me, and then the end.
And to this day I love the French, because they remind me of Quebec City. And to this day, I still can't go back to Quebec City. But I want to. I want to blast through Riviere-de-Loup, through the shortcut we learned when the police escorted us through the first time we got lost on the move to Gagetown, then scream 3 hours down the highway, across the bridge, back to the old city, and I want to live weeks there, then head back to Montreal, and eat delicious omelettes in the Jewish quarter with my good friends then head back to another week of learning French, then go back further to the first weekend of leave from basic training, and partying and just trying to be a person again with 40 strangers who were suddenly my entire world, then keep going back, to before it all started, to Ottawa, and taking things for granted, and going home with girls from Thursday night at Barrymore’s, and back to dating dozens of girls in a few months, but never for more than few weeks, then to the big ex, to 2 years of mediocrity I will forever remember as the best years of my life, to her beautiful pale body and her soft pink bra in the bright lights of my bedroom the first time we had sex, the first time I had sex, on top of the sheets, as she smiled at me and looked into my eyes...
And when I open my eyes I'm still there, lying, legs locked in a circle with my 39 fellow soldiers, my machine gun pointed out towards an imaginary enemy, still on patrol.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
24 hours back
Backbrief.
Go to the Canadian Museum of Civillization, I think around the 3rd floor, the walking tour through Canadian history. Stand in one of the outdoor areas, maybe the French Canadian village, or by the creepy tent filled with pioneers giving birth. Listen to the looped, pre-recorded ambience of birds and wildlife. You can also hear it at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Niagara Falls, the disappearing man exhibit. Or check your nearest local outdoorsy museum. Not the Biodome in Montreal though, because that's probably real birds. Or parakeets, or parots. I can't tell a sparrow from Tucan Sam, frankly, but you get the idea. It's definently not the penguins though.
Sentry Shift.
This morning I sat and listened to the forest wake up, the birds and the bugs, the sun creeping up to the horizon, climbing the ridgelines and forests. I breathed in the moist morning air while cleaning my weapon, generously oiling it to keep the rust back, a never ending battle in anything but an August drought. Around me 38 of my friends slept, some out in the open, tucked into old sleeping bags wrapped in top of the line bivy bags, clenched up tight against mosquitoes, just bug bitten lips and noses sticking out into the night. Others slept under low lean-tos and hooches strung between trees, shared for warm or curled tight around their bodies, just enough to keep rain out of their boots and mouths. My friend Jake sat next to me, shaving with a canteen cup and a pocket stove.
Patrolling.
The rest of the day, and all the day before, we lay in the rain, pressed low to the ground, looking over rifles, machine guns, recoiless rifles, grenade launchers, legs crossed over each other's in a tight circle, lying in hiding from an imaginary enemy, fighting nothing but hypothermia, boredom, and sloppy drills. Cold can be dealt with, and wet is tolerable, but when you're cold and wet it takes a little bit more to keep your head in the game, to do your job, to write your orders, to effectively lead troops. So you learn when and where you can turn off your brain and just push on with your body.
Regrets.
By now I've slept with every girl I've ever had a crush on a thousand times over in my mind. I've written my combat estimates remembering the little quirks of those that I really did sleep with. I get distracted from my mission analysis day-dreaming of kissing the eyelids of sleeping beauties from the past, a long history of beautiful women and poor decision making on my part. I try to wargame my courses of action while trying to account for all the false starts and misteps that led me to this point, lying in the mud, trying to keep my map sheets dry, trying to my commander's intent and my operational tasking into a succinct mission statement, single and undersexed despite literally dozens of amazing opportunities all carelessly wasted.
Planning.
At the end of the week, Saturday to be exact, we're back in. I've watched animals pick apart rucksacks. I've watched squirrels pry apart pull taps and crows open zippers. I've seen an entire platoon's food stolen from their packs and tossed in a half eaten mess over an entire patrol base. I've been bitten at least 46 times by mosquitoes. I've snuck back through the woods to avoid an errant bear and her cubs. I've eaten a sausage and hashbrowns raton pack every meal for days on end. And then we're back and everything is in the past and everything is amazing. I just want to see humanity, to talk to people, to anyone, to buy things, food and random movies, standard items of society. And I don't want to sleep, ever, because 24 hours later, I'm boarding a truck right back, with a new load of food, water, and ammo, and the mud scrubbed off my frag vest. And I'm planning ahead, with old pictures and journal entries and anything I can find, stocking up the nostalgia and regret to keep me going for another week in the woods, lying in the rain, reminding myself all the time why backwards is never an option, but why backwards must always inform forwards.
Go to the Canadian Museum of Civillization, I think around the 3rd floor, the walking tour through Canadian history. Stand in one of the outdoor areas, maybe the French Canadian village, or by the creepy tent filled with pioneers giving birth. Listen to the looped, pre-recorded ambience of birds and wildlife. You can also hear it at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Niagara Falls, the disappearing man exhibit. Or check your nearest local outdoorsy museum. Not the Biodome in Montreal though, because that's probably real birds. Or parakeets, or parots. I can't tell a sparrow from Tucan Sam, frankly, but you get the idea. It's definently not the penguins though.
Sentry Shift.
This morning I sat and listened to the forest wake up, the birds and the bugs, the sun creeping up to the horizon, climbing the ridgelines and forests. I breathed in the moist morning air while cleaning my weapon, generously oiling it to keep the rust back, a never ending battle in anything but an August drought. Around me 38 of my friends slept, some out in the open, tucked into old sleeping bags wrapped in top of the line bivy bags, clenched up tight against mosquitoes, just bug bitten lips and noses sticking out into the night. Others slept under low lean-tos and hooches strung between trees, shared for warm or curled tight around their bodies, just enough to keep rain out of their boots and mouths. My friend Jake sat next to me, shaving with a canteen cup and a pocket stove.
Patrolling.
The rest of the day, and all the day before, we lay in the rain, pressed low to the ground, looking over rifles, machine guns, recoiless rifles, grenade launchers, legs crossed over each other's in a tight circle, lying in hiding from an imaginary enemy, fighting nothing but hypothermia, boredom, and sloppy drills. Cold can be dealt with, and wet is tolerable, but when you're cold and wet it takes a little bit more to keep your head in the game, to do your job, to write your orders, to effectively lead troops. So you learn when and where you can turn off your brain and just push on with your body.
Regrets.
By now I've slept with every girl I've ever had a crush on a thousand times over in my mind. I've written my combat estimates remembering the little quirks of those that I really did sleep with. I get distracted from my mission analysis day-dreaming of kissing the eyelids of sleeping beauties from the past, a long history of beautiful women and poor decision making on my part. I try to wargame my courses of action while trying to account for all the false starts and misteps that led me to this point, lying in the mud, trying to keep my map sheets dry, trying to my commander's intent and my operational tasking into a succinct mission statement, single and undersexed despite literally dozens of amazing opportunities all carelessly wasted.
Planning.
At the end of the week, Saturday to be exact, we're back in. I've watched animals pick apart rucksacks. I've watched squirrels pry apart pull taps and crows open zippers. I've seen an entire platoon's food stolen from their packs and tossed in a half eaten mess over an entire patrol base. I've been bitten at least 46 times by mosquitoes. I've snuck back through the woods to avoid an errant bear and her cubs. I've eaten a sausage and hashbrowns raton pack every meal for days on end. And then we're back and everything is in the past and everything is amazing. I just want to see humanity, to talk to people, to anyone, to buy things, food and random movies, standard items of society. And I don't want to sleep, ever, because 24 hours later, I'm boarding a truck right back, with a new load of food, water, and ammo, and the mud scrubbed off my frag vest. And I'm planning ahead, with old pictures and journal entries and anything I can find, stocking up the nostalgia and regret to keep me going for another week in the woods, lying in the rain, reminding myself all the time why backwards is never an option, but why backwards must always inform forwards.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Between Courses
She walks into the room and two thoughts come into my head at once; I want to fall in love with her, and I’m embarrassed by my ridiculous haircut. Sitting on a couch watching DVDs of old cult Saturday morning kids shows, trying to make a good impression looking like a cop sticking out like a sore thumb in the midst of skinny, shaggy haired, bearded scenster types. She isn’t classically beautiful, she isn’t even specifically pretty. But she is cute and something about her strikes me and it doesn’t hurt that I am fresh from digging trenches and patrolling through swamps and giddy from the return to world, if only for a brief week of leave. I’m suddenly self conscious, but try to hold onto my confidence; that I can strap live grenades to my body and crawl through the dirt but my heart skips beats if I stand too close, close enough that I can smell a woman, is the result of coming on two years of insanity that isolate us so thoroughly from the people for whom we sacrifice a normal life. But things are ok, after all, charm comes easily to a man with nothing to lose and a plane ticket in his pocket.
And we all go out to the bars, we all dance, and I stare at her when she’s not looking, at the lines of her neck, her back, all the parts of a woman you begin to appreciate sitting in a shell scrape with your best friend at 3 am, shivering through the freezing rain trying to stay awake telling the same old stories of conquest and loss that have kept each other awake and depressed for months and months of training. And it isn’t about sex. It’s about trying to catch a glimpse, trying to seize and hold a tiny moment of normality for as long as you can. It’s about living in a bunk bed for two years of your life and spending every second with your coworkers until you can draw all the scars on their bodies, and all the scars on their souls. I don’t want to sleep with her, I want to hold her, to hug her, to love her, to wake up next to her late in the morning, to have no idea where I am, as long as it isn’t the barracks. But it’s not going to happen. The travelling soldier routine doesn’t work much with the kind of girls you want to be with anyways, or maybe I just don’t have any game anymore. But when my friends decide to leave and she decides to stay, I tell her goodbye and lean in and whisper to her that since I’ll never see her again I can tell her that I think she’s the most beautiful girl there tonight.
And it’s ok, because I shouldn’t have, but it was liberating to say it, to voice the truth at least, to not have to carry any thoughts with me that will remain unsaid forever. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve been gone long enough now that nostalgia and homesickness, if not even for a place but maybe a lifestyle, have eroded the sense of purpose that made me sign on the dotted line in the first place. At least there is pizza, and two slices and 15 minutes on foot later I am sitting in my friend’s kitchen with my best friend and another acquaintance. So I drink water and check my e-mail while they have another drink and talk. And he tells her a story, about her, about the girl who walked into the apartment and stole my attention for the rest of the night. He tells her how they hung out the other day, how through a combination of booze and drugs they ended up in bed together, how he accidentally slept with her and regrets it because he didn’t feel like it. And maybe that was there I began to remember why I gave up so much. How a young man of 20 can regret sleeping with a beautiful woman, I don’t understand it. I’d sell my soul for a fixed address, let alone a warm body to wake up next to every now and then; but he has everything I want and to him it’s nothing but baggage.
And for a brief second, yes, I feel like beating some sense into him. To these boys who never grow up into men and play video games of my job all day, while taking for granted all the fantastic things in their lives, and the fantastic people, and the women, while I’m stuck doing the job for real in the middle of nowhere, living in a sleeping bag with a rifle and my full fighting order at arms reach, but precious little else. But I know for sure that nothing lasts forever, and one day I will get out of the field and the barracks and have a chance to grasp at the same straws. And unlike this guy, or my friends, or my father, or any one of a million assholes in the world who will never realize the value of what they have, I’ll never take anything I have for granted.
And we all go out to the bars, we all dance, and I stare at her when she’s not looking, at the lines of her neck, her back, all the parts of a woman you begin to appreciate sitting in a shell scrape with your best friend at 3 am, shivering through the freezing rain trying to stay awake telling the same old stories of conquest and loss that have kept each other awake and depressed for months and months of training. And it isn’t about sex. It’s about trying to catch a glimpse, trying to seize and hold a tiny moment of normality for as long as you can. It’s about living in a bunk bed for two years of your life and spending every second with your coworkers until you can draw all the scars on their bodies, and all the scars on their souls. I don’t want to sleep with her, I want to hold her, to hug her, to love her, to wake up next to her late in the morning, to have no idea where I am, as long as it isn’t the barracks. But it’s not going to happen. The travelling soldier routine doesn’t work much with the kind of girls you want to be with anyways, or maybe I just don’t have any game anymore. But when my friends decide to leave and she decides to stay, I tell her goodbye and lean in and whisper to her that since I’ll never see her again I can tell her that I think she’s the most beautiful girl there tonight.
And it’s ok, because I shouldn’t have, but it was liberating to say it, to voice the truth at least, to not have to carry any thoughts with me that will remain unsaid forever. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve been gone long enough now that nostalgia and homesickness, if not even for a place but maybe a lifestyle, have eroded the sense of purpose that made me sign on the dotted line in the first place. At least there is pizza, and two slices and 15 minutes on foot later I am sitting in my friend’s kitchen with my best friend and another acquaintance. So I drink water and check my e-mail while they have another drink and talk. And he tells her a story, about her, about the girl who walked into the apartment and stole my attention for the rest of the night. He tells her how they hung out the other day, how through a combination of booze and drugs they ended up in bed together, how he accidentally slept with her and regrets it because he didn’t feel like it. And maybe that was there I began to remember why I gave up so much. How a young man of 20 can regret sleeping with a beautiful woman, I don’t understand it. I’d sell my soul for a fixed address, let alone a warm body to wake up next to every now and then; but he has everything I want and to him it’s nothing but baggage.
And for a brief second, yes, I feel like beating some sense into him. To these boys who never grow up into men and play video games of my job all day, while taking for granted all the fantastic things in their lives, and the fantastic people, and the women, while I’m stuck doing the job for real in the middle of nowhere, living in a sleeping bag with a rifle and my full fighting order at arms reach, but precious little else. But I know for sure that nothing lasts forever, and one day I will get out of the field and the barracks and have a chance to grasp at the same straws. And unlike this guy, or my friends, or my father, or any one of a million assholes in the world who will never realize the value of what they have, I’ll never take anything I have for granted.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Doubts
It's the last week of course and I'm at a loss as to where the previous 10 weeks went. But that's how it always seems to go on course, you lose your entire life to it, and then you wake up on the other side with a bunch of stories and some new skills but no real appreciation of what just happened to that little sliver of your life. This course is no exception.
SO I threw hand grenades and I fired machine guns and I ran ranges and I lead patrols and I dug out and built a battle trench and lived in the stupid thing for 9 days taking turns sleeping in the covered protection with my fireteam partner and burned a hundred or so little tea lights for warmth and I taught classes and ran far too much and rucked a little too long and hurt myself in more places than I'm ever going to admit or seek medical attention for. And of course I was inspected and succeeded and failed and did pushups and marked time and all the other standard bullshit of courses. But I didn't care, and I never worried, and I started to feel comfortable in command and never be at a loss for what to do.
And now I'm hanging around avoiding sleeping, avoiding the start of the last week of courses. All courses wind down in the last week with administration, dotting the last Is and crossing the last Ts of paperwork, signing course reports, returning kit, etc. No one really cares anymore, the staff even less than the candidates, because for all intends and purposes its over. I've learned what I was required to learn, past all the tests, met the standards. Anything past this has no training value. They can punish us all they want, but no one cares and there's no training value. By now we've all perfected the art of shutting down. I can stand there or kneel there or mark time or do pushups till infinity, but I'm not really there. My enthusiasm for the army has waned dramatically since I began, and my anxiety has all but disappeared. I understand the rules of the game now, because for almost a year and a half now, the game has been my life.
But that's just what is distressing me now, when I should be enjoying what little opporunity I have to relax. Course ends on Friday, and we're graciously enjoying a week off before we start our next course. Recovery and recuperation are luxuries that we don't have time for, hell, we're too tough, this is the infantry, we're infantry officers, we're tough beyond physical constraints, we only know the job, we only stop when the mission is accomplished - and our mission, to become trained, useful, deployable members of the Canadian Forces, is far from achieved.
Well, fuck that. A year ago, I wanted nothing more than to learn my job and go overseas, and do my part for my country. Today? I want to have a fucking life, for once, I want a real life. Not a fantasy life measured out in 48 hour weekend leaves between 5 days of reality. No, I want the real thing. I want to wake up and go to work, not wake up there already. I want to go home at the end of the day, I want to live somewhere, have personal effects, cook for myself, hell, I want to come home to someone. I want to stop hurting people because I think I can be someone or something for them, that I can sustain the energy I can put into a weekend over a real relationship when there is no way I can. Or maybe I just don't want to wake up every morning staring into the plywood floor of the top bunk, or sleep in my PT gear, or eat anymore artifical scrambled eggs at the mess.
Or maybe I've just been a transient, untrained, useless junior officer for so long that I forget what it's like to have a place in the world, and definently, I just don't know who I am anymore. And I don't even need to know who I am. I just want to do my job, or I want out.
SO I threw hand grenades and I fired machine guns and I ran ranges and I lead patrols and I dug out and built a battle trench and lived in the stupid thing for 9 days taking turns sleeping in the covered protection with my fireteam partner and burned a hundred or so little tea lights for warmth and I taught classes and ran far too much and rucked a little too long and hurt myself in more places than I'm ever going to admit or seek medical attention for. And of course I was inspected and succeeded and failed and did pushups and marked time and all the other standard bullshit of courses. But I didn't care, and I never worried, and I started to feel comfortable in command and never be at a loss for what to do.
And now I'm hanging around avoiding sleeping, avoiding the start of the last week of courses. All courses wind down in the last week with administration, dotting the last Is and crossing the last Ts of paperwork, signing course reports, returning kit, etc. No one really cares anymore, the staff even less than the candidates, because for all intends and purposes its over. I've learned what I was required to learn, past all the tests, met the standards. Anything past this has no training value. They can punish us all they want, but no one cares and there's no training value. By now we've all perfected the art of shutting down. I can stand there or kneel there or mark time or do pushups till infinity, but I'm not really there. My enthusiasm for the army has waned dramatically since I began, and my anxiety has all but disappeared. I understand the rules of the game now, because for almost a year and a half now, the game has been my life.
But that's just what is distressing me now, when I should be enjoying what little opporunity I have to relax. Course ends on Friday, and we're graciously enjoying a week off before we start our next course. Recovery and recuperation are luxuries that we don't have time for, hell, we're too tough, this is the infantry, we're infantry officers, we're tough beyond physical constraints, we only know the job, we only stop when the mission is accomplished - and our mission, to become trained, useful, deployable members of the Canadian Forces, is far from achieved.
Well, fuck that. A year ago, I wanted nothing more than to learn my job and go overseas, and do my part for my country. Today? I want to have a fucking life, for once, I want a real life. Not a fantasy life measured out in 48 hour weekend leaves between 5 days of reality. No, I want the real thing. I want to wake up and go to work, not wake up there already. I want to go home at the end of the day, I want to live somewhere, have personal effects, cook for myself, hell, I want to come home to someone. I want to stop hurting people because I think I can be someone or something for them, that I can sustain the energy I can put into a weekend over a real relationship when there is no way I can. Or maybe I just don't want to wake up every morning staring into the plywood floor of the top bunk, or sleep in my PT gear, or eat anymore artifical scrambled eggs at the mess.
Or maybe I've just been a transient, untrained, useless junior officer for so long that I forget what it's like to have a place in the world, and definently, I just don't know who I am anymore. And I don't even need to know who I am. I just want to do my job, or I want out.
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