Word has reached me through my family that there are concerns about my new job. All these hours away from the fight, in the air conditioning, sitting in my chair and having food delivered... am I getting fat? Restless? Well, a little restless sometimes. And I have been hitting the gym with a determination to burn at least as many calories as I normally did walking around the city carrying a hundred pounds of stuff. I have taken to lifting heavy things repetitively. Needless to say, I am getting bigger. But not as some of my family and friends would suppose.
And I have plenty of entertainment. From my large leather chair in the middle of the TOC, I am occupied at all moments by no less than eight monitors and six stations of soldiers constantly shouting information at me. Throw in a couple of field-grade officers who hover occasionally, wanting to know EVERYTHING that is going on in EVERY little corner of the city, and my work is cut out for me. I jump from -classified- to -classified-, taking a moment to shout back for status on the -classified-, and finally combining all of these assets into a -classified--censored--we'd tell you but we'd have to kill you-. So. You see why I have problems writing about my new job.
The real problem I have is the perpetual struggle to remind myself and my crew that we are Supporters. We assist in the fight, but we are not the fight. We are here to facilitate them and get them the things they need, when they need them, to win. But as in all offices there is a bureaucratic urge to create a little paper tyrant.
"What? The patrol didn't fill out the third line of Form 1026 in accordance with the new guidance from FRAGO 4-26? Battle Captain, stop them! Don't let them go! They're trying to go without our permission!"
I imagine myself, a month ago, trying to push a platoon as quickly as possible into a fight, racing against the clock. I remember the immense fury that would wash over me whenever some bureaucratic ninny tried to grind the gears of war to a halt because someone in the Command Post hadn't crossed the t's. And I look at my radio operator with what little patience I can muster and explain, again, that we are here to help, not hinder. I'll fill in that section myself. I know what they're trying to do. So I push the platoon out the gate, much to the frustration of my crew and my counterpart, the NCOIC (non-commissioned officer in charge). They always ask why I'm going so easy on the line units, and I always just barely refrain from eating them alive.
There is a character in the military that I love, a certain cheerful fatalism, a powerful self-awareness and a conscious loathing of all personal weakness. This is most prevalent on the line, where men have a reason to be a bit fatalistic. It is not so prevalent in the office. Some of the guys definitely have it, and I'm thrilled to see it, but some of these men have been establishing their little kingdoms of memorandum for a bit too long.
I've talked about this particular military character to family and friends before. If for no other reason, the exposure and hopefully conversion to this mentality is one of the best reasons why I would recommend military service to others. It is wonderfully refreshing. In a society so often defined by its hedonism and egoism, where every little scrape or perceived offense is worth a Wagnerian opera of drama and complaining, the character you find here is like breathing clean air again. I remember a soldier cutting his head open on a piece of metal on his bunk back in the States. He ran down the hall, bleeding profusely, apologizing every step of the way. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, no, don't clean that blood up, I'll get it, I didn't mean to bleed on the floor, I'm so sorry!" He was back with the mop and a couple of stitches within the hour. And last week, when a soldier took grenade shrapnel to the rear. The story goes that his platoon came in to the medical center to check on him and saw him grinning from ear to ear, thumbs up. "I always said the Army would give me buns of steel!" he shouted. Or the strange little tradition of some men in Red Platoon who, after every patrol, count each others' limbs and digits. "Another good day!" they declare upon finding the appropriate number, laughing as if it were the peak of wit. How can anyone not love this? The kind of dark humor that pervades the military can be misconstrued as callousness, but a closer look shows that at root we're just amusing ourselves at the quirks of life and death. "You're dying? Well, for God's sake stop being so damned dramatic about it. Seriously. It happens to everyone from time to time."
I guess that this, and the camaraderie built on shared trials, is what I miss most about the line. But the TOC is its own kind of lesson and I'm finding that it offers its own kind of reward. All in all, I'm happy, the days are counting down until mid-tour leave, and I'm practically reunited with my wife (FINALLY) for at least a couple of weeks. So soon. That should easily refuel me for the last four months. We're over half-way done, and only a week and a half before victory, so who can complain?
