Private Murphy's Law...

04FEB2010

Along with half of my platoon, I have bronchitis. If you have no military experience, surely you’ve heard some random hero in some random war flick say, “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training”. It’s true. From now on, ignore the weather channel. If you want to know if it will rain on your wedding day, call the nearest Army post and ask if any Infantrymen have a training exercise that day. Normal people label this irony Murphy’s Law, but out here, we call it Private Murphy’s Law. And Private Murphy is always there—omnipresent. For three days in the rear we had adorable weather; San Diego weather; mid-70’s, no cloud in the sky weather. The morning we woke for a five-day field problem, the rain was making mini ice rinks here and there. I imagine mini Private Murphy rolling around the mini rinks on a mini zamboni.

Out there in the field with the mini zamboni, fueled by irony, we practiced soldier stuff. We practiced convoy security, practiced occupying a battle position, urban operations, and firing our mounted weapons while on the move. The last of these was the only fun found that week. And that fun, as always with the Army, was a controlled fun. An observer sat up there with our gunner and said, “shoot here but not there”, “are you sure you know what you’re doing”, “shoot”, “don’t shoot”, and so on. I imagine a Nun with a ruler, jabbering on about piety while smacking away at children’s wrists, where piety is really fire control and smacking away at wrists is really smacking away at wrists.

Between each wrist smack, our gunners would fire a burst of 7.62 or .50 cal rounds down range towards the enemy—those little green plastic men. If Martians hold true to stereotype threat, the Army is well prepared for their arrival. But for each crew, the Martian slaughter only lasted an hour. The remainder of the day I sat at the ammo point, coughing up a lung and handing out bullets. Little bullets covered in my sickness. I think of small pox covered blankets. And I wonder if one day green plastic men won’t have to pay taxes.

- The Exodus