Monday, February 4, 2008

Camp Dodge



My first month of activation has passed, and I've been reminded of many things that I'd forgotten, or more likely, supressed. Like getting up at 0430 hours for a crappy breakfast, then waiting around for an hour or two for the normal people to come to work. And grenade practice in the snow, setting up claymore mines in the snow, and tactical movement in the snow. Or the state of the art ( for 1930) latrines:


There's nothing quite like a nice morning chat with your neighbor while you both empty out last night's meatloaf. On the up side, the paperwork was done, problems were resolved, and my urine was judged to be of superior quality by the lab, e.g., I don't have diabetes yet, or any nasty forbidden substances in my system.


Of course, there's always a few unpleasant suprises lurking in the corners, like being issued a brand-new MOPP (chem warfare) suit with all of it's charcoal-like dust intact, then being told to put it on for the last class of the day before boarding busses back to the armory:



The next day brought an interesting plane ride to Texas, but that's for the next post.

2 comments:

BobG said...

Good to hear from you; hope you have a minimum of problems getting re-acclimated to military life.

Unknown said...

I was there, one of your instructors at Bullis. You've got a great board here, cudos, and thank you for the kind words!