The problem with unexpected things is that you never know how to react, because of course, you never expected to be in that situation in the first place. And I know that sounds pretty obvious, but for the most part I don’t think anyone is ever really surprised past a certain point in their lives, a given age, or accumulation of experience. Everyone resorts to standard operating procedures to reduce any bizarre occurrence to its basic, previously experienced themes. But every now and then, we are taken completely off guard. These are the kinds of events that get you killed, or in day to day situations, confused, hurt, angry, frustrated, surprised, etc. In the military, just about everything you could ever expect has been thought of, planned out, war-gamed, adjusted, demoed, exercised, and written down. There is almost nothing for which a clear and concrete doctrine is not published, outlining in exact detail the standard reaction which you are to follow.
Weapon drills are the earliest building block of this kind of thinking that soldiers are exposed to. The core of any military force is the individual soldier and his service battle rifle. With this standard arm, the soldier can defeat the enemy and defend himself, and given this importance he must know the weapon intimately and be able to expertly operate it in under any conditions, most commonly the stress and confusion of battle, and quickly remedy any stoppage that occurs. When a soldier’s rifle ceases to function the enemy stops dying and his comrades begin to. Only a few weeks into basic training, when recruits can still barely dress themselves correctly, they begin to have the drills for the service rifle beaten into their heads. Failing the handling test is possibly the surest and simplest way to cease being a soldier and end up back on the streets selling pencils. Everyone remembers the call of the instructor, “Weapon fires, weapon stops!” and the immediate, unconscious canting of the rifle left to verify the position of the bolt.
This training continues with each new weapon system that is introduced to a soldier, so that reactions become completely automatic and that nothing short of a catastrophic failure can take the soldier and his weapon out of the fight.
And frankly, I think it’s a failure of both society and the public education system that we as people don’t receive this kind of training. How many times have you caught yourself or your friends lamenting indecisively over some difficult situation; a break-up, unemployment, depression, existential crisis, etc, and you just wanted to scream at yourself, or them, and get on with your life. It should be that easy, we should all snap to attention, analyze the situation, and react appropriately; feel sad for a week, go out to a bar, meet new member of opposite sex, bang! print resumes, hit street, find work, bang! start working out, switch up your routine, smile, bang! read a lot of Camus and Sartre, realize those old French bastards didn't know anything more about the world than you do, take a trip, get the fuck over it, bang!
But I suppose that would take all the fun out of life, not to mention all the fear, grief, frustration, and other amazing emotions that really are the core food groups of the human soul. Now I like to think that I have seen and experienced a lot of weird stuff, and that I’m pretty well rounded and capable, at least in that I can usually sort myself out whenever I encounter a new weird experience and keep moving on, but I learned this weekend that I really have no fucking clue how to react when you run into a stripper who is the spitting image of a girl you once seriously considered marrying, at the single, ridiculous, hidden away secret strip club in Fredericton that your buddies tricked you into going to.
So, that was pretty much the weekend. I have to be up for PT in a few hours, but I’m not sleepy and just lying on my bunk. I can’t help but laugh that the first time I ever went to a strip club it was by trickery, and that in the middle of this nasty place filled with hideous people, the one good looking employee was a startling and gorgeous clone of the last girl I dated. The world is a strange place, and thank gawd, because otherwise what the hell would we have to talk about on Monday?
We may be lonely but at least we’re laughing out here.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Boredom, Bunkbeds, and the Training System
Mail isn't a common thing these days in the military. Some people get lots of letters, but for the most part, e-mail and texting and telephones has taken over. Packages are still a thrill for everyone, but again, most of the time it's things we've ordered for ourselves. Shopping in the wonderful village of Oromocto is limited to groceries and the Canadian Tire. The single mall in Fredericton isn't much better, especially when the average infantry officer's tastes run to $20 socks and an ever increasing range of both strange and common place items remade in various combinations of gore-tex and camouflage. Waterproof breathable membranes are possibly the single greatest thing ever invented, after women and coffee of course, for the army.
Now I needed to get something shipped out to me (a completely unnecessary but warm and snively jacket that weighs slightly less and packs up much better than the issue equivalent) so I had to figure out my address. Which of course got me thinking, as did a customer service struggle to get my cell phone and internet access figured out for my new home in New Brunswick. I hate when you try to shop somewhere and they ask for your address, and I have to say, sorry, I don't have one. People usually roll their eyes as if through this refusal I am trying to make their underpaying job just that much more difficult. So then I offer something more specific, really specific, say, Bunk 4 (clockwise), Top, Room XYZ, Shack H#, CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick. Now, in this town that will get you a pizza delivered, but not a bill.
Thankfully everything was resolved and now my roommates and I can both order in food or socks, and access the internet without driving over to the not quite worth it coffee shop that is the only game in town for wi-fi. We've settled in here now, into this barren, wind-swept land where neat rows upon rows of young saplings grow to repent for someones idiotic decision to cut down all the trees on base, and where the morning gusts freeze our sweat to our faces as we run PT. Of course, 7 men in a room designed for 4 soldiers or 1 college student generates a fair bit of heat so we sleep warmly, wrapped in our camo ranger blankets, weening ourselves off of luxuries like sheets that must be forgotten for the year to come.
Now, the holidays are over and we have all been back to work for one or two weeks, but I can hardly call what we are doing work. Myself and most of my friends are members of the 72 strong and holding Infantry School Support Company, also known as PAT Platoon, also known as holding platoon, also known as 69 bored men and 3 bored women waiting desperately to go back on courses where they will hate every minute of their lives but at least be moving forwards, or some direction vaguely approximate. Here is our daily schedule:
6:00 AM: Wake up to 4 beeping watch alarms. 4/7 roommates jump out of bed, having worn their PT gear to sleep, drag on running tights, shoes, and hoodies, smash into every other bunk or chair in the room, and drag themselves out into the bright never-dimming lights of the hallway miraculously without waking the remaining 3 who get to sleep for another hour.
6:15 AM: Breakfast. Scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, either too much or not enough bacon. Fibre cereal with mango yogurt. Soy Milk, apple juice, coffee. Usually two coffees. We eat quick and then drag out the coffee to let our stomachs settle.
7:20 AM: Form up in the Infantry School building for PT. The trip from the mess to here being the coldest, most underdressed, and difficult part of the day, all 3 minutes of it. Run 5 KM fast, or 5KM at pace with pushups, or 8KM under pace, depending on the Captain's mood.
8:30 AM: Back in the shacks, shower, get dressed, lye on bunk, nap or read a book.
10:00 AM: Show up to the LAV hanger, stand around, gawk at veh techs working on the giant 8-wheeled armored vehicles, dream of commanding them one day. Hang around for 6 minute meeting.
10:15 AM 11:30 AM: Lye on bunk, think about lunch.
12:30 PM 01:55 PM: Lye on bunk, think about dinner, share pictures of ex-girlfriends with other roommates on facebook.
02:00 PM: 4 minute afternoon meeting. Nothing to do with you.
02:15 PM: Day officially over. Go to the gym to kill time. Fail.
So basically, I work for around 10 minutes a day, and exercise for 2 to 3 hours. The rest I mostly spend puttering around the shacks, trying to maximize the efficiency of my 7 cubic feet of personal space. Or watching movies, or nodding at my best friends across the room, because we've run out of things to say but at least we are together. Or planning which cougar bar we will go to on friday night, depending on if people are trying to go home with some girl or if we just want to have a chaotic night of east-coast lunacy. Either way.
Course starts again on February 11th. Hemmingway wrote that in war "we burn the fat off our souls." Well, waiting to go to war is where we pack those pounds on, and it is a sad irony that every day I train and improve my physical body that much more, but that every day, I lose another small piece of myself out here in the middle of nowhere, thinking of people 2 provinces, and yet a universe away.
Here's to a good soup in the mess tomorrow. I'm hoping for cream of broccoli.
Now I needed to get something shipped out to me (a completely unnecessary but warm and snively jacket that weighs slightly less and packs up much better than the issue equivalent) so I had to figure out my address. Which of course got me thinking, as did a customer service struggle to get my cell phone and internet access figured out for my new home in New Brunswick. I hate when you try to shop somewhere and they ask for your address, and I have to say, sorry, I don't have one. People usually roll their eyes as if through this refusal I am trying to make their underpaying job just that much more difficult. So then I offer something more specific, really specific, say, Bunk 4 (clockwise), Top, Room XYZ, Shack H#, CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick. Now, in this town that will get you a pizza delivered, but not a bill.
Thankfully everything was resolved and now my roommates and I can both order in food or socks, and access the internet without driving over to the not quite worth it coffee shop that is the only game in town for wi-fi. We've settled in here now, into this barren, wind-swept land where neat rows upon rows of young saplings grow to repent for someones idiotic decision to cut down all the trees on base, and where the morning gusts freeze our sweat to our faces as we run PT. Of course, 7 men in a room designed for 4 soldiers or 1 college student generates a fair bit of heat so we sleep warmly, wrapped in our camo ranger blankets, weening ourselves off of luxuries like sheets that must be forgotten for the year to come.
Now, the holidays are over and we have all been back to work for one or two weeks, but I can hardly call what we are doing work. Myself and most of my friends are members of the 72 strong and holding Infantry School Support Company, also known as PAT Platoon, also known as holding platoon, also known as 69 bored men and 3 bored women waiting desperately to go back on courses where they will hate every minute of their lives but at least be moving forwards, or some direction vaguely approximate. Here is our daily schedule:
6:00 AM: Wake up to 4 beeping watch alarms. 4/7 roommates jump out of bed, having worn their PT gear to sleep, drag on running tights, shoes, and hoodies, smash into every other bunk or chair in the room, and drag themselves out into the bright never-dimming lights of the hallway miraculously without waking the remaining 3 who get to sleep for another hour.
6:15 AM: Breakfast. Scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, either too much or not enough bacon. Fibre cereal with mango yogurt. Soy Milk, apple juice, coffee. Usually two coffees. We eat quick and then drag out the coffee to let our stomachs settle.
7:20 AM: Form up in the Infantry School building for PT. The trip from the mess to here being the coldest, most underdressed, and difficult part of the day, all 3 minutes of it. Run 5 KM fast, or 5KM at pace with pushups, or 8KM under pace, depending on the Captain's mood.
8:30 AM: Back in the shacks, shower, get dressed, lye on bunk, nap or read a book.
10:00 AM: Show up to the LAV hanger, stand around, gawk at veh techs working on the giant 8-wheeled armored vehicles, dream of commanding them one day. Hang around for 6 minute meeting.
10:15 AM 11:30 AM: Lye on bunk, think about lunch.
12:30 PM 01:55 PM: Lye on bunk, think about dinner, share pictures of ex-girlfriends with other roommates on facebook.
02:00 PM: 4 minute afternoon meeting. Nothing to do with you.
02:15 PM: Day officially over. Go to the gym to kill time. Fail.
So basically, I work for around 10 minutes a day, and exercise for 2 to 3 hours. The rest I mostly spend puttering around the shacks, trying to maximize the efficiency of my 7 cubic feet of personal space. Or watching movies, or nodding at my best friends across the room, because we've run out of things to say but at least we are together. Or planning which cougar bar we will go to on friday night, depending on if people are trying to go home with some girl or if we just want to have a chaotic night of east-coast lunacy. Either way.
Course starts again on February 11th. Hemmingway wrote that in war "we burn the fat off our souls." Well, waiting to go to war is where we pack those pounds on, and it is a sad irony that every day I train and improve my physical body that much more, but that every day, I lose another small piece of myself out here in the middle of nowhere, thinking of people 2 provinces, and yet a universe away.
Here's to a good soup in the mess tomorrow. I'm hoping for cream of broccoli.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Christmas Leave 2007
1 year, 8 days.
Every Christmas most of the Canadian Forces gets 3 weeks of leave. It is generous to say the least, and much appreciated. I know right now that many of my friends and fellow soldiers are with their families again finally, after months and months of separation. I'm sure it's a fantastic vacation for everyone, but for those of us who are new, and still not full-fledged soldiers, who have yet to be posted, it's something really special. Or at least I imagine it is.
Life is a bit different for the single soldiers. It's nice to be able to go wake up somewhere other than the shacks for more than 2 nights in a row, of course. It's just not the same thing though. I've talked to some of the married (or close enough) guys about this. I really am happy for those guys, it must be incredible to get 3 weeks of waking up next to the woman you love, without that cruel immediate anxiety about leaving creeping up on you. A few times in the last year I've had somewhere to look forward to go, and each time it hit me as soon as I got there - 2 sleeps and its back to the army. I shouldn't complain of course. On the suffering scale, wishing you had someone to miss is a distant runner up to missing someone you love. No question.
On that note, something I'm willing to claim as a fact: I've yet to meet a young man who doesn't have much better luck with women now that he's a soldier than he had before as a civillian. Maybe not in quantity, but in quality of encounters, well, really, quality of women. Maybe I'm completely off base about this, and Canadian women secrely have a military fetish, but I'm inclined to believe it is something deeper than that. I don't know if you can make it through your first year in the army without changing for the better. Everyone seems more confident and comfortable in their skin then you'd guess they were before, at least from what you know about them. Personally, I don't know what happened, but I'm not the same person I was before I started getting short haircuts.
That is maybe the cruel thing about becoming a better person. I'm grateful, of course, to the big green machine. But it's a little late. The price of being a sorted out, content young soldier on the path to building a life, is being a young soldier out in the middle of nowhere training where there is no one other than your coursemates to know you're even still alive. I call it the leave curse. You get some time off, you pop back to the universe, you are king shit of fuck mountain, you can do no wrong, but it can't last. There is a bunk and a fireblanket and a rifle and a fighting position and a mound of dirt or a pile of mud waiting for you somewhere, calling you back. You get to enjoy your new self only for the few days listed on your leave pass, that's it. But you get used to living in the moments, I find, but I never get used to the cliches. I haven't heard them very many times but each time it's jarring.
"I wish I had met you before," or it's baggage laden cousin, "why couldn't things have been like this before?"
The truth is simple. Some people joined the military content and happy and sorted out, just looking to serve their country, and they are good people and fine soldiers and I'm sure as hell glad that they have my back. But some of us joined the military to get sorted out, and we really shouldn't have expected a free ride. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it includes breakfast, dinner, and an entirely new outlook on life, not to mention unlimited seconds and coffee.
So this is where I find myself after a year in the Canadian Army. I have never been so satisfied with who I am as a person, or what I am doing with my life. I am confident, purposeful, organized, and motivated. I also live in the middle of nowhere and have little to no personal life. I pine for women who are intrigued by a young officer but who I feel I cannot ask to wait for me, or settle for unwaivering devotion at a 1200km distance, even if I thought they would say yes.
But what the hell. Who else gets to wake up in the morning, slip on some camo pyjamas, get paid to stay in the shape, work with the finest people the country has to offer, and look forward to doing some real good for the world? Did I mention all of this in camo pyjamas?
So maybe life isn't good, but there's no way it won't be one day. Hurry up & wait.
Every Christmas most of the Canadian Forces gets 3 weeks of leave. It is generous to say the least, and much appreciated. I know right now that many of my friends and fellow soldiers are with their families again finally, after months and months of separation. I'm sure it's a fantastic vacation for everyone, but for those of us who are new, and still not full-fledged soldiers, who have yet to be posted, it's something really special. Or at least I imagine it is.
Life is a bit different for the single soldiers. It's nice to be able to go wake up somewhere other than the shacks for more than 2 nights in a row, of course. It's just not the same thing though. I've talked to some of the married (or close enough) guys about this. I really am happy for those guys, it must be incredible to get 3 weeks of waking up next to the woman you love, without that cruel immediate anxiety about leaving creeping up on you. A few times in the last year I've had somewhere to look forward to go, and each time it hit me as soon as I got there - 2 sleeps and its back to the army. I shouldn't complain of course. On the suffering scale, wishing you had someone to miss is a distant runner up to missing someone you love. No question.
On that note, something I'm willing to claim as a fact: I've yet to meet a young man who doesn't have much better luck with women now that he's a soldier than he had before as a civillian. Maybe not in quantity, but in quality of encounters, well, really, quality of women. Maybe I'm completely off base about this, and Canadian women secrely have a military fetish, but I'm inclined to believe it is something deeper than that. I don't know if you can make it through your first year in the army without changing for the better. Everyone seems more confident and comfortable in their skin then you'd guess they were before, at least from what you know about them. Personally, I don't know what happened, but I'm not the same person I was before I started getting short haircuts.
That is maybe the cruel thing about becoming a better person. I'm grateful, of course, to the big green machine. But it's a little late. The price of being a sorted out, content young soldier on the path to building a life, is being a young soldier out in the middle of nowhere training where there is no one other than your coursemates to know you're even still alive. I call it the leave curse. You get some time off, you pop back to the universe, you are king shit of fuck mountain, you can do no wrong, but it can't last. There is a bunk and a fireblanket and a rifle and a fighting position and a mound of dirt or a pile of mud waiting for you somewhere, calling you back. You get to enjoy your new self only for the few days listed on your leave pass, that's it. But you get used to living in the moments, I find, but I never get used to the cliches. I haven't heard them very many times but each time it's jarring.
"I wish I had met you before," or it's baggage laden cousin, "why couldn't things have been like this before?"
The truth is simple. Some people joined the military content and happy and sorted out, just looking to serve their country, and they are good people and fine soldiers and I'm sure as hell glad that they have my back. But some of us joined the military to get sorted out, and we really shouldn't have expected a free ride. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially when it includes breakfast, dinner, and an entirely new outlook on life, not to mention unlimited seconds and coffee.
So this is where I find myself after a year in the Canadian Army. I have never been so satisfied with who I am as a person, or what I am doing with my life. I am confident, purposeful, organized, and motivated. I also live in the middle of nowhere and have little to no personal life. I pine for women who are intrigued by a young officer but who I feel I cannot ask to wait for me, or settle for unwaivering devotion at a 1200km distance, even if I thought they would say yes.
But what the hell. Who else gets to wake up in the morning, slip on some camo pyjamas, get paid to stay in the shape, work with the finest people the country has to offer, and look forward to doing some real good for the world? Did I mention all of this in camo pyjamas?
So maybe life isn't good, but there's no way it won't be one day. Hurry up & wait.
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