It’s that time of year again: the entire BN took the day off to attend mandatory seminars. Until lunch, it was the familiar parade of lectures that boil down to “It is better for you personally and for the Army if you are not a drunken boor.” After lunch, we had an interesting tour of [...]
Sometimes the high-security lock is so high security that it won’t open, or close, or release the key, until you get in and bang on it with a sledgehammer a few times. Once that’s done, though, it turns with a sweet, oily smoothness.
The army’s schedule accommodates no man. It doesn’t matter that I signed in from leave three days ago or that I’ve been living from a duffel since the beginning of October. Today there was a mission! An important, long-planned mission which, since I’d been gone for the duration of the planning, basically required me to [...]
“It’s really a pain to take leave to a foreign country; I’m just trying to take my wife and kids to Thailand and I’m getting all kinds of procedural flak about it.”
“Yeah, the S2 shop at Brigade has to approve all travel not to the US. It’s all to cut down on the Prostitution / [...]
Let me tell you my work schedule, because it is crazy:
Last Friday: 2pm – 2am
Saturday: 11am – 9am Sunday
Monday: 3pm – 5pm
Tuesday: 9am – 9am Wednesday
Thursday: 8am – 3pm
Friday: 2am – noon
This has a lot to do with the fact that half the BN is currently tasked to do a big Korea-wide exercise, and the [...]
I never thought before going to flight school that weather would be such a big part of piloting. Even in flight school, I figured that since they train us in instrument flying techniques, bad weather wouldn’t be a huge deal. Now I’m learning that I was naive. The fact of the matter is that pretty [...]
Duct tape a coffee mug securely to the front end of the brim of a baseball cap. Tape two rolls of quarters to the sizing strap to balance the weight. Acquire a pair of thickly tinted green round spectacles, such as can be found at the gates of the Emerald City. Lightly fog the surface [...]
Anytime an Army pilot arrives at a new post, they have to get to a status called Readiness Level One, which just means that they’re familiar with the local flying procedures, the local area, and their new unit’s mission. This can take several months. Here in Korea, since the default tour length is only a [...]
The Army has determined in its institutional way that morale is a good thing to keep high. As such, every so often, they let people out of work and take them on a field trip. The nature of the trip varies according to the circumstances–one of my friends was in the Old Guard previously, and [...]