The hardest thing about my life right now is the simple fact that I have little to no control over it. From when I wake in the A.M., to bedtime late at night, the military will dictate how I spend my twenty four hours. This is often onerous because they have no idea on how to best utilize me, my talents, or skills. Despite claiming the title of having a great democratic republic or whatever, our military is surprisingly communist in nature. A person is given a job they will most likely have for the duration of their service with minimal changes to it. Making a lateral move is difficult to impossible, usually held as a re-enlistment perk.
“Oh so you hated being water technician? Well we can get you that position you originally wanted as flight crew chief if you sign on for six years. Yeah, it’s an extra two years due to the length of the schools required for it. No, there’s no signing bonus.”
As one can no doubt glean from the above, I have such a job. Its function is almost completely outsourced to civilian contractors and is primarily only used in a field capacity with my battalion. The best part is that since my unwise twenty-three year old self signed on with no regard, Present Me is doomed to whatever bitch labor they have to chuck at me. My platoon has already left for Afghanistan and I was sadly chosen to help with the remain behind element to clean ALL of the facilities we used. It’s giving me traumatic flashbacks to my old summer job as a maintenance worker for my old school system. Moving heavy furniture around, cleaning floors, dealing with grungy outdoor access bathrooms, mopping, scrubbing walls; not exactly the picture one has of life in The Corps.
There is no cohesion or set plan in motion to accomplish Operation Immaculate Cleansing. Our staff rouses us early to stand in a formation for half an hour until their hive-mind comes up with a solution to complete the obvious. “Hurry up and wait” is the unspoken mantra amongst the junior enlisted. As a bonus all of the staff have different projects they are attempting to complete and are constantly abducting manpower from other parties. Those that are snatched in such fashion are often counted as absent from duty and punished accordingly for following orders of senior personnel. Sometimes camp officers breeze through wanting us to do some activity in order to free their crew from performing it. Thus we are whored out like Romanian girls promised high paying careers in France. Then we get to come back and finish the original tasks as they consume our cherished free time.
The officer staff seems to be completely clueless as to how effectively they are demoralizing the men in their command. Do they get shat out of OCS (Officer Candidate School) and just forget the inherent need to have a modicum of relaxation at the end of a work day? Or a weekend off for that matter? We have what is called a ninety six hour liberty period coming up for the Labor Day holiday. Every stateside servicewoman/man will be able to partake in it or if their job requires them to work part of it, they will still get the time off at a later date. Our despondent little band will not see any of this as we have been tasked to finish furniture assembly until we deploy.
Active duty folks are constantly amazed at the stories recounted by us of the horror we undergo thanks to our inept command. Most can’t believe that there has not been an open mutiny due to bumbling leadership’s decision to overwork and under-reward its troops. In their careers of service to our nation, mystery is non-existent as it is inefficient and creates chaos. Wake up, show up to your shop, work till quitting time, go home relax, repeat till Friday, enjoy the next two days off.
I have to take this to the most extreme contrast. This morning a substance addict woke up in some squatter’s paradise and knew exactly how the day was going to unfold.
1.) Get up.
2.) Get money, items to barter, or render services to get drugs.
3.) Get high.
Ingenuous in it’s simplicity. No bullshit mire to wade through. Just a simple route towards an attainable goal. So if needle freaks can pull this off, how does it continue to be a mystery for individuals charged with the defense of our country? The whole picture makes my impending cross globe posting to combat terror in Afghanistan seem considerably more daunting.
