A couple days late

I completely forgot that a couple days ago there was a big event that I forgot to post. I feel as I am cheating my loyal fans by not passing on every mundane detail of my life. On Saturday, I think it was, we got to go to the range on the other side of Rusty. Every so often, the Army wants to make sure that our weapons work, so we fire 10 rounds of M-16 and 5 rounds from our pistol. I asked one of the Master Sergeants who went one group ahead of me if he hit the target, and he assured me he had. After I shot, he asked me and I told him I had at least scared it. As they handed out our 15 bullets, I couldn't help but think that Barney Fife would be jealous.

Confession time: I haven't cleaned my M-16 yet. Whenever I think about that I just feel terrible, like I am letting Tim and Koichi and all the Marines in my life down. I cope, but I still feel terrible. My penance is that every night (almost) I take all of the bullets out of my magazine and let the spring stretch back into its normal shape. Tim told me to do that before I left, and I do it to make him proud. That way, if the base gets overrun I will have 15 chances to hand out 72 virgins for a total of 1080 eternally unhappy women, or I can really scare someone 15 times.

A funny story. Back when we were at the main base in Baghdad, my friend Geoff and I were walking back from the gym, and we passed these two soldiers who were barbecuing. They invited us to have a steak with them (where they got it we did not ask), and the one guy started telling us about his last day. These were two real soldiers who went off the base and got in abandoned houses and waited for people to come and try to kill them. The way his day normally goes is they get in the house a couple hours before sunrise, and after morning prayers people start coming toward the houses with AK-47's. So this sergeant is recounting his squad's gun battle and this sergeant says, " and then car drives by and the guy shoots at us with a pistol." The sergeant is clearly insulted, as if a violation of a sacred code has occurred. The squad stops their shooting at the bad guys and just stare at each other until some says, "Did he just shoot at us with a pistol?" Before anyone can respond, the car drives by for a second round, and that was too much of a foul to bear, so they disabled the car and end up taking the guy prisoner.

The really funny part of the story was the second barbecuing soldier who was clearly not leadership material. He looked like a grown up and slightly heftier version of Opie, red hair and freckles. He had on white leather I'm-not-athletic gym shoes, and during the whole conversation he had been trying to jump up and get a seat on a four foot tall wall next to us. He had failed, miserably. I really felt for the guy because he was clearly out of his element being with the real soldiers instead of the fob dwellers. Or so I thought. Once his sergeant mentioned the guy shooting at him with the pistol, Opie starts yelling "die" and cursing at the top of his lungs. Kind of turrets-esque. Not civilized. I wanted to laugh and run at the same time. Aunt Bea would not have been pleased, Andy would have tanned his hide, but deep down inside all of Mayberry would have been proud that their son had grown up into a man who knows you don't bring a pistol to a gun battle.

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the courage these plain average guys had to go out of the wire every day, and not be scared when a guy shoots a pistol and then come back and barbecue and talk about how their ex-wife is spending the child support on manicures. Facing bad people who want to kill them is these guys' 9 to 5. I still chuckle when I think about it and hope that Abu or Mohammed doesn't get as mad as Opie if I ever have to use my pistol.