Yesterday O’Clock

This guy was dead asleep in his underwear exactly 33 seconds ago.

Doing Army stuff is awesome.  Except that it starts so early, the time is best described as ”yesterday.” 

It’s not uncommon to hear (through my ears), something along the lines of “Formation at Yesterday O’Clock, soldiers!  Then we head to the range for M-16 qualifying.” 

I assume he means we will be qualifying with the rifles by the light of Orion’s belt, since that will be the major source of target illumination for the next 5 hours.

My particular training class has a group of Army Rangers in it, along with some Special Forces guys too.  They all decided to hang up the guns and take up stethoscopes as P.A.’s and pursue things in life, like hobbies and families.  As you might expect, these guys can handle Yesterday O’Clock better than anyone. 

It’s a bit mystical, really.  In our tent of 30 men, someone starts to stir at the ungodly prescribed hour, and everyone just organically follows suit.  Soon every guy in the tent is methodically working step-wise to primp themselves (Army-style, more on that later) for another dimly lit Army morning. 

Everyone except the 4 Rangers.  They stay there, still as statues, enshrouded in their sleeping bags while the tent becomes a kicked anthill of activity.  The minutes tick by, the spectre of arriving to formation suffusing the humid tent’s air. 

Maybe these Ranger guys so easily stare down scary things like being late to formation because they’ve stared down much scarier things, like death via hot shrapnel.  Whatever.  Fine. But here in our little AMEDD training world, being late to formation is scary.  And being late is easy, because it’s scheduled so freaking early, it’s yesterday o’clock.

As the appointed “time” (more of a philosophical concept, this early in the morning) approaches, a frantic rush ensues.  In desperation, we huff out to stand in our little box of humans, also called “formation.”  And guess who’s standing there, looking sharp and ready to plant a spear in a saber-tooth bear? 

The Rangers.  2 minutes ago these guys were lined up on their cots like 3-toed sloths on an ativan drip.  The rest of us have been running around for 45 minutes. 

“Where you guys been?”  One of them asks, as I run up, wild-eyed and still priffing with my uniform.  “We’ve been here since yesterday.”

Smarching

Me, spinning in formation

“1^st Platoon!  Atten-SHUN!”

We all throw our shoulders back and stare straight ahead into nothing.  And we don’t move.  Leaders mill about, thinking about things, looking over their retirement accounts, playing Tetris on their phones. 

But we, the little people, just stand there.  Sweating.  Sweat runs in what feels like lightning patterns down my face.  Down my neck.  My back.  My rear…and down my legs.  I stand there taking a sweat-shower.  Spin me around fast enough and I’d fling so much water in every direction I think I could personally ease the drought problem in Texas.

“SMAAAARCH!”

Well, he actually say ‘march,’ but, really, you just can’t call it that.  No nuance.  We aren’t marching.  We’re walking around in 104 degree F heat, with sweat pouring from our bodies on par with your average Bangladeshi monsoon.  So we’re sweating.  With a little marching thrown in. 

It’s smarching.

8 Pigeons? I’ll Check the Regs…

I love urban legends:  The one about the killer calling the babysitter from inside the house, or the acne that turned out to be a quivering pod of spider eggs.  You know, all those.

But my favorite is the one about how you can cause pigeons and seagulls to explode by giving them Alka-Seltzer.  I’m serious.  EXPLODE.

This myth is cool for the science-fair, medico-extravagance of it.  But I also harbor a fairly pathological grudge against seagulls.  Sure, their winsome cry carrying on the breeze hearlds the nearness of the endless sea.  Thousands of poems and stories and paintings concern themselves with these ocean-going fowl.  But I lost all romance toward the seagull when a GIANT group of them ate an entire bag – including the bag – of Chips A’hoy cookies while my buddy and I were surfing once.  I’m STILL looking forward to eating those cookies, and that was 8 years ago.

Why do they explode?  Apparently, birds have a one-way alimentary tract, which means they can’t burp.  Give them something effervescent, all that gas has nowhere to go aaaaand – POW! Alice, straight to the moon.

You can understand, then, why my favorite patient currently is a guy who actually tested this one-way-no-burp-POW! theory.  For all my grudges against the birds, I’m still too much of a softy to actually blow them up.

Not Jake, though.  He went for it.  And still doesn’t feel bad about it.

He went with pigeons – same class as seagulls, if I was the ornithologist in charge – and trying out the theory got him kicked out of the Army.  ’Course, he tried it on 8 birds at the same time.  After he stuffed them into his commanding officer’s new Chevy Tahoe.

“So, it really works, then?  They blow up?”

“Yeah, it works.”  He said, looking bored and chewing on a cuticle as I nearly wept with laughter.

“They ALL exploded in your commander’s car?”

 

Uugggh, did you eat a bunch of those little white crackers too?

Suddenly he perked up, eyes sharp and intelligent, “Nah, not all of ‘em.  Some just shit all over the place.”

Imagining his commander’s reaction the next morning after finding the most colossal mess of all time, just brightens my day every time I think about it.

 

By some miracle, this guy got away with his life after that episode.  More miraculously, after getting CHAPTERED out of the military (basically a court-martial without the court or jail), he got back into the Army just a few years later. “On a wavier for bi-polar disorder, in remission.”  He said with a wicked smirk.  ”Needed a paycheck.”

I can only imagine the ever-positive recruiter.  ”Oh, well, 8 pigeons?  Only 8?  I’ll check the regs…there’s probably nothing in there that expressly forbids entry into the military for blowing up birds.  No problem, man.  I’m sure we’re good.  Now, I can’t promise you a bonus, you understand..”

Now he’s on his way back out of the military, via my unit.  He’s wry, filled with black, intelligent wit and flat-out hates authority.  I’m not sure I’d call this a mental disorder… but in the Army, a guy like this is nothin’ but stark-raving nuts.

Of course, once he gets bored…he’ll be back.

 

POOF!

 

 

Get On the Plane!

Jerry reluctantly entered the WTU, the unit I oversee as a doctor, just recently.  This soldier has achieved about as much as anyone in the non-officer ranks can achieve.  He’s been in the Army for 24 years.  After 20, you can retire with full military benefits, but this guy hung on by voluntary extension for another 4.

He entered my unit because of a health problem list that runs to 6 or seven issues.  The primary ones being kidney disease and hypertension.  He’s had both for years.  All untreated.

“Why haven’t you taken care of this stuff?” I ask, ready to get all righteous on the Army.

“Well, you can only do what you can do, sir.”  He says, politely pretending that I would outrank him if actually a soldier myself.

“Um, do you know how long you’ve had hypertension, and how bad it’s been?” I say, trying a different angle.

“Listen son, I know exactly what my blood pressure was averaging before my last deployment downrange.”

“How many times have you been deployed?”

“3.”

Making no effort to hide my surprise, I reply, “You’re peeing out half a bicep in protein every 24 hours, your blood pressure is 190-101 today, and you’ve been deployed 3 times?  Each time for over a year?”

“Son, when the time comes, you gotta get on the plane.”

“So, you knew about all of this prior to deployment?”

“Which time?”

“ANY time!”

“Well, sir, yes I did.  But I told my men, ‘When it’s time, I’ll be getting on that plan.  If I don’t, I’ll be dead.  If YOU don’t get on that plane after me…I personally hunt you down, I will find you, and then YOU’LL be dead.”

“There’s doctors downrange, though, right?  Couldn’t you be seen by one of them?”

“Look, I cain’t treat myself too well with the boul-ets whistling over my head.  And I’m not gonna tell nobody that I got problems at a time like that.  They’ll send me back home and leave all my boys there to fend for themselves.”

“Right.  What was your blood pressure prior to your last deployment?”

The thin, muscular man thumbs through a huge stack of medical papers, “Hmmm.  I remember that day.  Headache, bad.  Seeing spots and stuff.  Hmmm.  Oh, here it is:  224/112.”

“That was your blood pressure before you left for a war zone!!??“

“Son, you won’t understand because you ain’t never worn no uniform.  But when the plane is for you…you get on that plane.  It’s pretty simple, really.”

“Do you think, just maybe, I can get you to take some blood pressure pills now?”

“Oh sure, doc!  You bet.  Army brought me back safe and sound, see?  Doing fine now.  I’ll take them pills.  Hooah, boy!”

Ode To Mr. Fingerprint

We can’t figure it out, exactly.  There isn’t one thing that we can point to and say, “Yeah!  That’s were everything became too much.”

But somewhere along the way, this little adventure piled up and reduced both of us to tears.  How the Army manages to organize itself enough to go around the world killing people – unless through excessive paperwork – still mystifies me.  But I can say that if they just stuck to the paperwork – threatened to attack the terrorists with administrative paperwork – world peace would be ho-hum news. 

“We give up!  We recant!  Never mind all that Allah stuff!  We’re Americans now.  Look, look, we’re buying Hummers and we all have flat-screen T.V. in our camel-skin tents with only CNN and Disney channels on them.”

I will say this:  With exception of the laudable fingerprint dude, I have never been to an Army office and gotten done what I came there to do on my first attempt.  Never.  And, for the guy to do my fingerprints that day, he had to overlook 2 reasons to send me away. 

If I’d had a trophy, I would have given it to him.  I DID sing his praises; describing his feat in a halting, emotional, too-grateful voice.

“I….I….I just want to let you know that.  *AHEM!*  Sorry, something in my throat.  Some sort of lump.  Anyway….”

Corpulent man in too-short square tie knit by kids in Taiwan R.O.C. funded by Wal-Mart stares dully, shifting slightly in his creaking office chair.

“You’re the first, EVER, to give me what I came to get on my very first attempt!  It’s a record.  Over the past 6 months, in dozens – maybe hundreds – of office visits my wife and I have needed to make just so I can do a job, you’re the first to not send me away on my first request.”

“Huh.  That’s good.  Fill out an I.C.E. card, alright?”

“What’s that?”

“A card.  You know, a card.  Tell ‘em how I’m doin’.  Let ‘em know I set you up.”

Right.  I.C.E. card.  I took that thing home, spent 45 minutes filling it up with love and gratitude toward the first man EVER to spare me making 2+ trips just to get a simple administrative task done.

Then I realized it would take another trip to that office to put the card in the guy’s box.

And I shredded the thing.