Take-off

Morning came too early. My body registered the darkness and the softness of my bed as I lay there, hand on snooze, negotiating with myself for an extension. Finally, my mind hit on a convincing argument to get out of bed--hygiene. I still had time for one last shower. Stink avoidance is a powerful motivator. As is one last real meal. Like many of my classmates, I've been trying to finish all my perishable food before we go, but I'd saved two eggs, a vanilla yogurt, and a cup of Amish blueberries to settle my protesting, sleep-deprived stomach.

It was stil dark when I arrived on campus, hunching under the weight of a pack that could have fit me. How in the world did I pack all this stuff? I felt like the only place I deviated from the list was in doubling the recommended underwear quota. Whoever thought three bras would last six days of field exercises until we could do laundry has clearly never worn them.

Most of the men had cut their hair super-short over break to decrease required maintanance and looked slightly smaller and more vulnerable with their extra exposure. Even with that, and beneath their enormous packs and camelbacks, I was surprised at how many of my classmates were distinguishable just by their silouettes--how a year of living in these conditions, sharing cadavers and Tom Smith's famous Monday morning chocolate bundt cake, makes it feel like we've been together forever. Well, maybe not forever. In fact, definitely not forever.

Hmmmm. The producer of the Lord of the Rings films is an alumnus of my undergrad. Sometime after the release of the third one, he came to campus and gave a convocation, in the which he described some of the massive logistical obstacles required in transplanting a whole city worth of set builders, make-up artists, camera workers, extras, and all the people required to feed and house them into the New Zealand countryside. He also described some of the special effects that had been designed specifically for some of the battle scenes in LotR. One of them was about computer-generating large armies of computer-animated soldiers that moved as individual entities within a larger movement. The trick was to start with a prototype skeleton and give it parameters in which to raise knees to lift feet to project leg motion forward to project body motion forward, etc., etc.. Then, once they had created this almost self-directing animated entity, they made the movements individual by tinkering with the dimentions, making small changes in the proportional heights of femurs to tibias or width of shoulders. Suddenly, rather than a uniform crowd, there was a sea of unique soldiers.

So this morning, in the shadows, it was striking that just by the tilt of a head, by a small wave, I could distinguish most of the class when it was too dark to actually see anyone's features. We've kinda become a part of each other by now. Our bags, however, do not have such obvious distinctions, and calls could be heard from various corners of "is this one my duffel?" and "if you see a helmet with a muffin in it, that's mine."

The sun was just beginning to peak out over the trees when we pulled off. The buses for Bravo Company would be late, so our platoon got a bus almost to ourselves. The ladies set to work immediately, Lieutenant Nicole Baker french braiding Lieutenant Alicia Scribner's hair tight enough to last a month and Ensign Jaime Piercey wrapping Lieutenant Jesse Schoener's hair into two similarly tight plaits. Somewhere in the process we developed a new hand-motion to refer to Marion Keehn, called the "french weave." I wanted to catch up on sleep, but my book was too gripping, and the AC of the bus was on way too high. Instead I got to hear alternating jelly fish stories. The newest addition to our platoon, Ensign Jason Baumann, added to our long line of Kerkesner aphorisms: "There's not really a difference between thirty jellyfish stings and a hundred jellyfish stings."

We drove through a mountain pass to arrive in the valley that is Fort Indiantown Gap-Jazeeristan, Pennsylvania. We're camped out at the edge of a rather large clearing, surrounded on all sides by woods that are high enough that we can't any terrain features beyond the immediate tree-line.

After some introductory yelling to get us in the mood, we assembled our tents, or rather, we all assembled someone else's tent, and then went around helping fix the last details. Our company of three platoons had six gender-integrated tents, filled to the brim with comfortably wide and sturdy cots and little personal misquito nets. After some shuffling to create a partition-able sleeping order, we put up Old Glory to add some color and a jury-rigged string of ponchos to be rolled down for changing and wet-wipe bathing.

Then came the M-16 issue. This is the first real gun I've ever touched in my life. If it were up to me, we really wouldn't have a second ammendment (but since it's not up to me, I respect that it's there). But I have to say, it was kinda anti-climactic. An M-16 is a whole lot like a fake M-16--heavy, awkwardly long, and kinda clunky-looking. I had read an article in the New Yorker maybe four years ago about the history of Kalashnakov and his namesake invention, and one of it's main points was that the AK-47 has become the weapon of choice for mobsters and terrorists because it's coarse and kinda abuse-proof. An M-16 has much more accuracy, but requires the kind of disciplined care that can only be assured with a more organized, structured force. An AK can go through swamps, can get filled with desert sand, and can almost never be cleaned and still operates with relatively the same efficacy. So I had built up some expectations, maybe even some hopes, for the M-16 I was to have glued to my person for the next five days. So far I'm kinda unimpressed that technology hasn't brought us something more elegant and ergonomic. We'll see if something more satisfying comes out of actually firing it once they finally give us blanks.

After boxed lunch and MRE issue, there was the business of digging "hygiene ditches" in which we are to spit our toothpaste and shave. When you assign an entire platoon to dig a ditch, and when your platoon has no greater entertainment than to whack the bottom of that ditch with a pick-axe and catcall at each other while waiting for the pick-axe, you get a mighty impressive place to spit toothpaste.

A rumor came down from leadership that, in searching for a suffienciently imposing name for the shadowy general heading our enemy forces, the cadre accidentally named him Gargomel, who also happens to have a side-job playing on the opposition force for the Smurfs. There is no word on whether the requested name change has been approved.

We awoke from our quick break to find Eddie crouched in front of our tent, maintaining security while the rest of us got up for further M-16 training. "Chuck Norris doesn't sleep, he waits." "Eddie is our Chuck Norris." In true Chuck Norris style, he went on eBay a few weeks ago and bought us a dozen Cingar radios, which proved invaluable strategically for the afternoon's movement rehearsals. They also helped us discover that Lieutenant Loren Walwyn-Tross has a wonderfully rich radio voice. It's a pitty that as Platoon Seargent he has more responsibilities than any of us, because it would be much easier to make him our permanant Radio Transmission Operator.

After rehearsals, we retired for a dinner of MREs. The vegetarian ones are not really all that horrible. The problem is, since I've become a grown-up, I've been remarkably good at being a selective enough eater that my usual standards are much higher than "not really all that horrible." But I absolutely admit that there are worse things one could eat than dry crackers and peanut-butter. Things like dry crackers and jalapeno-cheese spread. Or barbeque gardenburger on hardtac.
Tomorrow the mission begins.