"Deployment: it's not just for the Few and the Proud anymore."
In my introduction I mentioned these two classic deployment e-mails I received from Lara when I was in the Middle East. For those pals that just got back, read them again and get a chuckle. I know a lot of the military blog sites have posted these on their pages as well. But they are timeless classics that remind me of what I went through and I periodically review them to share how good we have it back here in the USA. Additionally, I wanted to share these one more time with the pals that didn’t get to experience the mass e-mail from overseas when they were distributed. Enjoy!
"Deployment: it's not just for the Few and the Proud anymore."
Want to pretend you are deployed? Here is a list of things you can do right in the "comfort" of your own home to give you that deployed feeling.
· Sleep on a cot in the garage.
· Replace the garage door with a curtain.
· Two hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.
· When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
· Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
· Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.
· Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
· Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.
· Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
· Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
· Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
· Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.
· Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.
· Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.
· Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.
· Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.
· Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.
· Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
· Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
· Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you along with your gun and a flashlight.
· Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.
· Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."
· Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
· Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
· Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.
· Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.
· Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.
· Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.
· While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
· Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.
· Drink your milk and sodas warm.
· Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.
· Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.
· Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.
· Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.
· When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.
· Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.
· Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.
You know you have been in Iraq too long when.....
· Mortars land near your compound and you roll over in bed and think "still way off, I got another 5 minutes"
· You start humming with the Arabic song playing on the radio on the shuttle bus
· Every woman that reports to your unit starts looking attractive
· Every guy that reports to your unit starts looking attractive
· You walk an extra 6 blocks to eat at the KBR (contractor run) dining facility to have the exact same food they are serving in your dining facility because you think it tastes better
· You actually volunteer for convoy security duty because you still haven't seen the country yet
· You start picturing your wife in traditional Arab dress
· The contractors have more fire power than the military combat units. (This is true)
· You take the time to add your lines to this list
· You drink the water from the tap because you want to drop 20 pounds in two weeks
· Driving around in SUVs with weapons pointed out the windows and forcing cars off the road seems very normal to you
· You can put your body armor and helmet on in the dark in under 5 seconds
· When the organization you work for has changed its name more than 3 times
· When you can actually talk to people in the United States on a cell phone, yet you can't get people on their cell phone a block away
· When you actually spend more time writing e-mail about the dog in the compound versus how to conduct the fight in Najaf
· Your idea of a fun Thursday night is to go to the Palace pool to watch the State Department folks get drunk, naked and try to pick each other up
· When you actually get excited to get a package that contains 3 pair of socks, 12 bars of soap and a Victoria Secret Catalog
· When you start to enjoy the rocking of the trailer every time the MEDEVAC choppers fly over
· You memorized every episode from the 4th Season of Sex in the City
· You enjoy the audience commentary while watching a movie bought at Hajimart
· You see celebratory fire going over the compound at night and think, "wow the colors are so pretty" and want to fire back
· Your thinking of buying real estate in the green zone
· Your idea of sex is 20 minutes of Instant Messaging with your wife on the computer, OK, 10 minutes, who are you kidding?
· You wake up and think Baghdad, I am still in friggin Baghdad
· You make the new guy show you his count down timer just to make you feel better about your time you have left in country
· You're in the Army and you start saying Ooorah
· You're in the Marines and you start saying Hooah
· You're in the Navy and you realize you are in the middle of the desert, the exact opposite of being in the middle of the ocean, where one might normally find the Navy.
· You're in the Air Force, and you're on the plane home because an Air Forcetour is too short to have been a long Iraq tour. Ignore this list, zoomie, you won't get it.
· You only notice the stench of Haji funk when its not there
· You plan on removing all trees and grass in your yard when you get home soit will look more natural
· You forget there are other colors than brown that can be found in placesother than power point slides
· The temp drops down to 102 degrees and you shiver while reaching for yourGortex jacket
· You have noticed a change of season, from long, hot and dry to short, coldand wet.
· When you call home and your kids ask, "Who is this?"
· You call home and your wife says hello Bill (your name is Sam)
· When you go on R&R, you duct tape your child to the roof of your car, hand him a pellet rifle, and assign him a sector of fire for the ride to "The Olive Garden."
· When you can comfortably shave and brush your teeth using bottled water, but don't mind showering in the "non-potable" local water.
· While on R&R, you look out the window and find Nature, which leads you to wonder who stole your sandbags.
· When some of the contractors wear their DCUs (Desert pattern camouflage uniform) more properly than some of your soldiers.
· When 12 hours is a short work day
· When, During the BUA, "DIV asked MNSTC-I for the FRAGO that MNC-I was supposed to publish, but couldn't because MNF-I hadn't weighed in, since they were too inundated with MOD and MOI war-gaming the JCCs within the ISF to square us away!" is a valid comment and generates no questions.
· When you start using words like G'day mate, Cheers, and Bloody hell as part of your normal vocabulary
· When you have your opinions printed in the STARS and STRIPES more than 3 times
· When the palace catches fire and instead of helping to put it out you grab a bag of marshmallows and start roasting
· When you step into any office and there are 6 colonels, 12 lieutenant colonels, 15 majors, and 8 captains supervising the work of 1 sergeant
· When you end every phone conversation with "Out"
· When you're ordered to get an air mission together on short notice because it's a "Hot priority" only to have the Major call back once he is in the air to ask "Does anyone know where I am going?"
· When the weapon buyback program has become so successful that you have issued the same AK-47 to the Iraqi army 3 times
· When you can actually tell the difference between the sound of an exploding car and an exploding mortar
· When on R & R you tell your wife that your weapon status is Red and your looking for the clearing barrel
· When on R&R you go to Church and wonder why no one is wearing body armor or carrying an automatic weapon to the service
· You see an indirect fire attack take out a generator and get angry at the enemy for not hitting the one that powers your computer
· You see an indirect fire attack take out an air conditioner and your vigor to fight is renewed
· You yell at the FNG for shouting "Incoming!" when the rounds don't impact close enough to hit your tent with dirt
· You know that you need to run inside immediately after any win of an Iraqi sports team to keep from being hit by celebratory fire
· You decide for that for grins - lets take a run around Lost Lake at Camp Victory to see if we can get shot at by the sniper
· You never worry about oversleeping because if the morning call to prayers doesn't wake you, the daily 0430 mortar attack will (most mornings)
· The highlight of your shopping experience at the PX is to see that they got in a new shipment of Schick Tracer razor blades
· When you send out your laundry and your whites become grayer, your blacks become grayer and your DCU's become grayer - makes it easier to sort loads...
· You get offended by people wearing clean, pressed DCU's
· You decide that it is a better course of action to pull your blankets over your head than put on your body armor during a mortar attack - the woobee will save you and at least you are comfortable
· You make a contest out of seeing who can wear their uniform for more days before becoming entirely disgusted with themselves
· You wonder if the fish served at dinner really was carp caught out of the Tigris or Camp Victory's lake
· You find it completely acceptable to pick your nose while talking to a complete stranger or member of the opposite sex
· A rocket or a mortar really isn't a big deal until the crater it leaves is big enough to trip over in the dark on the way to the latrine
· You go to a social gathering and intermittent gun fire or explosions don't even cause a pause in the conversation
"Deployment: it's not just for the Few and the Proud anymore."
Want to pretend you are deployed? Here is a list of things you can do right in the "comfort" of your own home to give you that deployed feeling.
· Sleep on a cot in the garage.
· Replace the garage door with a curtain.
· Two hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, "Sorry, wrong cot."Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using your bathroom and use a neighbor's. Choose a neighbor who lives at least a quarter mile away.
· When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the lights off.
· Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.
· Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on "HIGH" for that tactical generator smell.
· Don't watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.
· Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.
· Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
· Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
· Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
· Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.
· Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.
· Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.
· Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.
· Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.
· Invite at least 185 people you don't really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.
· Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
· Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
· Keep a roll of toilet paper on your nightstand and bring it to the bathroom with you along with your gun and a flashlight.
· Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, "just in case." Every time.
· Announce to your family that they have mail, have them report to you as you stand outside your open garage door after supper and then say, "Sorry, it's for the other Smith."
· Wash only 15 items of laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and without ironing or removing the mildew, proudly wear them to professional meetings and family gatherings. Pretend you don't know what you look or smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for another week.
· Go to the worst crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed, wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents that you are there to help them.
· Eat a single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it's for Malaria.
· Demand each family member be limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.
· Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of your home for proper ambiance.
· Sandbag the floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and fragmentation.
· While traveling down roads in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before proceeding.
· Fire off 50 cherry bombs simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will make an acceptable substitute for their shattered windows.
· Drink your milk and sodas warm.
· Spread gravel throughout your house and yard.
· Make your children clear their Super Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the front door before they come in.
· Make your family dig a survivability position with overhead cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4x4s are not 8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.
· Continuously ask your spouse to allow you to go buy an M-Gator.
· When your 5-year-old asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.
· Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the year and announce to your family that there will be no heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner. Tell them you are doing this so they won't get cold/ hot.
· Just when you think you're ready to resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this process for another six months to simulate the next deployment you've been ordered to support.
You know you have been in Iraq too long when.....
· Mortars land near your compound and you roll over in bed and think "still way off, I got another 5 minutes"
· You start humming with the Arabic song playing on the radio on the shuttle bus
· Every woman that reports to your unit starts looking attractive
· Every guy that reports to your unit starts looking attractive
· You walk an extra 6 blocks to eat at the KBR (contractor run) dining facility to have the exact same food they are serving in your dining facility because you think it tastes better
· You actually volunteer for convoy security duty because you still haven't seen the country yet
· You start picturing your wife in traditional Arab dress
· The contractors have more fire power than the military combat units. (This is true)
· You take the time to add your lines to this list
· You drink the water from the tap because you want to drop 20 pounds in two weeks
· Driving around in SUVs with weapons pointed out the windows and forcing cars off the road seems very normal to you
· You can put your body armor and helmet on in the dark in under 5 seconds
· When the organization you work for has changed its name more than 3 times
· When you can actually talk to people in the United States on a cell phone, yet you can't get people on their cell phone a block away
· When you actually spend more time writing e-mail about the dog in the compound versus how to conduct the fight in Najaf
· Your idea of a fun Thursday night is to go to the Palace pool to watch the State Department folks get drunk, naked and try to pick each other up
· When you actually get excited to get a package that contains 3 pair of socks, 12 bars of soap and a Victoria Secret Catalog
· When you start to enjoy the rocking of the trailer every time the MEDEVAC choppers fly over
· You memorized every episode from the 4th Season of Sex in the City
· You enjoy the audience commentary while watching a movie bought at Hajimart
· You see celebratory fire going over the compound at night and think, "wow the colors are so pretty" and want to fire back
· Your thinking of buying real estate in the green zone
· Your idea of sex is 20 minutes of Instant Messaging with your wife on the computer, OK, 10 minutes, who are you kidding?
· You wake up and think Baghdad, I am still in friggin Baghdad
· You make the new guy show you his count down timer just to make you feel better about your time you have left in country
· You're in the Army and you start saying Ooorah
· You're in the Marines and you start saying Hooah
· You're in the Navy and you realize you are in the middle of the desert, the exact opposite of being in the middle of the ocean, where one might normally find the Navy.
· You're in the Air Force, and you're on the plane home because an Air Forcetour is too short to have been a long Iraq tour. Ignore this list, zoomie, you won't get it.
· You only notice the stench of Haji funk when its not there
· You plan on removing all trees and grass in your yard when you get home soit will look more natural
· You forget there are other colors than brown that can be found in placesother than power point slides
· The temp drops down to 102 degrees and you shiver while reaching for yourGortex jacket
· You have noticed a change of season, from long, hot and dry to short, coldand wet.
· When you call home and your kids ask, "Who is this?"
· You call home and your wife says hello Bill (your name is Sam)
· When you go on R&R, you duct tape your child to the roof of your car, hand him a pellet rifle, and assign him a sector of fire for the ride to "The Olive Garden."
· When you can comfortably shave and brush your teeth using bottled water, but don't mind showering in the "non-potable" local water.
· While on R&R, you look out the window and find Nature, which leads you to wonder who stole your sandbags.
· When some of the contractors wear their DCUs (Desert pattern camouflage uniform) more properly than some of your soldiers.
· When 12 hours is a short work day
· When, During the BUA, "DIV asked MNSTC-I for the FRAGO that MNC-I was supposed to publish, but couldn't because MNF-I hadn't weighed in, since they were too inundated with MOD and MOI war-gaming the JCCs within the ISF to square us away!" is a valid comment and generates no questions.
· When you start using words like G'day mate, Cheers, and Bloody hell as part of your normal vocabulary
· When you have your opinions printed in the STARS and STRIPES more than 3 times
· When the palace catches fire and instead of helping to put it out you grab a bag of marshmallows and start roasting
· When you step into any office and there are 6 colonels, 12 lieutenant colonels, 15 majors, and 8 captains supervising the work of 1 sergeant
· When you end every phone conversation with "Out"
· When you're ordered to get an air mission together on short notice because it's a "Hot priority" only to have the Major call back once he is in the air to ask "Does anyone know where I am going?"
· When the weapon buyback program has become so successful that you have issued the same AK-47 to the Iraqi army 3 times
· When you can actually tell the difference between the sound of an exploding car and an exploding mortar
· When on R & R you tell your wife that your weapon status is Red and your looking for the clearing barrel
· When on R&R you go to Church and wonder why no one is wearing body armor or carrying an automatic weapon to the service
· You see an indirect fire attack take out a generator and get angry at the enemy for not hitting the one that powers your computer
· You see an indirect fire attack take out an air conditioner and your vigor to fight is renewed
· You yell at the FNG for shouting "Incoming!" when the rounds don't impact close enough to hit your tent with dirt
· You know that you need to run inside immediately after any win of an Iraqi sports team to keep from being hit by celebratory fire
· You decide for that for grins - lets take a run around Lost Lake at Camp Victory to see if we can get shot at by the sniper
· You never worry about oversleeping because if the morning call to prayers doesn't wake you, the daily 0430 mortar attack will (most mornings)
· The highlight of your shopping experience at the PX is to see that they got in a new shipment of Schick Tracer razor blades
· When you send out your laundry and your whites become grayer, your blacks become grayer and your DCU's become grayer - makes it easier to sort loads...
· You get offended by people wearing clean, pressed DCU's
· You decide that it is a better course of action to pull your blankets over your head than put on your body armor during a mortar attack - the woobee will save you and at least you are comfortable
· You make a contest out of seeing who can wear their uniform for more days before becoming entirely disgusted with themselves
· You wonder if the fish served at dinner really was carp caught out of the Tigris or Camp Victory's lake
· You find it completely acceptable to pick your nose while talking to a complete stranger or member of the opposite sex
· A rocket or a mortar really isn't a big deal until the crater it leaves is big enough to trip over in the dark on the way to the latrine
· You go to a social gathering and intermittent gun fire or explosions don't even cause a pause in the conversation
Labels: army, deployment
Posted by Sean
11:08 AM
1 Comments:
I know this too, but with a different titel "How to prepare for deployment"
By
Anonymous, at 5:22 PM
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