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.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
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.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Surprises
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.
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.
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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