Now I have the immigrant song stuck in my head
One of the less fun aspects of being in the military is the way you will be utilized on a day-to-day basis, while in garrison. For instance, you may have just finished training on a new high-tech computer system. Or learned how to speak an exotic and obscure language. You might even be qualified on some sort of armored killing machine capable of destroying and terrifying the enemies of our nation.
But at the end of the day, a normal day, you are a grounds-keeping specialist.
I, myself spent six months doing my initial entry training, Basic, Illustrator training at Fort Mead, followed by jump school. I was a lean, mean, Photoshopping machine, who was also able to jump out of airplanes for no suitably explored reason. And I had been assigned to PSYOP at Fort Bragg where I would use my newly acquired skills to help craft propaganda to confuse and demoralize our enemies. And on my first day at my brand new unit, they told me I was being assigned to “Post Beautification Detail”. This turned out to be Army-speak for “Here’s a weed-whacker. Have a nice month doing lawn care.”
And so I spent the next 30 days taking my frustrations out on the various North Carolina weeds. During this time, one particular incident does stick out for me. At one point, me and my elite post beautification team were handling the grass near the Special Operations Command building and we came across some device on the ground. It looked like a little tiny radar installation and was presumably some sort of high-speed communication device. It looked like someone had being using it and just wandered away. I noticed that it had some sort of yellow and black warning sticker on it, maybe the size of a pack of cigarettes. I wondered what it said, and got close enough to read it.
“Danger. Non-aligning isotopes. Do not approach closer than 10 feet while in operation.”
“Hmmmm,” I though to myself, standing maybe two feet away from this device, “I think I will run away screaming like a little girl now.”
To this day I still have no idea what that device was.
A fun tradition at Ft Bragg was that once a year they would have Post Clean-Up event. This meant that for a week, everybody got to help with the lawn care. And by everybody I, of course, mean the enlisted along with a few unlucky officers who had evidently pissed off someone important.
One particular year my unit got assigned to clean up the Mata-Mile.
For those of you that are not familiar with Ft Bragg, the Mata-Mile is one of those general purpose areas which gets used by different groups for different activities. For most soldiers on the post, it was a path through the woods, suitable for running or ruck-marches.
For every person living in the nearby town it was a path through the woods suitable for dumping things like old washing-machines, tires, dead hookers, and boxes of unlabeled urinalysis samples.
And for high ranking officers, it was a path through the woods, which needed to be cleaned on a yearly basis. To hear it told to us, the cleanliness of this path had a direct and urgent effect on our nation’s ability to defend itself, even if no one could ever explain why.
So one week we are out there, raking the dirt path. Not raking things out of the dirt path. Just dragging a rake through the dirt. Not my idea, just following orders. So my unit is out there, industriously raking the dirt when a Captain came out with a new assignment. He wants us to go into the woods around the trail, and collect all of the pine needles and pine cones. And then to make them into piles under the trees. To make the area look more natural.
I will repeat this, and highlight a few points that might not be obvious.
This Captain, who is a grown man, who has graduated from college, and presumably came from some sort of officer training program. A man who has been in the military for at least five years or so. And he orders us to go make piles of pine cones and pine needles under all of the trees. To make the woods more “natural looking”.
After issuing this order he wandered away. Presumably to dispense his wisdom to other needy soldiers. One of my NCOs scratched his head and went, “Natural? Do piles of pine-cones ever happen naturally?”
And I decided to be helpful.
“I thinks so Sgt. Squirrels do that sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Yep. It’s how they bury their dead. You know, when they’re not burning them in little tiny long-ships.”
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April 15th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Little black box huh? And you never reported it just in case? Ah well, guess since it didn’t go boom it was supposed to be there. As far as i know, squirrles also like to seek revenge…
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April 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Viking squirrels! heheheh Norse rodents coming to lunder our lands!
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April 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Plunder, I meant to say plunder…
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April 15th, 2008 at 10:37 am
“little tiny long-ships”….I just got a visual of a squirrel-sized Beowulf (I know he was really a Geat, but still). Man, only in the military would you find someone who thought neat little piles were more natural than, say, the *natural* occurence of them.
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April 15th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“Little black box huh? And you never reported it just in case? Ah well, guess since it didn’t go boom it was supposed to be there.”
Well, it was by the SOCOM area, though it’s not a commo device I’ve ever heard of.
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April 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I don’t know, I think my favorite was picking the grass out of the cracks in the sidewalk. Or sweeping the sand off the side of the road because some SGM didn’t feel like waiting for the street sweeper to come in two days.
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April 15th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I’m glad I’m EOD. “Sir, due to the ‘response orientated’ nature of our mission, both combat and stateside, we cannot send our soldiers on this detail. Rest assured, though, that our company area will be neat and tidy, as per installation SOP.” Almost a direct quote that our commander sent to the officer in charge of “Post Beautification.” And she was right, too. Gotta love it. And, Elizabeth, the point of you guys sweeping the sand was so that the street sweepers could put it back, so you guys could sweep it again, so… ad infinetum.
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April 15th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
that device smells like a SOCOM variety of tweaking the newbies, to me. mostly because i’m 95% sure that “non-aligning isotopes” is a phrase that doesn’t even make any sense.
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skippy reply on April 15th, 2008 9:55 pm:
Yeah I tried googling the phrase as I remembered it from the sticker to see if I can figure out what it was. So far my two best guesses are it was either a pile of spare parts and a fake label and some NCO was laughing at me, or I’m not remembering the warning label correctly.
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April 15th, 2008 at 7:18 pm
…I’m Still stuck on squirrel sized Beowulf….or a beowulf size squirrel
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April 15th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
The only thing worse than an Officer with a Beautification Project. Is a Post Sgt Major.
We had one at Ft Goddam err Gordan, Ga. that had people cutting the dirt. It never managed to grow enough to become grass that needed to be cut.
I can remember one instance of being called up on a fine Sunday morning at 5:30am whilst being Charge of Quarters, by the Battalion Staff Duty NCO, that the Post SGM said to get the entire Student Company up and to Police our assigned area as it was “Filthy”. Now, getting 150+ teen age- low 20s out of bed on a Sunday morning after they’ve been drunk all Saturday night is a non-event. So I used *initive*, something the U.S. Amry *expects* NCO’s to have but *NEVER* use, to send my runner out to the area to check *before* I attempted to get un-responsive people awake. Results? The *FILTH* waas 2 pieces of paper, in a ditch 30ft off the road, behind a bush.
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:29 am
I spent about a month doing Base Beautification in Millington, TN, in ’88. I never did figure out how that was intended to make me a better avionics technician.
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April 16th, 2008 at 12:48 am
I miss the base clean up detail at Misawa AB, Japan. We picked up the truck to drive around and pick up trash. Which consisted of us dropping the truck off by the paint ball course then having people pick us up, we go back to the dorms and change then hang out at Shimoda mall all day.
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April 16th, 2008 at 1:27 am
*giggles quite a bit at the squirrel burial pyramids*
You have absolutely no interest in the mounds of pine cones that red squirrels make to eat during the winter, right? Right. Just had to make sure.
BTW, on the list (“103. My commander is not old enough to have fought in the civil war, and I should stop implying that he did.”) — …WHICH SIDE were you implying he was on?
Evil civilian minds would like to know.
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April 16th, 2008 at 1:36 am
“non-aligning isotopes”
Sounds like the joke about sending a newbie to the supply sergeant to pick up two hundred feet of shore line.
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April 16th, 2008 at 11:27 am
“Base Beautification” falls under that category of duties I’m sure are intended for the purpose of training people to follow orders, no matter how stupid, with alacrity. Because someday the order might be “jump out of cover and run screaming at the enemy” (or some tactically less stupid variant on that) and the guy who’s gotten to the point of not even wondering why the dirt needs mowing will say, “Yes, sir!” and run screaming at the enemy.
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April 16th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
re: the non-aligning isotope box.
You realize you probably stumbled across someother malcontent’s idea of a joke.
I also further pondered that if you had decided on the realignment of pine cones and needles to do a unit psyops program, Research and design a squirrel sized bunker complex with camoflaged bunkers in squirrel scale with interlocking fields of fire, trenches, spide holes, scale mine fields with chicom (chinese communist markings and litter in squirrel sized size, and maybe a squirrel sized little red book of the Quotations of Chairman Mao. Set this all up on a weekend when the area wasn’t in use, and then waited for the first unit to do a training run thru the area the next work week, and wait for the report to filter up to Post Hq of “A prevously undeteced Chicom Bunker Complex built by communist squirrels or *something* real small….
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April 16th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I’ve got a nephew at Ft. Bragg right now….. wonder if he’d like to try out Richard Brown’s chicom squirrel setup….. *gigglesnort*!
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April 16th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
i’ve heard legends about fort stewart. not sure if this is true but they have a large brass statue of a cartoon bulldog named “rocky” who is the mascott of the 3rd infantry division. supposedly when people piss off the csm they are given 2 options: A) non judicial punishment B)polish rocky’s balls for a predetermined number of hours.
now supposedly as a result of this the reflected light from rocky’s balls can singe your corneas on a sunny day.
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April 17th, 2008 at 7:47 am
I was at bragg some months ago, with a friend.
I noticed that some of the hillsides were bare (TERRIBLE for erosion control. Bad drought around here, and you could still see rivulets in the dirt) and that the trees all had mounds of pine straw around their bases.
I found it stupid, said as much to my friend (a captain, btw), and asked how this crap came to pass.
I forget the rank of the person (sgt major?? maybe) he gave, but his answer was ‘what [person] says, [person] gets’
“You mean even if it’s completely wasteful and pointless, and counterproductive?”
“Have you forgotten you’re on a military base?”
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April 17th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Google search for “Non-aligning isotopes” gives a total of 16 results. Result #1 is Skippy’s list: This article….I think you got punked.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 1:41 am
Clean-sweep is now twice a year.
Double the pine cones, and you double the fun.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 2:21 am
As a practicale joke some guys and I got together and whilst setting up a ROSat (Recieve Only Satelite) Dish attached a large sign to the front of the stand stating there was a safety warning on the back of the stand. The safety warning on the back of the stand was very realistic in appearance and warned that while the device is on standing behind the device for more than 5 seconds could have serious side effects on a persons health including “Simultanious Diarhea and constipation, Elephantitis of the reproductive organs, lesions and boils on the Onychophagia (fingernails though we didn’t put that tidbit of information on the sign), irritation of the Sciatic nerve resulting in deafness and exploding eyeballs, and radiation damage to the nervous systems.” We then went on to indicate that ingesting the device while powered could result in electrical shock and that inhaling the steam from the device during rain showers could have mind altering side effects. All in all we thought it was funny. Medical didn’t though. They recieved several calls asking for check-ups and if it would require surgery to check for lesions and boils on their Onychophagia. They actually had a couple of soldiers complaining of pressure behind their eyes and would the nurse speak up because it was hard to hear them. Our punishment was base clean-up for a month.
(Just for everybodies reference a Recieve Only Satelite dish does emit radiation, but only reflected radiation from the front of the disk. Do NOT stand in front of a satelite dish that has been zeroed in on a satelite as this CAN cause serious long term harm. This is why we put the big easy to read sign on front and the small hard to read sign on BACK. Jokes like this are only truly funny if no one actually gets hurt.)
Captcha: side stirred… The newest thing at Starbucks…
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