“We like to call that analysis.”

“Do not search for area 51 on sipr.  Or on JWICs.  You won’t find anything.  Not that I tried.”

Army people travel a lot and seem to have a lot of free time.  This belies the ugly truths behind these truths.  Army people travel a lot, usually because there is no better option.  when stationed in the middle of nowhere involuntarily, one may as well travel to the next closest somewhere.  Army people get a lot of holidays off and four day weekends.  This hides all the 12 hour workdays and weekends spent working.

but underneath it all there is a puritan kind of happiness.  Working out and working hard gives people the energy to really appreciate time off and use it fully.  Having a difficult job and an easy personal life allows us to be angry at things larger than ourselves; free of feeling like we need to fix anything.  And most of all, the army life is full of order and routine, but also full of new and changing experiences.

I’ve come to realize that nearly any woman wearing her hair in a bun has spent some time in the military.  It’s funny, becuase in most countries, the choice to wear hair up or down is left to the soldier.  I used to to watch the NATO soldiers walking around Kuwait, coveting the way that they only put their hair back when they wanted to or when it made sense.  Even females in the US air force are allowed to wear a ponytail for PT.  It’s only the army and marines that demand that hair be pulled back so tightly it hurts, damages hair, and causes small sores on the back of the neck. Also, I am quite sure that it’s females perpetuating these standards.

Women dress up for other women.  We all know that.  Then when enough women do something, men get used to it and assume that is standard.  The actual uniform regulation on female hair is generally pretty vague and mostly about the color of hair clips.  It even says that hair must be parted directly down the middle–something that no one does anymore.  but the informal regulations are much stricter.  Through the 90′s, it seemed like everyone wanted to have a french braid.  This has now fallen out of fashion almost entirely, but I’ll still occasionally do it to mix it up.  When I was in basic training, we all wanted our hair pulled straight back and slicked down with an insane amount of hair gel–usually the kind that comes in jelly bean colors in a small tub.  A battle buddy of mine, half african-american and half white, would often be sent back to the barracks 2 and 3 times a day to slick back any unruly flyaways that might denote that her hair had some texture.  Throughout the early 2000′s, it seemed like everyone, without reguard to heritage or rank, parted their hair to the side, pinned it back with triangle clips, and then formed a small bun at the base of the neck.

I still wear this style often.  I’ll watch the younger females, and notice that new trends are moving in.  Lately, bobby pins have become more fashionable than triangle clips.    it seems like triangle clips have fallen out of fashion for civilian women as well.  Lately, twists and braids have become popular, something that I still think of as princess hair.  I have to wonder what it means that as the army is engaged in two wars and becoming more ground-combat focused, it’s females are dressing more and more like they’re going to the prom.

No matter what happens with civilian hair fashion, it seems like the style never returns to the bun.  There was a time, I know, when normal everyday women would wear a bun all the time, but it seems like since the women’s liberation movement no one will get near the thing.  There’s some kind of control that a bun indicates.  Self control?  Discipline?  A no-nonsense attitidue?  In practicality, it’s more than a woman in a bun is being controlled.

“It’s heat cat 6.  That’s heat cat 5 + rattlesnakes.”

My first annual training (AT) was with an aviation unit.  It was a scary thing to show up to a new unit and entrust them with my care and feeding.  I felt like I was going on a bus trip to a foreign country with strangers.  I had no gear, I had no friends.  The first night of the training, I was supplied with some of both.  Standing on the flightline, a grizzled supply sergeant gave me a duffel bag full of issued equipment, split into a million small components that I didn’t know how to adjust or assemble but I did have to sign for.  I fussed with the gear, unsure that I was doing the right thing with the gear or with myself.  My only military experience was basic training, where every second was planned and watched.  I didn’t know what to do with my new independence other than worry that I wasn’t doing the right thing.  I stood under a lone street light, frustrated nearly to tears.

He came from around the corner, carrying an identical duffel bag and stopped in the pool of light.  He laughed a little as I snapped to parade rest–a custom to show respect to non-commissioned officers that no one does outside of basic training.  He was chiseled, with midwestern boy features and a perfect high and tight haircut.  As he helped me assemble my gear, explaining the features of each item too new to be issued at basic, carefully adjusting it to fit me but never touching me, he told me about how he, too, was new to the unit and getting his gear.  He had been infantry, and his most recent assignment had been with the Old Guard, on duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  He was switching over to flight crew, and the unit was in love with him.  I instantly fell in love with him, with a crush based mostly on childlike admiration.

Walking back to put my gear in my car, he gave me my next gift–he introduced me to a group of soldiers going to Waffle House after the duty day.  He had given me friends, and by the next morning I felt infinitely more prepared and even excited to be going to training with my unit.  I had discovered that there was another female private.  She was about my age, fun, and flirty, and we bonded immediately.  I felt so much safer with her.  Through days of training, I always had a female buddy to take with me when I needed to find the latrine, go for a shower, or report to KP.  But she expected that I would be her buddy where she wanted to go–and she wanted to party.  We were in a headquarters unit, where the senior officers enforced a no alcohol policy.  But through the woods we would go to the flight companies, who would bring in coolers and bottles and always had extra for young female privates.  It seemed harmless enough.  I’d been to parties in college and wasn’t a stranger to alcohol.  We always made it back to our tents and up for duty the next morning.  But I was young enough and inexperienced enough to not realize that there was no such thing as free beer.  I was not in college.  I was in a world of aggressive males.  My friend would disappear sometimes, leaving me to chat with other friends under a tree or inside a canvas tent.  She’d return later with beers or pull me to another group of soldiers.

One night, towards the end of annual training, she pulled me over behind a trailer with a noisy generator.  There were two male soldiers there with a cooler of beer.  We started talking, joking, and drinking the beers, and one of the males suggested backrubs.  She anxiously agreed, pairing off with one of them.  I turned to the other male, uncertain and scared.  I didn’t want to have backrubs with him.  At all.  I wanted to leave.  My friend’s backrubs were becoming more sensual.  She clearly had engineered the situation.  I watched as the other male took off his blouse, revealing his sweat-stained t-shirt.  His wedding ring caught the light as he anxiously explained to me how it was just going to be a backrub.   He offered me more beer, but i didn’t want to stay to drink it.  I was already drunk, and I wasn’t sure how to get home.

I heard a twig crack, and turned around to see that the sergeant who had rescued me when I couldn’t fix my gear had rescued me again.  He said my name loudly and said that my company commander needed me to report immediately and he’d walk me back to the headquarters base.  I jogged behind him.  My head was spinning.  What was my commander going to do when I reported to him drunk?  We weren’t supposed to be drinking.

The sergeant stopped in a small clearing where the moonlight cast shadows on his stern expression.  ”I expect that I will never again find you in a situation like that.” He barked at me.  He calmed down a little, taking on a fatherly tone.  ”That girl is trouble.  She’s crap.  She’s ruined.  No one in this unit will take her seriously.  But you are not.  You are going to make something of yourself.  Remember, in this Army, you are half what you do and half the company you keep.”

There was no commander’s request.  He was long in bed or having a beer himself.  The sergeant had come to save me.  And at that moment, I had let down the person that I most wanted to impress in that unit.

He sighed and kept walking.  I asked him how he knew where to go without a flashlight.  I couldn’t see much more than his boots.

He said, “You’re in the Army now.  You’re just going to have to get used to finding your way in the dark.”

Throughout the rest of my time in that unit, I was careful to never go back to that crowd.  Throughout the rest of my enlisted career, I was careful to be friendly with everyone, but friends with few.  I was careful to do my job and avoid cliques–any cliques–rather than join the wrong one.  It seemed to work.  Other’s actions didn’t hold me back the way that some are.  The company you keep is half your career.

So I am a new LT in a a new company.  I no longer have the safety of a squad to tell me who to follow and where to be.  I feel like that private again, standing around with a pile of gear I can’t assemble.  My first drill, I followed the S4 and  new warrant officer around.  I felt a comradery and the safety of friendship.  but, but by the end of drill, I could see that these ladies were the wrong kind of company.  They were on the outs with the clique, the kind that  will hold you back.  I vowed not to attach myself to them again.

And now, reporting to AT, I find out that I am double-slotted as S2.  The other officer is a 1LT, has been to intelligence school, and has experience as an S2.  Plus, we seem to get along fabulously.  I tag along with him all day, and he seems to be someone who can fill me in on the job.  I have my safety blanket, and AT will be okay.  But as the day goes on, he starts opening up.  He tells me all about how he joined this unit because it seemed like he could slack off.  How he doesn’t want to command, and how he plans to skip out on most of the drills.  Although he seems to be checking most of the boxes of officership, at the end of the day our company commander dresses him down in front of myself–and a whole group of lower enlisted soldiers.  While the company commander shouldn’t have done it, suddenly his stock is down.  It’s not just that he’s jacked up in the leadership’s eyes, he’s been jacked in the soldier’s eyes and mine.

As an officer, I’m wondering if leadership is half actions and half company, if I will even get to the chance for action with my current company.  I was told by a young captain that “no one was going to lean forward to tell intelligence what to do.” but I don’t have the education to know what to do on my own.  This 1LT may be my only shot at what to do, and I’m stuck with him.

And now, eight years later, I have to find my way in the dark.

-James Webb, Fields of Fire

I went to the welcome ceremony for an Air Guard unit’s return home.  It appears that the job of a PAO is to make things easy on the press.  Simple enough.  Guide them to the right place on base.  Secure gate passes.  Help them find interviews and human interest stories. 

The trouble with all of this is that I do not know the units, the bases, or the media well enough to connect and understand them.  So I spent most of today attempting to be useful, but really only watching.  I’m going to call it “shadowing.” That sounds more productive.

And the thing about it is that the only way that i’m going to get good at this is by slogging through it until I learn the ins and outs.  There isn’t really a shortcut or a book I can read.  I just need to be in this unit long enough to understand the human terrain.

I give one of the reporters a ride back to the gate.  He says to me that he goes to a lot of these welcome home ceremonies, and they’re always good.  I say that I don’t get choked up at much, but I do at things like this.  I am wondering to myself if i’m just remembering the day that i got home from my deployment.

He says that it’s raw emotion.  There aren’t many unscripted, happy, pure moments in life.  These ceremonies are one of them.

I think about this.  I think about cell phone waiting areas at airports, what did we lose when we lost airport reunions?

Me: It was alright.  I stuck with most of the workout, and if I ever felt something twinge or pop, I stopped.

Colonel:  That’s how I started approaching every exercise after I turned 40.

Do you believe that paperwork can be it’s own destiny?  I believe that more than I believe many faith based systems.  And finally, after many struggles with army paperwork, one of them works out for the best.

As it turns out, the army never properly put me into the system as an officer.  This means that although I took an oath, got pinned, even got saluted…as far as records go, i’m still enlisted.  This is a major paperwork error that should have been fixed months ago.  So now, I’m trying to get a transfer.  Enlisted transfers are a pretty simple process.  Officer transfers are not.  So now, since my current state is so shamed that they didn’t get it right to begin with, they are going to loose the paperwork for my commissioning on purpose.  This allows me to quickly transfer to the new state. 

Then, the new state will need to accession me as an officer again.  This could take months.  however, in the meantime, that is enough to get me working on the full time side.  So, i’m not sure.  Am I a sergeant again?  A lieutenant?  I don’t know. 

However, i’m feeling good about this.  As terrible as bad paperwork can be, this one has created some real oppurtunities.