...Infinity CET...

03 JUNE 2010

As I suspected, my new CET suits me just fine. My boss—and this is not well-marketed ass kissing—turned out to be one of the few NCOs here I feel could teach me a thing or two. He’s quiet. And a combat veteran of multiple tours with similar experiences to my own, just more of them I imagine. If he has any of the issues I carry around for Uncle Sam, he hides those better than I do too.

The soldiers below us are fine enough Joes. I had pictured them to be more disgruntled. These are the additional men, flown in after our work had started, to make the efficiency of our backwards production line to disassemble Iraq’s recalled American parts run a little smoother. They are inactive reservists, deployed to their own little war of paradox, suffering from the irony of a catch-22, fine print under the dotted line of enlistment papers. I had expected them to be black and white, Quick Stop clerks, and thinking, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” But they are here, and as it turns out, neither bad soldiers nor grumpy company.

One small line of sarcasm is all that I’ve been able to recognize concerning a disinterest in being here—aside, of course, from what could be considered usual bitches, gripes and moans of the average soldier. We have been dubbed a handful of names: the New CET, Fourth CET, the Infinity CET and so on. The title that really sticks though, is the Floater CET. And our design and purpose, as it seems in this first short week, is to fill in and make ready any pre-existing CET required to be ‘combat effective’—which is to say, give a man here and a truck there for lending. We’ve also been tasked with riding as ‘armed escort’ for Joes going to and from the airfields of Kuwait on two weeks leave. We have, it also seems, taken on the responsibility of range cadre for the local training areas. It is in response to these assignments, as we looked around discussing the possibilities of nothingness, one of the new Joes said, “Man, I’m so glad the Florida Guard needed the extra men for this.”

I am not upset with my new agenda, as I’ve said it suits me just fine. Our convoy missions had become boring and familiar and quite monotonous. The change of scenery—I imagine you could call it that—was needed to break the slow grind of redundancy. Other changes to the custom—a complete and most likely irrelevant side-note—I have decided to grow out my hair, to the very limits laid out by army regulations. It has been inching its way out for some time now, so I imagine what I mean to say is, now I have made the conscious decision to let it be so. I hope it will be good for my morale. So far, however, the only change in me I’ve noticed is that there is less hair up there than memory expected. And, I imagine, this suits me just fine too.

- The Exodus