The first weekend was a fascinating exercise in self-inflicted stress. We all had a good idea of what to expect – indeed, after three months of preparatory drill weekends, we were arguably over-prepared, our heads bursting with the innumerable tasks and functions we were expected to perform. So it was with some manic force propelling us that we rolled our socks, arranged our towels, and made our beds, hands shaking and tension high. Looking back, I wondered why we were so anxious – our TAC officer (Train, Advise, Counsel, also known as a “black hat”) hardly uttered a word of admonition all weekend, except for one night, when he calmly told us to get down and start pushing. Just the very thought of his mere disapproval was enough to send us into paroxysms of effort; for my part, I was stricken with a blinding headache for most of Saturday in what must have been my first migraine.

The very fact that everybody cared so damn much about lining up our towels and stacking our books and taping up loose straps on our bags speaks to the fact that you don’t get into the warrant officer program unless you already have the traits necessary to succeed. In a way, WOCS isn’t a barrier to one’s accession to chief-hood, but rather a validation, an exercise in tautology. You don’t get to WOCS without being able to get through WOCS.

As the second weekend approached, I felt much better about the situation. I felt like I had the measure of WOCS, and that nothing particularly fatal lurked within – just a lot of fatigue of the physical and mental varieties. As usual, I wanted to dramatize the situation, to turn this thing into an epic quest, but I realized that it’s just a slog of twenty-hour days and struggling to stay awake in a classroom.

One of the major parts of the slog is a 10-kilometer (about 6.2 mile) ruck march, carrying a 48 pound load (not including water, helmet, and fake rifle), to be accomplished in 106 minutes or less. During the second weekend we did a short march – just 2.5 miles – which seemed like a nice easy nature walk when it was briefed to us. Within the first ten minutes I realized my error, as my shins and calves burned and I struggled to keep up with our TAC, who seemed to have concealed rocket thrusters in his rucksack. As both the shortest and lightest guy in the class, I felt like I got a raw deal: not only did I have the shortest stride, but I was also carrying the largest percentage of my body weight (about 33%). I spent a lot of time jogging. I figured out the technique by the end, but I have a lot of training to do between now and July.

The state Command Chief Warrant Officer (CCWO) taught our class on the history of the Army warrant officer, and it was hard not to feel charged with sacred purpose after hearing him expound on our heritage. I’m quite glad that I opted for the state WOCS program instead of the federal one at Fort Rucker, because it’s much more inspiring to marinate in the world of our own warrant officers – from new WO1s to the CCWO – than to be lectured by anonymous active duty warrants who know little of our unique world of the National Guard.

It seems hard to believe that in four months I’ll pin WO1 and I’ll become “Mr. Delobius.” I’ve already asked the guys at work if they’re going to start calling me “sir” – and I hope not, because I desire dominion over no man. If I wanted kowtowing, I would’ve become a commissioned officer.

What is this weird thing on my chest?

I’ve started on the path of the warrant officer by way of our state’s Warrant Officer Candidate School (WOCS). Unlike those who attend the federal WOCS course at Fort Rucker, Alabama – who enter the school as an enlisted soldier and leave a shiny warrant officer – I will undergo a six-month transition, basically waddling around in this pupal state for all to see.

It’s an awkward transition not unlike puberty, where others are unsure how to interact with you and you can’t yet identify your mutating role in the world. I’ve been sirred a couple of times already, which is amusing when a young specialist does it but strangely disconcerting when it’s someone who was a peer in rank just a few weeks before. More than one person has asked if they’re supposed to salute me (no), and many more have asked what to even call me (“candidate” is fine, I guess).

Another side-effect of my slow-motion metamorphosis is that it requires a mental gearing-up before each drill weekend. Monday through Friday, it’s all “hey Dave” and laughs around the water cooler, regardless of ranks, but when the WOCS drill weekend arrives it becomes “yes sir” and “no sir” and snap-to and “CANDIDATE DELOBIUS SIR.” The week before drill the thing hangs over me like a black cloud and it hasn’t even really started yet (April is the first no-shit real WOCS drill). Last night I had a dream that we held the class in my house and I got yelled at because I didn’t have a projector screen; earlier in the week I dreamed that our team-building exercise was piloting a massive cargo ship without looking out the windows. Shit, I thought, it’s bad enough that I know nothing about operating a giant boat, but I have to do it blind, too? Objectively speaking, there’s really very little to be afraid of, but even so the process is a black box and my subconscious is working overtime to crack it open, however futile that might be.

Another facet of WOCS is the seemingly endless list of rules and regulations governing our lives there. Detailed protocols dictate all manner of behavior, including dining, with rules about how many utensils to take, where they should be placed (to the quarter-inch) on the tray, and how to fold your napkin. All told, the WOC Standard Operating Procedures (WOCSOP) is a PDF document almost 120 pages long, two columns per page – a fat rulebook for the roleplaying game called WOCS. (Cue an angry warrant officer berating me for not taking this seriously – “you think this is a game, candidate?”)

Actually, having a massive rulebook suits me just fine; if everything is written down, it keeps the amount of invented bullshit to a minimum. It’s easy (comparatively) to meet expectations if they’re explicitly defined. Additionally, I’ve proven many a point during my career with the thorough look through obscure manuals and regulations. I wield well-timed quotes as weapons, and will not hesitate to do so here. As long as I don’t have to steer any watercraft, I should do just fine.

Didn’t I have these games already?

Lately I’ve been on something of a “classic gaming” kick, revisiting in physical form many of my favorite games of days past. I hesitate to call it “retro” gaming, because per the definition of retro:

relating to, reviving, or being the styles and especially the fashions of the past : fashionably nostalgic or old-fashioned <a retro look>

there is an implication of being fashionable, or adopting old things as an affectation. I’m not engaging in this activity in some sort of ironic, hipsterized way that pervades our culture (I’m not about to start drinking PBR, either); rather, in a real sense, I never left the 16-bit era. I just sold off a shitload of the stuff, and am now simply buying some of it back as a collector, something that I have never had the urge to become.

It all started (as many of these things do) with idle web browsing. I came across an article detailing how to turn a Super Nintendo controller into a USB controller with built-in flash memory, thus enabling one to have literally every SNES game ever made in the palm of your hand, playable on any computer, for less than the cost of a single one of those games in 1993. It’s an obvious idea in retrospect, but my mind was blown. Shortly after, while browsing the local used book store, I saw a really well-preserved SNES controller on the shelf (yes, at the book store), and bought it on a whim. This, of course, is always the snowflake that starts the avalanche; with a controller, one certainly needs a console, and games to go with it!

This led to a trip to the video game store, a locally-owned affair with an eclectic mix of old games, new games, DVDs, and geek paraphernalia. As a store of its type, it’s unremarkable, save for one distinction: the beautiful young woman behind the counter. With her winsome smile, shocking peroxide-blonde hair, and a buy-one-get-one-free sale sign on the counter, I was soon stacking cartridges in front of the register. Castlevania II was playing on a TV in the background, the town theme bumping out of the speakers, and I commented on her choice of game. “Yeah,” she said, “I just wish the first Castlevania didn’t have a timer – I could listen to Vampire Killer all day!” Citing a classic video game music track by name sealed the deal – I was in love. Too bad about the whole married thing…

Games in hand, I now needed consoles. I acquired a refurbished NES from another store (and then found out that seemingly everyone besides me had a NES lurking in the basement), and SGT Dock hooked me up with his SNES and a few more games. (Some of the games are utterly terrible, like Super Godzilla and Super Ninja Boy, continuing what has become a game of shitty media one-upsmanship against each other.)

Partying like it’s 1999

Despite having played games on all of these systems using emulators on the PC for many years, I found there is a distinct difference playing them as intended, using real hardware and a CRT television. Control is more direct, with no abstraction between player input and game action, and the experience is more direct, too: no dropping out of the game to check Facebook or read email. You turn the thing on and damn it, that’s what you’re doing until you’re done!

The experience is not particularly one of nostalgia, since a) the games I bought have stood up well over the years and b) I’ve played many of them in emulators, some quite recently. Nor is it a crotchety sense of “they don’t make ‘em like they used to,” since plenty of modern games are in many ways better, not just graphically but as complete packages. Instead, these games stand on their own, much like any media of another age, a different style but no less enjoyable for that.

[Collector side-note: don't blow into your NES cartridges, as we did as children. This just blows spit and water vapor onto the cartridge connectors, causing corrosion. Use a q-tip and rubbing alcohol to clean them instead. You'll be surprised at how dirty that q-tip will be!]

My new unit is still in Minnesota, but it’s not nearly as storied as the Red Bulls. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the Army is that sense of lineage, the history that pervades even inane shit like company change-of-command ceremonies. In a post-modern society that worships at the altar of new and shiny and looks upon tradition with disdain, the Army is a refreshingly grounded organization, fairly reveling in its heritage. Perhaps many don’t feel the same, but I am occasionally energized by the thought that I’m an inheritor of the Army of long past, that I am upon a page of history still in the writing, within the same book as the men of Anzio and Gettysburg – however small and anonymous my part may be.

Historical musings aside, I’ve worn the same patch on my left shoulder for all of my career until now, which means that I’ve “grown up” in the division, from a wide-eyed E-4 to the crusty E-7 (and soon to be lower-than-dirt, weaker-than-zygote warrant officer candidate) that I am now. In a very real way, the Red Bulls have shaped my career, my personality, my character, and my life for the last ten years. Of course, it’s not like I’m leaving the Army; and indeed, it is almost certain that I’ll wear the ol’ skull on my shoulder again. But it’s one of two stark transitions: the transition out of the division, and the transition from an enlisted man to warrant officer.

The Army, too, is in transition: the end of the war in Afghanistan is in sight, and post-war budget cuts loom large in nearly every conversation. The institutional memory of the lean post-Vietnam and post-Gulf War days is strong, and we enter 2013 wondering where the first hammer-blow will fall. Morale isn’t low, per se, and arguably the Guard has emerged from a decade of war the strongest, best-equipped, and most organized it has been perhaps in its entire history. Certainly, these years of integration with the active component have made us much more adept at asking for and getting support, influence, and money – though we will reap the bitter harvest of big-Army bureaucracy in the coming years as a price for our expanded role.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve spent more than ten years as a soldier – and it seems in many ways that I’m just getting started. I have a long career ahead of me, and I’m sure it’ll be just as surprising and will take just as many unexpected turns as those years behind me.

Mrs. Melobi was amazed that, unlike the last time I returned from the war, I didn’t constantly babble about the people, places, and things there. Nor was I plagued with dreams of my comrades (not any sort of horror, mind you – just endless dreams of mundanity, a continual b-roll of the same damn people I’d spent 18 months with); it was almost like the whole thing never happened. Maybe that’s because so little actually did happen that in my memory, the repetitive bits are deleted and highlights (miserably few, those) compressed, so that the deployment is zipped into a little three-week excursion.

But it did happen, and it wasn’t three weeks. Just when I forget about it, I remember that there’s a year-long hole in my life; I catch myself saying things like, “last summer, I…,” before realizing that it was two summers ago, the intervening one having disappeared into the sandy horizons of Kuwait.

I struggled to contextualize the experience in the last months there, trying to find some larger meaning for an office job half a world away. Now that I’m home, I don’t feel that need so much – it just happened, and I can try to glean lessons about my career and think about individual events without fitting them into a larger whole. This also means that the deployment was evolutionary, not revolutionary; a continuation of a theme, rather than last time, which was a complete discontinuity. It was still a fitting end to a chapter – or a capstone event, if you will – since I’ll walk the path of a warrant officer soon, making this my last tour as an NCO.

And now it’s back to life in the human world, living and loving here as that sandy year fades into the distance, already a lifetime ago, with the glorious full-color world laid out in front of me, just waiting to be seen.

The soldiers from the North contemplate the sea

Pensive looks there, as we enjoyed the calming splash of water against the breakers and the warm breeze from the Persian Gulf, and talked about how close Iran was, just over the haze-cloaked horizon. It was a little escape from one prison camp to another, an all-day junket for work but also for sea-viewing and shawirma-eating.

We had to transport our measly three shelter trucks to the naval base for inventory, cleaning, and customs inspection, a task that should’ve felt like progress but really felt pointless, since two of the three trucks were never used. They came here on a boat, got shuffled around the camp from lot to lot, and will roll back onto a boat, never having been opened, except for inventory.

Civilians would be conducting the inventory, and they agreed to “start the day early,” saying they’d meet us at 0730. We arrived by 0700, and had enough time to make two runs to Dunkin Donuts, use the bathroom, and discuss everything wrong with our organization before the civilians arrived – at about 0845. “Starting early,” my ass.

The inventory went smoothly, although the civilians didn’t seem to know what most of the items were – several times, they’d read off an item (“AB-4289 antenna base? Got one of those?”), and I could’ve held up a ham sandwich and they would’ve checked it off the list.

After inventory, the vehicles had to be washed – can’t bring back any Kuwaiti sand, you see – so we had to drive them onto pairs of giant concrete wedges, angling them upwards to expose the undercarriage. Entering the wash rack, the ground guide pointed me to a set of ramps angled apart quite precariously; I was hesitant to approach but figured these guys do this every day so they must know what they’re doing. I gingerly nosed the truck up to the ramp and feathered the gas pedal, already formulating my statement for the accident investigation that I was sure to shortly follow. (Note that terms like “gingerly” and “feathered” are relative terms when driving a 15,000 pound truck that’s straining to climb a 20-degree slope, all while you’re trying to obey the precise directions given by the ground guide who’s almost completely obscured by the hood.) Somehow I didn’t steer the thing off the ramp, though, and managed to bail out of the vehicle and leave the thing in someone else’s hands. I swear the front passenger tire was halfway off the ramp (on the inside)…

Afterwards we enjoyed chicken shawirmas (kind of a gyro-like concoction, with chicken shaved from a rotating spit, then mixed with herbs & vegetables and wrapped in a tortilla or flatbread-like thing) and a trip to the pier, where the sea breeze washed over us and we furtively snapped pictures (trying to avoid the harbor facilities, lest the Coast Guard boat nearby train its .50-cal machinegun on us). Then it was back to the sandy waste of our own camp; it was the last time most of us would leave the place, until the end.

Speaking of the end, it’s almost at hand – our bags are packed, final packages sent, goods sold to the new guys or thrown away (we sold our 32″ LCD TV for what we paid, and got rid of chairs & rugs). I’m living out of one duffel bag until I return home, which isn’t as bad as it sounds, but it sure will be nice to return to the human world, what with the real furniture and indoor plumbing and non-brown environment and all that.

All packed up and no place to go

The brigade commander said this morning, after hearing that our equipment turn-in was 98% complete, brigade-wide: “Let’s get us some flights and get us the hell out of here. What are we waiting for?” He was being facetious, of course – our timetable is on a fixed track and an organization our size is about as nimble as a fully loaded locomotive – but the sentiment was accurate. What are  we waiting for?

My time remaining here is measured in days rather than weeks, yet my impeding departure hardly seems real. Unlike last time, there’s no feeling of transition, since my job was office-based and our mission ended with a fade to black instead of a triumphant finale. Indeed, we’re not even being directly replaced; we’re literally just turning off the lights and leaving, with no successors to inherit our equipment and hard-won FOBbit wisdom. It’s an endcap of anticlimax to the ultimate anticlimax deployment, a giant squib round of a tour during which nothing seemed to happen.

That’s pure cynicism, of course – obviously we did things and stuff happened, but up here in the rarefied air of the brigade HQ, it’s all very abstract and distant. Particularly for me, acting as I do as support for staff who mostly make work for subordinates, it feels like I hardly deployed at all. Too bad I couldn’t telecommute to this thing! I’m about six degrees of separation from anybody who actually had direct activity in the war (known as “warfighters,” in the parlance of contractors and field-grades), making my job several echelons beyond mere terms like “REMF” or “FOBbit,” thus probably necessitating new terminology.

I’m groping for words here, trying to contextualize this experience. I don’t feel like my time was wasted, somehow, but I don’t know why, because on an individual level, it almost certainly was. Maybe it’s because I can see myself and my actions as part of a much larger whole, and place myself as a tiny part of the proverbial Green Machine that is the Army. I struggled with much the same rationalization during my Iraq tour, but looking back, that time seems so much more meaningful and important now than it once did.

In any case, it won’t be long before this trip is at an end, and I’ll return to the human world once more…

1. Like most birds, they forage early in the morning and late in the afternoon, especially during the brutally-hot summer. They especially like to perch on the bathroom trailers and fences near the dumpsters, behind the DFAC, and swoop down to the dumpsters, where discarded food ends up on the ground.
2. Much like rats, the sparrows will eat almost anything they can carry off or tear apart with their beaks. As far as I can tell, they mainly subsist on old grease, orange peels, peanuts, and french fries. (The latter food item is limited to the populations that hang around the food courts. The sparrows at the LSA seemed particularly bonkers for McDonald’s fries – they seem to have much the same preference as humans!) The exception to this is beef jerky – though I suppose because they simply can’t eat it. (I have a full set of teeth, and it’s a difficult task for me.) I’m pretty sure a discarded piece of jerky sat next to our building for several weeks, untouched, until I guess someone threw it in the trash.
3. Unlike their North American brethren, males here never lose the black color to their bills. They seem to maintain breeding plumage all year long. (Back home,the males’ bills take on a beige or “horn” color during the winter, changing to black again in the spring.)
4. The breeding season here starts at the beginning of February and is still ongoing. There might be two seasons – one in late winter and one in the fall, when temperatures are low enough to avoid roasting eggs in the nest, but warm enough not to freeze the chicks when they hatch.
5. Males entice females with a little mating dance, where they droop their wings, raise their heads, and hop around, chirping frantically. The females then rush the male, chasing him off, and he repeats the dance, and the female attacks, until apparently she gets tired and invites the male to mount. It’s a funny little show of hard-to-get that seems oddly appropriate for the urban environment in which they live.
6. Males spend most of the day on a high perch, chirping to get attention and broadcast their territory. On our living buildings, they’ll space themselves evenly, one at each corner and one in the middle, and chirp away.
7. Before dawn, the males will chirp from lower perches, like chain-link fences and the supports for our air conditioners. I suppose it’s because they can’t be seen, so don’t need to be high up. Also, it makes it easier to wake up stupid humans who unwittingly leave windows open, since those windows are right under the A/C units.
8. Despite their inability to sing, the sparrows do have different voices, and some males even string different chirps together in a sort of performance (akin to a toddler banging on a piano). One even managed a bit of a trill between chirps, which gives me hope that in 100,000 years or so they’ll evolve a song or two. Females just make a loud chittering call when agitated or when chasing others around.

I might be the only person on the internet comparing the Playstation 2 and PSP role-playing game Persona 3 and this year’s movie Act of Valor, so bear with me here. (Also note that there may be spoilers below for both Persona 3 and Act of Valor.)

Saturday I finished my 120-hour epic quest in Persona 3, a pretty standard game about Japanese high school students fighting demons in their school after midnight, shooting yourself in the head to summon spiritual beings, and leveling up by eating fast food (at familiar joints like “Wild Duck Burger”). Saturday night we went to see Act of Valor at the base theater, and with the intense experience of the ending of Persona 3 fresh in my mind, the film about war and sacrifice made an interesting juxtaposition with the themes of the game.

For sacrifice is one of the final themes of Persona 3, as the main character – the silent protagonist who you control for the duration, and whose personality is only expressed through your choices as the player – willingly gives up his life in the end, choosing death in order to save his friends (and indeed the rest of humanity). It’s an act several orders of magnitude larger in scale than the SEAL jumping on a grenade in the final firefight of Act of Valor, but one that’s no less personal. And indeed, those “damn few” SEALs put their lives on the line for an entire nation, the citizens of which – much like the people of the fictional city of Iwatodai – may never know from what they were saved, or by whom.

The more overarching theme of both works, though, was that of facing death, and living in spite of that inevitability that awaits all living things. Act of Valor quoted Tecumseh:

When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.

And Persona 3′s final enemy, Nyx, had her own quote:

Celebrate life’s grandeur… its brilliance… its magnificence… Only courage in the face of doubt can lead one to the answer. Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. It matters not who you are… Death awaits you.

Death is a journey that all life must make; the only choice left is how to face it, and sometimes, when to begin. In Persona 3, Nyx urges the characters to give up hope as death descends upon the world; after all, if death is known and inevitable, how can one continue living under that crushing burden? But the characters make the decision that the SEALs in Act of Valor already made: they choose to fight, and to live as best they can, with the time given to them. In both cases, this also gave them the freedom to choose sacrifice – voluntarily choosing death for the life of others. Not a berserker’s death (or that of a kamikaze), but a calculated decision, made in an instant.

Can such a decision be made in the moment? Or is it made long before, with “hard sweat of the brow” and long nights of doubt, ultimately arriving at that quiet steel, that state sought by many but attained by few? Neither work provides answers, but both suggest that only by facing death and acknowledging it can one live freely, unburdened by the fear of the infinite.

And yet, here we have a little patch of life in the desert, maybe twenty yards long, right along Patton Avenue (the camp’s main drag), a riot of color in our otherwise brown world. A few small butterflies even flitted to and fro in the stiff north wind (I’m no bug guy – they looked kind of like the “Painted Lady“), and a pair of Crested Larks chirped and scuttled across the sand nearby.

Few will notice this little garden, since I’m sure it’ll be gone soon, and most traffic on the road is vehicular anyway. Still, it was heartening to see some life on Brown Planet; a mere preview of what awaits in the spring of home, three months and five thousand miles away.